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democracy, where people are not actors but only reactors in politics. They
elect those candidates from the competing elites who they think are the closest
to their interests and will govern the state according to their own ideas and
the peoples will (and hopes). In this system, elites represent the expertise,
while people represent the source of legitimacy.
This kind of balance is the basis of modern liberal democracy, but
technocracy is also a constant challenge to democracy, because it tends to
depoliticise governance (Caramani 2020, 1-4). As Hobson puts it, “liberal
democracy is not meant to be so much about empowering people, as it is
about protecting their liberties and allowing them to pursue their own interests
unimpeded. As such, core civil and political rights are prioritized” (Hobson
2012, 444).* However, as we saw in the second part of this chapter, this kind
of depoliticisation along with representative politics produce not only a gap
between the political class and the people, but also raise dissatisfaction and
distrust among the people towards the elites, claiming that people are not
really represented any more.
Taggart explains another aspect of this through the example of European
integration. This has produced a very complex, multilevel governance
system, where people are represented in many different ways, and at many
different levels, but has also created complex, opaque, and bureaucratic
politics, and a “very indirect representation [that] emphasizes the distance
between citizens and elites” (Taggart 2002, 75). The supposed victory of
liberal democracy also meant the victory of this technocratic-elitist form
of governance: people became only viewers, consumers of politics in “the
age of political consumerism” (Rosanvallon 2008, 253-254). But while
consumerism distanced people from politics, on the one hand, it also raised
their expectations towards political institutions, on the other. In this system,
democracy restricts democracy: elected officials are reined in and lose their room to
manoeuvre owing to pressure from the voters themselves. As a result, the dynamics of
control take precedence over the appropriation of power. The citizen is transformed
into an ever more demanding political consumer ... the ‘age of political consumerism”
has been characterized by high expectations of political institutions and growing
demands upon them. The problem stems from the way in which these demands are
expressed, which tends to delegitimate the powers to which they are addressed. This is
3 Among the numerous and ever-growing variety of indices about democracy (Freedom
House, The Economist Intelligence Unit, V-Dem, IDEA, and so on) one can hardly find
any that has a strong focus on democracy as a political opportunity for taking part in
politics, or making our voice heard. Instead, the biggest share of these indices focuses
on civil liberties, the institutional set-up of constitutional liberalism, and the freedom of
market and economy. Social rights, equality, chances and forms of real political participation
(beyond general elections), inclusion — these are hardly, if at all, present in these reports.
For a detailed criticism of these methods see Doorenslpeet 2015.