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Debates in and over the European Union (EU) are increasingly characterised as being based in arguments that are either ‘populist’ or ‘technocratic’. As systems of communication, this article argues, populism and technocracy possess dramatically different logics of argumentation, modes of communication and meaning-making, distinct narratives, with appeals to distinct sources of legitimacy. As such, actors adopting either political style construct their identity in a way that seeks to legitimise its own political action, while in turn delegitimising that of its opponents. This results in an atmosphere of distrust between actors using these different communication styles, making any form of negotiation or cooperation between them exceedingly difficult. In the context of the Brexit negotiations, which this article uses as a case study, the UK Government has adopted a populist style characterised by narratives of taking back control, legitimised by the will of the people, communicating often in a ‘low’ political style and using a narrative of crisis and threat. In comparison, the EU has adopted a technocratic style characterised by narratives of technical policy making and the need for rationality, legitimised through the laws, rules and processes by which it is governed, communicating in a ‘high’ political style while using a narrative of stability and continuity. These radically different views of the world have resulted in an increasing of tensions and distrust by the parties to Brexit negotiations that were already heightened by a sense of ‘betrayal’ over Brexit.

The article investigates the reaction of the Polish technocratic security dispositif to the arrival of Ukrainian migrants in Poland between 2014-2020. It contributes to the studies on securitisation and on technocracy by proposing to re-conceptualise research on the security practices towards migration, drawing upon the notions of a security dispositif and regime of practices. It is exemplified by migration from Ukraine to Poland. The paper distinguishes three regimes of practices within Polish migration control: state ignorance, technocratic governance and neighbourhood. Contrary to most securitisation practices on migration to the European Union from the South, there have been very few populist ‘speech acts’ by Polish political agents that would have positioned the migration from Ukraine as an existential threat. The article concludes that the Polish security dispositif mainly mobilised state ignorance as a resource in governing migration, since neither new legal nor institutional practices were adopted to address the increased arrivals of Ukrainians. Simultaneously, this was accompanied by an internal logic of technocratic governance and its ubiquitous strategic tendency to widen surveillance and control capacities towards foreigners. The article also highlights the role of local identity and the politics of memory in governing Ukrainian migration to Poland.

This article introduces the special issue on populism and technocracy in the integration and governance of the European Union (EU), framing these opposing approaches in the context of polarised debate on the (il)legitimacy of the EU. The special issue was conceived as an interdisciplinary approach to questions of the EU’s legitimacy in the aftermath of structural crises (the eurozone, sovereign debt and the election and appointment of governing agents) and spontaneous crises (migration, external state and non-state security challenges, Brexit and Euroscepticism). Since the special issue’s conception the unanticipated Covid-19 pandemic, and responses from the EU and its member states (current and former) starkly illuminated debates on how the EU should operate, the limits of its power and the limits of its popular legitimacy. The era of passive consensus has been replaced by claims of legitimacy based on active expert-informed intervention, alongside populist claims of the EU’s inherent illegitimacy as an undemocratic technocracy. As such the special issue’s objective is to critically analyse manifold ways in which the populist-technocratic divide is narrated and performed in different regions, disciplines, and social and political systems in an era of growing internal and external challenges to the Union. We observe that the EU’s institutions remain highly adaptable in responding to challenges, but that member-states have continued and accelerated a tendency to nationalise success and Europeanise failure, with the EU acting as a perennial scapegoat largely due to the ease with which it can be narrated as a site of projection for mistrust, resentment, and social grievances. We argue that the relationship between populism and technocracy is rapidly evolving from an imagined binary into a much more fluid, overlapping, and reversible set of political narratives. We conclude that despite the changing nature of populist-technocratic debates and the resilience and adaptability of the EU, it faces accelerating challenges to its legitimacy in the new era of ‘politics of necessity’.

This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle during their campaigns for the European Parliament elections (January-May 2019). We focus on the Italian case as it is representative of a generalised shift in European public discourse towards an overt delegitimation of the European project and its re-imagination. In the Italian case, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle, which were in a Government coalition for fourteen months, have been instrumental in Italy’s shift from a strong Europhile country to one of the most Eurosceptic. However, while Lega has definitely aligned itself with a strong right-wing populist agenda, Movimento 5 Stelle has promoted a populist technocratic vision of democracy. Our analysis shows that the articulation of Eurosceptic discourses from both parties by and large reflects the two stances above with Lega’s messages (primarily produced by its leader Matteo Salvini) characterised by a ‘hyperled’ style of communication and stronger nativist elements (for example the appeal to an ethno-centric and ‘sovereign’ idea of Italy) than those of Movimento 5 Stelle, which instead relied on a ‘horizontal’ communicative style. However, our data also shows that the delegitimation of Europe in both parties occur along a similar domestication of European affairs into the national political agenda and the call for a reformed Europe along nationalistic logics which both parties claimed to champion.

This article explores how national executives in Serbia and Bulgaria address European Union (EU) rule of law conditionality by framing it within the populism/technocracy dichotomy. The rule of law remains one of the main problems of EU relations with the two countries. While acknowledging the nuances of pre- and post-enlargement Europeanisation, this article explores the technocratic and populist narratives exploited by the national executives in their interactions with the EU and their domestic public. Rather than positioning the current executives unequivocally either as populist or technocratic, we argue that the political elites act strategically in using both populist and technocratic techniques towards their publics when explaining interaction with the EU. We explore the extent this type of executive behaviour is determined by the countries’ formally different status. While we look for the levels of possible similarity and distinction in the two cases/countries stemming from their different EU membership status, our findings confirm the existence of strategic defensive populist and technocratic techniques applied towards the EU and the national public in both countries The aim of this strategy is to mitigate the impact of the EU rule of law pressure and to secure the persistence of the existing rule of law shortcomings within the process of European integration. Interestingly, our research did not identify substantial impact of the formally different status towards the EU of the two countries.

The article investigates the main populist and technocratic narratives employed in the campaign in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum. Based on a qualitative dataset comprising 40 selected speeches, interviews and other public interventions by prominent Leave and Remain protagonists and adopting the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper discusses how the language of the Remain and Leave camps bore signs of both populist and technocratic discourses. The key argument developed in this article is that while, at the most general level, the populist rhetoric was discursively appropriated by the Leave campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a failure, EU as an oppressor and of anti-establishment fury) and the technocratic rhetoric by the Remain campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a tool, the single market benefits and the withdrawal economic effects), the Remain side displayed a lower degree of narrative consistency.

Differentiated integration and disintegration are considered key processes of the European project’s dynamics. Opt-outs and disintegration pressures are typically associated with laggards or proponents of ‘less Europe’ who do not wish to integrate further, but prefer to maintain status quo or take a step back. However, differentiation also serves the needs of champions of ‘more Europe’ who wish to move forward despite lack of unanimous support to do so. Both types of claims are constantly justified and contested as they constitute a deviation from a more traditional and uniform way of ‘doing integration’ in Europe. This article aims to deal with the differentiation/legitimation nexus in the EU and shed light on the politics of differentiation, while empirically examining legitimating and de-legitimating practices of differentiation as revealed in technocratic and populist narratives produced by major political actors in France, Poland and the United Kingdom. The article highlights flexible and complementary usages of both populist and technocratic narratives that allow to (de-)legitimate differentiation in line with domestic political agendas.

The article investigates the main populist and technocratic narratives employed in the campaign in the run-up to the 2016 British EU referendum. Based on a qualitative dataset comprising 40 selected speeches, interviews and other public interventions by prominent Leave and Remain protagonists and adopting the general orientation of the Discourse Historical Approach in Critical Discourse Analysis, the paper discusses how the language of the Remain and Leave camps bore signs of both populist and technocratic discourses. The key argument developed in this article is that while, at the most general level, the populist rhetoric was discursively appropriated by the Leave campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a failure, EU as an oppressor and of anti-establishment fury) and the technocratic rhetoric by the Remain campaign (with the key narratives of the EU as a tool, the single market benefits and the withdrawal economic effects), the Remain side displayed a lower degree of narrative consistency. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates in and over the European Union (EU) are increasingly characterised as being based in arguments that are either 'populist' or 'technocratic'. As systems of communication, this article argues, populism and technocracy possess dramatically different logics of argumentation, modes of communication and meaning-making, distinct narratives, with appeals to distinct sources of legitimacy. As such, actors adopting either political style construct their identity in a way that seeks to legitimise its own political action, while in turn delegitimising that of its opponents. This results in an atmosphere of distrust between actors using these different communication styles, making any form of negotiation or cooperation between them exceedingly difficult. In the context of the Brexit negotiations, which this article uses as a case study, the UK Government has adopted a populist style characterised by narratives of taking back control, legitimised by the will of the people, communicating often in a 'low' political style and using a narrative of crisis and threat. In comparison, the EU has adopted a technocratic style characterised by narratives of technical policy making and the need for rationality, legitimised through the laws, rules and processes by which it is governed, communicating in a 'high' political style while using a narrative of stability and continuity. These radically different views of the world have resulted in an increasing of tensions and distrust by the parties to Brexit negotiations that were already heightened by a sense of 'betrayal' over Brexit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores how national executives in Serbia and Bulgaria address European Union (EU) rule of law conditionality by framing it within the populism/technocracy dichotomy. The rule of law remains one of the main problems of EU relations with the two countries. While acknowledging the nuances of pre- and post-enlargement Europeanisation, this article explores the technocratic and populist narratives exploited by the national executives in their interactions with the EU and their domestic public. Rather than positioning the current executives unequivocally either as populist or technocratic, we argue that the political elites act strategically in using both populist and technocratic techniques towards their publics when explaining interaction with the EU. We explore the extent this type of executive behaviour is determined by the countries' formally different status. While we look for the levels of possible similarity and distinction in the two cases/countries stemming from their different EU membership status, our findings confirm the existence of strategic defensive populist and technocratic techniques applied towards the EU and the national public in both countries The aim of this strategy is to mitigate the impact of the EU rule of law pressure and to secure the persistence of the existing rule of law shortcomings within the process of European integration. Interestingly, our research did not identify substantial impact of the formally different status towards the EU of the two countries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article investigates the reaction of the Polish technocratic security dispositif to the arrival of Ukrainian migrants in Poland between 2014-2020. It contributes to the studies on securitisation and on technocracy by proposing to re-conceptualise research on the security practices towards migration, drawing upon the notions of a security dispositif and regime of practices. It is exemplified by migration from Ukraine to Poland. The paper distinguishes three regimes of practices within Polish migration control: state ignorance, technocratic governance and neighbourhood. Contrary to most securitisation practices on migration to the European Union from the South, there have been very few populist 'speech acts' by Polish political agents that would have positioned the migration from Ukraine as an existential threat. The article concludes that the Polish security dispositif mainly mobilised state ignorance as a resource in governing migration, since neither new legal nor institutional practices were adopted to address the increased arrivals of Ukrainians. Simultaneously, this was accompanied by an internal logic of technocratic governance and its ubiquitous strategic tendency to widen surveillance and control capacities towards foreigners. The article also highlights the role of local identity and the politics of memory in governing Ukrainian migration to Poland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the digital communication of Italian parties Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle during their campaigns for the European Parliament elections (January-May 2019). We focus on the Italian case as it is representative of a generalised shift in European public discourse towards an overt delegitimation of the European project and its re-imagination. In the Italian case, Lega and Movimento 5 Stelle, which were in a Government coalition for fourteen months, have been instrumental in Italy's shift from a strong Europhile country to one of the most Eurosceptic. However, while Lega has definitely aligned itself with a strong right-wing populist agenda, Movimento 5 Stelle has promoted a populist technocratic vision of democracy. Our analysis shows that the articulation of Eurosceptic discourses from both parties by and large reflects the two stances above with Lega's messages (primarily produced by its leader Matteo Salvini) characterised by a 'hyperled' style of communication and stronger nativist elements (for example the appeal to an ethno-centric and 'sovereign' idea of Italy) than those of Movimento 5 Stelle, which instead relied on a 'horizontal' communicative style. However, our data also shows that the delegitimation of Europe in both parties occur along a similar domestication of European affairs into the national political agenda and the call for a reformed Europe along nationalistic logics which both parties claimed to champion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differentiated integration and disintegration are considered key processes of the European project's dynamics. Opt-outs and disintegration pressures are typically associated with laggards or proponents of 'less Europe' who do not wish to integrate further, but prefer to maintain status quo or take a step back. However, differentiation also serves the needs of champions of 'more Europe' who wish to move forward despite lack of unanimous support to do so. Both types of claims are constantly justified and contested as they constitute a deviation from a more traditional and uniform way of 'doing integration' in Europe. This article aims to deal with the differentiation/legitimation nexus in the EU and shed light on the politics of differentiation, while empirically examining legitimating and de-legitimating practices of differentiation as revealed in technocratic and populist narratives produced by major political actors in France, Poland and the United Kingdom. The article highlights flexible and complementary usages of both populist and technocratic narratives that allow to (de-)legitimate differentiation in line with domestic political agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article introduces the special issue on populism and technocracy in the integration and governance of the European Union (EU), framing these opposing approaches in the context of polarised debate on the (il)legitimacy of the EU. The special issue was conceived as an interdisciplinary approach to questions of the EU's legitimacy in the aftermath of structural crises (the eurozone, sovereign debt and the election and appointment of governing agents) and spontaneous crises (migration, external state and non-state security challenges, Brexit and Euroscepticism). Since the special issue's conception the unanticipated Covid-19 pandemic, and responses from the EU and its member states (current and former) starkly illuminated debates on how the EU should operate, the limits of its power and the limits of its popular legitimacy. The era of passive consensus has been replaced by claims of legitimacy based on active expert-informed intervention, alongside populist claims of the EU's inherent illegitimacy as an undemocratic technocracy. As such the special issue's objective is to critically analyse manifold ways in which the populisttechnocratic divide is narrated and performed in different regions, disciplines, and social and political systems in an era of growing internal and external challenges to the Union. We observe that the EU's institutions remain highly adaptable in responding to challenges, but that member-states have continued and accelerated a tendency to nationalise success and Europeanise failure, with the EU acting as a perennial scapegoat largely due to the ease with which it can be narrated as a site of projection for mistrust, resentment, and social grievances. We argue that the relationship between populism and technocracy is rapidly evolving from an imagined binary into a much more fluid, overlapping, and reversible set of political narratives. We conclude that despite the changing nature of populist-technocratic debates and the resilience and adaptability of the EU, it faces accelerating challenges to its legitimacy in the new era of 'politics of necessity'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This monograph examines the regulatory framework for genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in the European Union. Analysis of the institutions of the European Union, in particular the European Commission, leads to the conclusion that technocratic governance relies too heavily on assumed objective scientific assessment, with not enough focus on cultural or socio-economic factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article distinguishes theoretically two conceptual models of a fiscal council – the trustee and the orchestrator model. The article reviews the arguments that prominent advocates of fiscal councils have put forth and finds that those who argue that the deficit bias is caused by the common pool problem prefer the trustee model, while others identifying asymmetric information as the root cause of the deficit bias prefer the orchestrator model. While the latter model relies on throughput legitimacy, the former relies on output legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion about fiscal councils’ contribution towards strengthening EMU.

The Euro's problem-ridden second decade has made crisis management and economic reform across the European Union (EU) the priority of high politics. Despite the prominence of high-level intergovernmental summits, however, many studies identify EU policymaking elites as influential or even causal factors determining the EU's crisis response. This commentary therefore reviews the recent literature on EU economic governance which emphasises the role of supranational actors. The focus is on the methodologies and empirical strategies that scholars employ to determine the independent effect of policymaking elites on outcomes. This commentary identifies a renewed interest in actor-centred methodologies as well as a continuing emphasis on process-tracing approaches, primarily based on elite interviewing and document analysis. Finally, it discusses the potential of novel approaches relying on other sources of data such as policymakers' biographies, their speeches, or publication and citation patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article distinguishes theoretically two conceptual models of a fiscal council - the trustee and the orchestrator model. The article reviews the arguments that prominent advocates of fiscal councils have put forth and finds that those who argue that the deficit bias is caused by the common pool problem prefer the trustee model, while others identifying asymmetric information as the root cause of the deficit bias prefer the orchestrator model. While the latter model relies on throughput legitimacy, the former relies on output legitimacy. The article concludes with a discussion about the contribution of fiscal councils towards strengthening EMU and weakening populism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]