How to break through the cartel systems of the major parties? Become a techno-populist. But it's a rocky road
By Jonathan McHugh, from “The Rise of the Technopopulists”, New Statesman
We take a generally dim view at A/UK of the existing party-political system in Western Europe - and while our energies are massively focussed on grassroots-oriented activities and localist self-organisation, we do like to consider analyses of party politics that frame their possibilities differently.
At some point, empowered citizen networks will find themselves contending electorally, and it’s good to know what has (and hasn’t) worked in terms of recent innovations.
So it was really interesting to find this paper from two Cambridge academics [PDF} that outlines what they call “techno-populism” - a variant of “we the people vs. the elites” populism, but with a very particular and positive relationship to expertise and digital culture.
What’s fascinating about their analysis is that they claim this populism can begin from different points on the ideological spectrum, but can take “intra-party” or “extra-party” forms - ie, start from within parties, or outside of them.
Yet the fate of each techno-populist initiative is that, despite its hopes, it does not transform the standard party culture. And particularly, its ability to form a cartel that protects itself from the popular will (though success does depend on whether there is a fluidity in the party system, due to proportional representation).
Their classic example of “intra-party techno-populism” is the Corbyn period in the Labour Party. The Cambridge academics’ thesis is that, under the UK’s first past the post system - where the parties are traditional large blocs - this phenomenon could only happen inside the existing parties:
In its emphasis on technological innovation and automation, Corbyn enjoyed a momentum centred around technical expertise. Yet there also was a strongly organisational legacy on this techno-populist front.
The Labour-supporting grassroots organisation Momentum, for instance, combined focused electoral campaigning with digital outreach, in which members could consult online and vote on policy platforms. Such emphases on digital democracy were coupled with discourses celebrating full automation and a new jobless economy.
Sociologically, Corbynism also seemed to draw on the same bases as the Blairite coalition—an urban precariat and middle class— and lived by a ‘hyper-urbanism.’ By bringing in think-tanks and side-lining unions, Corbynism combined an appeal to a popular subject with emphases on technical expertise and digital democracy.
Except for its personalism (‘no Corbynism without Corbyn’), Corbynism thus saw itself as the representative of a non-class-based majority which could rely on technocratic assistance to achieve social justice.
Yet we all know the electoral failure of this approach in December 2019. The underlying question is intriguing: how should “people power” relate both to democratic technology, and to expertise that can shape systems and institutions to their benefit? One of our arguments for establishing CANs and constitutes is that we give ourselves the opportunity to experiment and prototype better relationships among these elements.
The Cambridge researchers then contrast what they call “extra-party techno-populism” - with the Spanish Party Podemos as their prime example. They provide a fascinating history of how Podemos has come to its current role as a partner in the Spanish government. For example:
Podemos does not fit the model of a porous organization, nor one created by plural and diverse personalities, but one led by a small group of experts with almost identical backgrounds who claim to have a special knowledge of politics and whose offering is predicated on a binary, absolute and moralistic understanding of politics: the many and the few, the decent and the corrupt, right and wrong policies.
This sociology of the party’s leadership gave rise to a particular form of left-wing elitism, which fits with the kind of post-neoliberal expertise that Carlos de la Torre associated with Rafael Correa’s techno- populism in Ecuador.
…Other observers have highlighted a different techno-political aspect of Podemos; namely, its adoption of digital media in a hybrid party structure that shows characteristics of digital networks and social movements.
Like Corbynism, Podemos’ use of social media and new digital technologies has challenged the traditional role of media in the construction of political discourse. While this interpretation of techno-politics equates the ‘techno-’ with the use of new technologies in political communication, it relates to our broader understanding of techno-populism in one crucial respect.
The preference for digital technologies to communicate directly with the people, while bypassing and criticising the intermediary role of the media, dispense with the functions of political mediation in a democracy, advocating instead for more direct and less pluralistic practices of political representation.
Podemos’ technocratic traits arose also from external or systemic pressure. Against the backdrop of collusion and institutional capture by the two major parties, Podemos accepted the need to appeal to expertise as a precondition for governing in post-crisis Spain.
By 2014, the idea that experts should take more decisions in public office had become a popular proposition among Spaniards, as consistently shown by public opinion surveys. In government, Podemos has insisted on this idea to justify, for example, the appointment of the renowned sociologist Manuel Castells as the Minister of Universities.
Furthermore, the party has accepted to govern under the supervision of all independent and specialist bodies created after the 2008 financial crisis. Not because Podemos has turned sympathetic towards unelected power, but because the party has accommodated its political offer to the prevailing technocratic logic; a logic that increasingly forces political parties to appeal to expertise and to govern along with the actors who reportedly possess it.
It is in this precise sense that we claim that the transition from cartel to techno-populist parties is taking place both out of choice and of necessity.
Yet what happens to a techno-populist party when it finds itself in power during the greatest battle around the credibility of expertise, Covid-19? The authors ruefully note:
After the fourth general election in as many years, Podemos entered a coalition government with the PSOE in December 2019. Only two months later, the Covid-19 crisis hit the world.
In 2015, Podemos had entered the Spanish parliament reclaiming the power of the people, for the people and against ‘la casta.’ It has ended up co-managing a global pandemic at the behest of experts and, reportedly, on the basis of scientific knowledge.
Musing on this study, we find the underlying issues are huge. If populist upsurging sees its primary endpoint as the command (or direct influence over) a parliamentary state, then it seems easy for the demands to be integrated into a familiar form of excluding government.
And where the “techno” part moves from social technology allowing new voices, to “technocracy” and the reinforcing of expert authority.
As Indra Adnan will explore in her forthcoming book, The Politics of Waking Up (see the blog series here), perhaps building and preparing what the pre-89, Havel-era Czech’s called a “parallel polis” - where new cultures and conditions of doing power can be tested out - is as important a place for energies to be directed to, as it is the endlessly frustrating spectacle of parliamentary government.