Overwhelmed by globalisation? Technocratic government as agonistic remedy for political crisis

When confronted with foreign policy crises emerging from Globalization and Europeanisation, Italian politics often look paralyzed. Strong discursive antagonisms prevent common ground, compromise and ultimately governance. The call for technocratic governments, as a result of rallying around common floating signifiers, is a last institutionalized means to restore democratic agonism and consequently to deal with those global and European challenges. Against some strand of the literature, we argue that temporary technocratic governments are not anti-democratic, but rather an agonistic mechanism for revitalizing democratic discourse. We illustrate this argument using the Monti government as an example and in the conclusion draw parallels to Draghi's term in office.