Technocratic Ministers in Office in European Countries (2000–2020): What’s New?

Abstract

Although Europeans are favourable towards the idea of being governed by ‘independent experts’, and despite the burgeoning literature on technocratic ministers, we still miss important information about the profiles of technocrats in government. This article provides new insights into the characteristics of non-partisan, non-elected ministers and the roles they perform once in government based on a Technocratic Ministers’ Dataset covering all governments in 31 European countries from 2000 to 2020. First, we show that average share of technocratic (as opposed to partisan) ministers in European cabinets rose from 9.5% to 14.2% over the last two decades. This increase is characteristic of all macro-regions, except Scandinavian countries. Second, technocratic ministers are assigned to a diversity of portfolios and not just finance and economy, which, respectively, account for only 15% of technocratic ministers. Finally, technocratic ministers do not hold office for shorter periods of time than partisan ones, except when they are part of caretaker cabinets.

Who do Europeans want to govern? Exploring the multiple dimensions of citizens’ preferences for political actors in nine European countries

“…The mean scores are slightly higher among citizens from Austria, Belgium and Bulgaria, while citizens in Denmark, the Czech Republic and Greece are on average more negative. Danes are much less accustomed to technocrats with a scientific background in government (Vittori et al, 2023), and are more often consulted on science and technology matters than citizens from the other countries, as exemplified by the Consensus Conferences of the Danish Board of Technology. This might explain why Danes do not push for empowering scientific experts even further.…”

Technocracy above partisanship? Comparing the appeal of non-partisan and partisan experts as ministers – A survey in 14 countries

“…Conceptually, technocratic ministers have two defining characteristics: (1) expertise that is directly relevant to one's ministerial portfolio and (2) being independent from political parties, meaning that they did not follow a partisan career path (Alexiadou and Gunaydin, 2019;Blondel and Thiébault, 1991). From recent studies, it appears that they remain a minority compared to partisan ministers, accounting for about 10% of all appointed ministers in Europe over the last two decades, although their presence tends to vary across regions, with Southern and Eastern European countries being the most 'technocratic' (Vittori et al, 2023b).…”

“…It appears that, overall, a significant share of citizens answers positively to such a claim (see Figure 1). 3 The appeal of independent experts in government is especially strong among citizens in Eastern Europe, while in Southern European countries (Greece and Spain), there appears to be an inverse relationship between the (high) number of technocrats appointed (Vittori et al, 2023b) and the (low) support for technocracy.…”

“…Building on the growing presence of technocrats in government over recent years (Vittori et al, 2023b), scholars have started analysing attitudes towards technocrats in government. The first works have showed that the support for 'having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country' 1 is widespread in most countries (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017; see also Bertsou, 2022;Bertsou and Caramani, 2020;Chiru and Enyedi, 2022;Lavezzolo et al, 2022).…”

“…In this regard, we fielded a survey in 14 European countries. Recent research has shown that the type of technocrats and their degree of independence from partisan politics varies considerably across European countries (Vittori et al, 2023b). Technocrats are much more present in some Southern European countries, like Italy, and in Central and Eastern Europe (Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Romania).…”