Populism and Technocracy: so Far, yet so Close? The Polarization of Belgian Public Debate on Covid-19 Vaccine
(2023) PANCOPOP Symposium 2023: Pandemic Communication and Populism — Location: Loughborough (12.June.2023)
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- Abstract
- Beyond health emergency, the pandemic fostered a different but equally pervasive crisis in Belgium: one of political legitimacy. From the outset, disagreements on how and by whom political decision should be made have indeed questioned the locus of political power. Such discussions notably heated up the tension between populism and technocracy (Esmark, 2021). On one hand, the need for efficient policies triggered the temptation of technocratic depoliticization. On another hand, the leading role of scientific elites fueled a populist backlash, relying on the mushrooming of epistemic uncertainties to cast doubt upon political measures. More fundamentally, populism and technocracy carried radically diverging views on the best way to quell the virus, consistent with their own understanding of democracy. As a consequence, their interplay substantially nourished the polarization of public debate, and eventually public opinion, on covid-19 management. Such polarization effects may also have been further enhanced by the common rather than conflicting ground they share, since both actually embody a critique toward ‘party democracy’(Bickerton & Accetti, 2017). Accordingly, this paper provides an in-depth analysis of populism and technocracy interplay in the Belgian public debate. To do so, it conducts a qualitative analysis (Antaki et al., 2003) of social/news media discourses produced by Belgian experts and policymakers on the contentious issue of covid-19 vaccination. Tapping on recent scholarship (Moffitt, 2015; Mudde & Kaltwasser, 2017; Nava et al., 2020), populism and technocracy are considered discursive practices rather than being approached from a behavioral perspective. Starting from these premises, this study hinges on three main axes of analysis. Firstly, it explores the content and the nature of populist and technocratic discourses (how was the issue of vaccination informed by populism and technocracy and, inversely, what features or themes of populism and technocracy were dominant in such a debate?). Secondly, it assesses the effects these styles produced on the dynamics and polarization of the public debate (what were the areas of convergence and divergence of populism and technocracy? how did populism and technocracy contribute to the polarization of covid-19 vaccination debate?). Thirdly, it appraises how these findings relate with political theory (what does it say about the quality of democratic debate in times of crisis?) and, more broadly, with the existing literature on populism and technocracy.
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Rondiat, C. (2023). Populism and Technocracy: so Far, yet so Close? The Polarization of Belgian Public Debate on Covid-19 Vaccine. PANCOPOP Symposium 2023: Pandemic Communication and Populism, Loughborough. https://hdl.handle.net/2078.5/274711