AUTHORIZED TECHNOCRACY: THE POLITICAL SUBORDINATION OF EXPERTISE UNDER POPULIST RULE

Abstract

Populism and technocracy are generally treated as two opposing logics of legitimacy. Populism locates the source of political decisions in the will of the people, whereas technocracy grounds authority in expertise and problem-solving capacity. Contemporary populist governments, however, do not abolish expertise; they continue to govern through scientific councils, advisers, technical bureaucracies, statistical agencies, and professional knowledge networks. To explain this apparent contradiction, this article introduces the concept of “authorized technocracy.” Authorized technocracy refers to a governing arrangement in which expertise is considered legitimate not as an autonomous source of authority and public scrutiny, but insofar as it is selected, authorized, and represented as compatible with the political leader’s interpretation of the popular will. Based on a qualitative concept-oriented review, the article brings together the literatures on populism, technocracy, technopopulism, the sociology of expertise, and democratic legitimacy. It argues that populist rule does not eliminate expertise but reorganizes it through selective authorization, institutional dependence, epistemic boundary-making, visibility management, and the asymmetric distribution of responsibility. The article distinguishes among authorized, conditional, and delegitimized experts and clarifies how authorized technocracy differs from classical technocracy, technopopulism, patronage, post-truth politics, and epistemic authoritarianism. It concludes that a democratic relationship between expertise and popular sovereignty requires reliable knowledge, institutional autonomy, plural scrutiny, and accountable political judgment rather than either rule by experts or the subordination of knowledge to political loyalty.