Disorganised Collective Citizens’ Interest, Social Transformations and Technopopulism

Abstract

New ways of doing politics, embodied in the appeal to populism, the appeal to technocracy, or both combined, that is, ‘technopopulism’, are revealing symptoms of crisis in citizens’ representation in democratic societies in the European Union. This type of doing politics indicates ruptures in the organised citizens’ interest, which are leading to the rise of new parties and party leaders promising to solve ‘the people’s’ problem in general, that is, populism, and of unelected technocrats that offer economic solutions and managerial approaches ‘for doing politics, but not policy’. It also a precursor in determining how countries can navigate systemic health crises like the COVID-19 pandemic. Both are symptoms of the same crisis of democratic representation of citizens’ organised interests. To unpack the causes, this chapter looks at the historical conditions under which technopopulism has risen since the 1990s. The Czech Republic in Central-East Europe and France in Western Europe, as two different cases with the same outcome, are used to illustrate the same path dependency of the conditions leading to the use of the logic of technopopulism. It argues that these ruptures are the result of the long processes that have led to disorganised citizens’ interests amidst the shift to neoliberal doctrine, the decline of party politics, and societal transformations in globalised societies.