Attitudes in established democracies show there is still a place for independent experts in politics

Abstract

While recent political developments may paint a bleak picture of the role of unelected experts in democratic politics, Eri Bertsou and Giulia Pastorella argue that positive attitudes toward ‘technocrats’ remain prevalent in many established democracies. They explain that what drives citizen preferences for political decision-making by independent experts is distrust of representative political institutions and a belief in the merits of democracy as a system. This highlights the appeal of ‘non-political politics’, which has enjoyed a surge in the past decade.