Although scholarly interest in populism has increased as populist parties have risen across Europe, the subnational level has been largely overlooked. This article adopts an original subnational focus and explores an unlikely but increasingly prevalent political agenda: the combination of technocracy and populism. We focus on technocratic populism as a political and governance strategy at the municipal level and assess how the interaction of populism and technocracy plays out empirically in relation to administration and public policies and how the tensions and synergies between technocracy and populism are solved at the local level. The article argues that the local level is especially prone to this kind of intersection between technocratic and populist ideology. While the article is mainly an exercise in concept development, two illustrative cases at the city level, namely the Movimento 5 Stelle (M5S, Five Star Movement) in Rome and the Akce nespokojených občanů (ANO, Action of Dissatisfied Citizens) in Prague are used to support the argument.

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Between 2012 and 2018, Spanish public opinion has been shaken by a seemingly endless series of corruption scandals, to the point that corruption has become one of the main long-term concerns of the Spanish population, according to nation-wide surveys. Despite the sharp rise in corruption scandals within local authorities, there are Spanish cities that have managed to limit corruption and build a transparent and efficient government, which stand out as islands of integrity and good governance. This article qualitatively investigates two cities in Spain—Alcobendas and Sant Cugat del Vallès—which, despite being in a region with comparatively lower quality of government, have managed to successfully control corruption. We argue that the key to success is the administrative reorganization prompted by the appointment of city managers that institutionalized professional management. Findings also have implications for practitioners, meaning that complex anti-corruption legislative frameworks will not work within an overburdened administration unless the administrative structure is reformed.

His research interests focus on the link between territorial party politics and public policy. He recently published a monograph on the regional politics of welfare in Italy, Spain and Great Britain (Palgrave Macmillan). He has also published articles and book chapters on multi-level social policy, changing local representation and populist parties in Western Europe 2 Between 2008 and 2014, Spain experienced a severe recession, which had a deep impact on its political system. Scholars have mainly focused on transformations occurred at the national level but have neglected changing equilibria at the local level. This paper shows that in Spain the role of traditional parties as mediators of local interests has declined and suggests that they have to face increasing competition coming from citizens' lists, which label themselves as 'local' or 'non-partisan'. By relying on an original dataset and quantitative analysis, this paper aims to understand to what extent these new forces are influenced by other forms of territorial mobilisation represented by regionalist parties and whether corruption and inequality, two factors that are crucial in Southern European societies, may also explain part of their success.