Virtual icon Experts and technocrats in government. Non-elected politicians as a cure or a curse for representative democracy?

Recent studies have shown that technocratic cabinets and the appointment of technocratic ministers in partisan government are on the rise in Europe (Mcdonnell and Valbruzzi, 2014; Costa Pinto, Cotta and Tavares de Almeida, 2018). Contrary to elected politicians, such members of government are getting into power without going through electoral contest and without being active in party politics. Appointing technocratic ministers may be perceived as attractive in contemporary European politics to address the growing crisis of legitimacy of representative institutions. Party legitimacy has eroded significantly in the last decades (Ignazi, 2014), party linkages is shrinking (van Biezen and Poguntke, 2014) and the traditional model of “party government” (Mair, 2008) is increasingly under scrutiny (Bohle, 2014). Recruiting ministers outside partisan circles could therefore be a way for parties to respond to this legitimacy crisis. Having experts in governments is a popular option (see Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017; Chiru and Enyedi, 2019), thus parties might decide to use technocrats to relaunch their image as organizations capable of selected competent personnel. Yet, appointing such technocrats and experts into government may also be a curse for representative democracy. Since parliamentary democracy can be understood as a long chain of delegation from voters all the way to the civil servants who finally implement public policy (Amorim Neto and Strøm, 2006, p. 623), having ministers not linked to the agents of the people, i.e. parties, breaks with this logic. In particular, for citizens claiming that representative institutions are too distant from the people, appointing non-elected ministers into government could do more harm than good. Illustrating such concerns, few studies have been published recently to understand better how citizens view and evaluate the appointment of experts and technocrats in government (Ganuza and Font, 2020; Lavezzolo and Ramiro, 2021) and to connect attitudes towards experts and technocrats to broader conceptions of democracy (Bertsou and Caramani, 2020; Guasti and Bustikova 2020). Yet, comprehensive and comparative account are still needed, especially to understand better whether non-elected politicians in government are rather bridging the gap between citizens and representative institutions, or whether they are further deepening it. It is this goal that the workshop proposed is trying to fill in. Amorim Neto, O. and Strøm, K. (2006) ‘Breaking the parliamentary chain of delegation: Presidents and non-partisan cabinet members in European democracies’, British Journal of Political Science, 36(4), pp. 619–643. doi: 10.1017/S0007123406000330. van Biezen, I. and Poguntke, T. (2014) ‘The decline of membership-based politics’, Party Politics, 20(2), pp. 205–216. doi: 10.1177/1354068813519969. Bohle, D. (2014) ‘Responsible Government and Capitalism’s Cycles’, West European Politics, 37(2), pp. 288–308. doi: 10.1080/01402382.2014.887876. Costa Pinto, A., Cotta, M. and Tavares de Almeida, P. (2018) Technocratic Ministers and Political Leadership in European Democracies. Palgrave Macmillan. doi: 10.1007/978-3-319-62313-9. Ignazi, P. (2014) ‘Power and the (il)legitimacy of political parties: An unavoidable paradox of contemporary democracy?’, Party Politics, 20(2), pp. 160–169. doi: 10.1177/1354068813519970. Mair, P. (2008) ‘The challenge to party government’, West European Politics, 31(1–2), pp. 211–234. doi: 10.1080/01402380701835033.