The Anti-Pluralist Challenge: Populism, Technocracy, and Liberal Democracy

Liberal democracy, it is often claimed, is under threat from anti-plural political forces. Although populists are generally perceived to be the primarily culprits behind declining support for liberal democracy (Rummens 2017), more recently technocrats (Caramani 2017) are also perceived as potential anti-democratic forces. To date, measuring anti-pluralist reactions towards democracy has produced mixed results. Supply side studies, for example, highlight that when populist parties are in power that they curtail the independence of the media and minority rights (Huber and Schimpf 2017), while demand-side studies show that individuals with stronger populist attitudes are more in favour of democracy. Little research has, however, assessed the implications of technocratic governments for liberal democracies. In this paper, we are interested in the relationship between individuals with stronger populist and stronger technocratic attitudes vis-a-vis liberal democracy. Using a original dataset from Great Britain, Germany, Spain, and Poland we first, assess the link between anti-pluralist attitudes and liberal democracy. Second, we examine the link between anti-pluralist attitudes and democratic ambivalence, understood as support for policies that can be linked with democratic backsliding. Our working hypotheses point to two divergent directions. First, we anticipate that the people-centeredness of populism leads individuals with stronger populist attitudes to be at odds with the political pluralism of liberal democracy. Individuals with stronger populist attitudes may see themselves are true democrats, however, we anticipate that these individuals struggle with political and constitutional pluralism. At the same time, we anticipate that technocrats will not demonstrate the same level of opposition to constitutional pluralism. In contrast, we anticipate that the technocratic focus on expertise will lead individuals with stronger technocratic attitudes to be more amenable to the potential suspension of democratic institutions, while the people-centeredness of populism will not manifest itself in support for democratic backsliding.