Democratic innovations and the threat of technopopulism

Abstract

The current crisis of democracy fuels the impression that democratic societies are stuck between populism and technocracy, between the rule of experts and mob rule. For all their differences, populism and technocracy are equally incompatible with democracy. Contrary to the democratic commitment to give all citizens an equal say in political decisions, populism and technocracy expect citizens to blindly defer to the decisions of others. In this time of crisis, it is therefore crucial to defend the possibility of genuine democracy against the sort of exclusions involved in populism and technocracy. Unfortunately, many popular conceptions of democracy tacitly rely on populist or technocratic assumptions that threaten the democratic ideal of inclusion. I justify this claim in two steps. First, I analyze deep pluralist, epistocratic, and lottocratic conceptions of democracy. I show that each of these conceptions offers institutional “shortcuts” in an attempt to solve well-known problems of democratic governance such as overcoming disagreements, citizens’ political ignorance, or poor-quality deliberation. However, instead of actually addressing the problems, the proffered solutions end up simply expecting citizens to blindly defer to actors over whose decisions they cannot exercise democratic control. Herein lies their anti-democratic core. In a second step, I analyze the roots of the requirement for blind deference in each of these conceptions. I show that deep pluralist conceptions justify the requirement of blind deference on populist grounds, epistocratic conceptions justify it on technocratic grounds, and lottocratic conceptions justify it on technopopulist grounds. I contend that democratic theorists and practitioners won’t contribute...