International organization, technocracy and the populist backlash

The rabid populism of the Trump years and the Brexit campaign not only dealt a hard blow to international organizations and global governance projects. It also marginalized experts and scientific expertise in government. The COVID 19 pandemic, on the other hand, brutally exposed the weaknesses of populist governance and underlined, once again, the value of scientific expertise and cooperation across borders. In this paper I argue that the populist revolts against international organizations and scientists in government are intimately related, almost two sides of the same coin. I contend that the common denominator is the resistance against the universal rationalization of governance. Drawing on historical evidence from the late 19th and entire 20th century the paper shows that technocracy (understood as expert governance) and international organizations often have been intertwined projects. Technocratic internationalism suggests that international relations should be managed by scientists, experts and lawyers rather than by politicians and diplomats. The ‘organization’ of international relations through bureaucratization, legalization and the turn to scientific expertise was part of an encompassing project of societal rationalization, which first the Western industrialized countries and successively most other parts of the world embarked on. Typically, proponents of technocratic international governance draw on three themes when legitimating IOs: technical competence, efficient problem-solving and impartial defense of the public interest against political rent-seeking. While technocratic governance relies on experts and scientific expertise, populists claim to be representing the authentic will of the people and defend it against elites and their dominant rationality. Populist resistance against IOs thus can be interpreted as a backlash against that modernization project and its implications, powered by generalized distrust of a rationalized society and its institutions.