Will versus Reason: The Populist and Technocratic Challenge to Party Democracy

Recent decades have witnessed the growth of populist mobilization and technocratic governance (nationally and supra-nationally) with claims that representative government and party politics are not sufficiently responsive and responsible. This paper compares the populist and technocratic critique of representative government from a political theory -- and more specifically from a representation -- perspective. First, it shows a number of commonalities between the two types of challenge in that in both there are anti-politics elements and a unitary non-pluralist unmediated vision of the general interest. Second, it highlights the differences between the two types of challenge. While technocracy stresses responsibility over responsiveness and therefore requires voters to delegate authority to decision makers who derive the general interest from rational speculation, populism stresses responsiveness over responsibility and therefore requires voters to delegate authority to decision makers who equate the general interest with a putative people’s will. References are made to both classical treatments of democratic legitimacy and more recent typologies of models of democracy.