Populism, Technocracy and the Critique of Party Democracy

This paper seeks to provide a new perspective on the normative value of party democracy by presenting it as the implicit target of critique of two seemingly opposed political forms, that are becoming increasingly salient in contemporary European politics: populism and technocracy. The argument we advance is that, although these two terms – and the political realities they refer to – are usually presented as irreducibly opposed to one another, there is also an important element of complementarity between them. This complementarity consists in the fact that both populism and technocracy are predicated on an implicit critique of two constitutive elements of party democracy, which also establish its normative value: the mediation of political conflicts through the institution of political parties; and a procedural conception of political legitimacy which lays the grounds for a recognition of the legitimacy of opposition. In order to advance this argument, we rely on a close analysis of works by Ernesto Laclau and Pierre Rosanvallon as exemplary manifestations of the critique of party democracy that underscores contemporary discourses on populism and technocracy.