Technopopulism The New Logic of Democratic Politics

Technocratic appeals to expertise and populist invocations of 'the people' have become mainstays of political competition in established democracies. This development is best understood as the emergence of technopopulism—a new political logic that is being superimposed on the traditional struggle between left and right. Political movements and actors—such as Italy's Five Star Movement and France's La R'epubliqe En Marche—combine technocratic and populist appeals in a variety of ways, as do more established parties that are adapting to the particular set of incentives and constraints implicit in this new, unmediated form of politics. In the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of technopopulism, we combine theoretical and historical approaches, offering a systematic definition of the concept of technopopulism, while also exploring a number of salient contemporary examples. This book provides a detailed account of the emergence of this new political logic, as well as a discussion of its troubling consequences for existing democratic regimes. It ends by considering some possible remedies that go beyond the simplistic idea that in the right 'dose' populism and technocracy can counter-balance one another.

1 - The Concept of Technopopulism
2 - Varieties of Technopopulism
3 - The Origins of Technopopulism
4 - Consequences of Technopopulism
5 - Normative Reflections on Technopopulism

Dr Christopher J. Bickerton is a Reader in Modern European Politics at the Department of Politics and International Studies, University of Cambridge. He is also Fellow of Queens' College, Cambridge and Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. His books include European Union Foreign Policy (2011), European Integration: From Nation-States to Member States (2012), and the best-selling The European Union: A Citizen's Guide (2016), which was nominated for the Baillie-Gifford non-fiction book prize. He has written regularly for the New York Times, The Guardian and the Monde Diplomatique. He is a regular panelist on the podcast Talking Politics. Dr Carlo Invernizzi Accetti is an Associate Professor in Political Theory at the City College of New York (CUNY). He is also Associate Researcher at the Centre for European Studies of the Institut d'Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po) and Visiting Associate Professor of European Politics at Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). His books include Relativism and Religion: Why Democratic Societies Do Not Need Moral Absolutes (Columbia UP, 2015) and What is Christian Democracy? Politics, Religion, and Ideology (Cambridge UP, 2019). He has published widely in academic journals, including in the American Political Science Review. He is a regular contributor on European and US political affairs for The Financial Times, The Guardian, Foreign Affairs, La Repubblica, and the Monde Diplomatique.