Do populist citizens prefer to be governed by technocratic leaders?

Several studies have written about the growing presence of ‘techno-populism’ – or the combination of technocratic and populist conceptions of democracy – in European politics. While some scholars pointed to the emergence of a techno-populist party family, others identified groups of citizens with techno-populist attitudes among the general public. Our study investigated the link between technocratic and populist conceptions of democracy by testing whether populist citizens prefer to be governed by technocratic leaders, using a conjoint experiment conducted in 15 European countries. In line with the definition of technocrats as non-partisan experts, respondents were asked to select their preferred candidate for four different ministerial roles, some of whom were described as a) not being affiliated to a political party and b) having previously worked in the same field as their ministerial portfolio. In a first step, we tested whether citizens with populist attitudes, i.e., scoring high on items from the Akkerman et al. (2014) scale, were more likely to select technocratic candidates than non-populists, demonstrating that this is only the case in 2 out of 15 countries; Austria and The Czech Republic. In a second step, we narrowed down the conceptualization of populist attitudes, by testing whether anti-pluralist populists were more likely to select technocratic candidates than the rest, showing that this is only the case in The Netherlands. Finally, in a third step we tested whether the voters of populist political parties (as identified by the PopuList classification), were more likely to select technocratic candidates than non-populist voters, finding no evidence for this in any country (and even counter-evidence in Denmark). All in all, our results challenge the claim that populists are also ‘technocratic’ when it comes to their preferences for the qualities of political leaders.