Technopopulism

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Technopopulism

Contemporary democracies face a crisis of political representation. In understanding this crisis, scholars and commentators often frame it as the 'end' or the 'collapse' of democracy. This book takes a very different path. It argues that we are witnessing a transformation in the nature and practice of political competition within existing democratic regimes. This transformation consists in the rise of a new political field, techno-populism. Within this field, appeals to the people and appeals to expertise are the new structuring logic of democratic politics. Populist appeals to a unitary 'people' combine in multiple ways with technocratic claims about efficient policy-making and policy implementation. These multiple combinations form the basis for the varieties of techno-populism outlined in detail in this book. We focus in particular on British, French, and Italian cases. The concept of technopopulism helps us to make sense of new and idiosyncratic political movements such as En Marche! and the Five Star Movement. Technopopulism is also the conceptual key to understanding the significance of Blairism for British politics and its legacy in the profound transformations underway in the contemporary Conservative Party. The transition from an ideological struggle between left and right to this technopopulist political field where populist and technocratic appeals are fused together into novel forms of political organization is having a significant impact on the quality of democratic political competition. This book analyses the origins and consequences of the rise of technopopulism, as well as considering the remedies available to us to tackle its negative effects.
Technopopulism

Author: Christopher J. Bickerton
language: en
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Release Date: 2021-03-20
Technocratic appeals to expertise and populist invocations of 'the people' have become mainstays of political competition in established democracies. This development is best understood as the emergence of technopopulism—a new political logic that is being superimposed on the traditional struggle between left and right. Political movements and actors—such as Italy's Five Star Movement and France's La Républiqe En Marche—combine technocratic and populist appeals in a variety of ways, as do more established parties that are adapting to the particular set of incentives and constraints implicit in this new, unmediated form of politics. In the first book-length treatment of the phenomenon of technopopulism, we combine theoretical and historical approaches, offering a systematic definition of the concept of technopopulism, while also exploring a number of salient contemporary examples. This book provides a detailed account of the emergence of this new political logic, as well as a discussion of its troubling consequences for existing democratic regimes. It ends by considering some possible remedies that go beyond the simplistic idea that in the right 'dose' populism and technocracy can counter-balance one another.
Multiple Populisms

This book provides a comprehensive interpretation of the multiple manifestations of populism using Italy, the only country amongst consolidated constitutional democracies in which populist political forces have been in government on various occasions since the early 1990s, as the starting point and benchmark. Populism is a complex, multi-faceted political phenomenon which redefines many of the essential characteristics of democracy; participation, representation, and political conflict. This book considers contemporary versions of populism that pose a real challenge to representative and constitutional democracy. Contributors provide an integrative interpretation of populism and analyse its principal historical, social and politico-legal variables to provide a multi-dimensional reflection on the concept of populism, comprehensive analysis of the populist phenomenon and a theoretical and comparative perspective on the diverse political experiences of populism. Based on conceptual and interdisciplinary reflections from expert authors, this book will be of great interest to scholars and post-graduate students of cultural studies, European studies, political sociology, political science, comparative politics, political philosophy, and political theory with an interest in a comparative and interdisciplinary theory of populism and its manifestations.