People Haven't Had Enough of Experts: Technocratic Attitudes among Citizens in Nine European Democracies

2020/08/20 by Eri Bertsou, Daniele Caramani · 217 citations
Medicine · Social Sciences · #Corporate governance #Democracy #Demographics #Economics #Electoral Systems and Political Participation #Law #Medicine #Odds #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Populism #Populism, Right-Wing Movements #Public administration #Rationality #Representation (politics) #Representative democracy #Social Media and Politics #Sociology #Technocracy

paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/ajps.12554

published in American Journal of Political Science 66(1), 5-23 (Wiley)

openalex publication_date 2020/08/20 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/01

Abstract

Abstract Political representation theory postulates that technocracy and populism mount a twofold challenge to party democracy, while also standing at odds with each other in the vision of representation they advocate. Can these relationships be observed empirically at the level of citizen preferences, and what does this mean for alternative forms of representation? The article investigates technocratic attitudes among citizens following three dimensions—expertise, elitism, and anti‐politics—and, using latent class analysis, identifies citizen groups that follow a technocratic, populist, and party‐democratic profile in nine European democracies. Results show that technocratic attitudes are pervasive and can be meaningfully distinguished from populist attitudes, though important overlaps remain. We investigate differences in demographics and political attitudes among citizen profiles that are relevant to political behavior and conclude by highlighting the role that citizens’ increasing demands for expertise play in driving preferences for alternative types of governance

Citations

• Defining and classifying technocrat‐led and technocratic governments
• Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right
• The Populist Zeitgeist
• The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information.

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