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Democracy and distrust | 113 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.
