Democratic Deficit, Authoritarianism and the Rule of Experts: Analysis of Political Demand in the Post-communist CEE Region

doi:10.21203/rs.3.rs-7685264/v1

Download PDF

Research Article

Democratic Deficit, Authoritarianism and the Rule of Experts: Analysis of Political Demand in the Post-communist CEE Region

https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-7685264/v1

This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License

You are reading this latest preprint version

This article argues that there are two types of technocratic attitudes in post-communist Central and Eastern European countries. The first is unsurprisingly associated with authoritarian attitudes. The latter, however, is not an expression of authoritarianism but one primarily associated with democratic deficit: the gap between the importance attached to democracy and (dis)satisfaction with the current state of democratic governance. Previous research has tended to view technocratic attitudes as rather one-dimensional. However, I show that there are in fact two distinct forms—authoritarian and democratic. The results of the study are relevant from both empirical and theoretical perspectives. Technocratic governance thus represents, in the eyes of a part of the CEE population, a way of solving the problems of democratic governance. Technocratic governance is therefore not necessarily and solely associated with authoritarianism, illiberalism and democratic backsliding, as existing scholarly discourse suggests. From an empirical point of view, this study presents a novel finding: evidence of the heterogeneity associated with technocratic attitudes.

Post-communist countries of the Central and Eastern European (CEE) region have been characterized over the past three decades by technocratic tendencies in terms of political supply and demand. (1) With respect to popular attitudes, the populations of CEE countries have demonstrated extremely strong support for technocratic and expert-driven governance. This has been repeatedly demonstrated by comparative survey research (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017; Bertsou and Caramani, 2022), demonstrating that there is a significant gap compared to Western European (WE) countries with regard to the preference for this type of governance among the citizenry. (2) In terms of political supply, the aforementioned technocratic tendencies have manifested in the electoral success of technocratic parties. Many of the major political parties from the CEE region have been described as technocratic-populist, where technocracy plays the role of host ideology and is combined with a thin ideology of populism (Havlík, 2019; Aprasidze and Siroky, 2020; Drápalová and Wegrich, 2021); examples of this technocratic populism are parties such as Czech ANO 2011 or the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria (GERB) (Reiser and Hebenstreit, 2020).

There has been ample research both of the sources of technocratic attitudes as well as the reasons for voting behaviour that favours technocratic (populist) parties. The paper’s research questions are therefore more specific, asking to what extent support for technocracy in CEE countries is a manifestation of authoritarianism and to what extent it is an expression of dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy, with the idea that a technocratic government can improve democratic governance.

To answer these questions, this paper engages in the debate as to the nature of technocratic attitudes. Support for expert/technocratic governance in CEE is usually viewed as a manifestation of dissatisfaction with democracy, as a side effect or a symptom of these countries’ social and political transformation. Perhaps even as a legacy of these countries’ undemocratic past (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017). What is not so clear is whether, in the case of post-communist CEE, this is a general rejection of democracy and support for authoritarianism or whether it is seen as a way to improve democratic governance – or a combination of both. This paper aims to address this problem.

This question is thus directly relevant to democratic developments in the post-communist CEE region. The current scholarly debate does not clarify what these strong technocratic positions mean in relation to democratization and democratic consolidation.

Countries in the post-communist region have been very supportive of technocratic expert-driven governance at least since the late 1990s. Based on the European Values Survey (EVS) from waves 3–5, the support for this kind of governance has been very strong. Figure 1 shows that populations across CEE have been strongly supportive of expert-driven governance. The first chart (Fig. 1 top) shows that CEE countries are significantly more technocratic than WE countries. The second chart (Fig. 1, bottom) shows the share of those having strongly technocratic attitudes. The share of these has been between 25–30% in CEE since the late 1990s, compared to less than 10% in WE countries.

FIGURE 1 HERE

The research problem this article addresses is what this strong support for technocracy means. The paper explores two possibilities: (1) technocracy can be viewed as a manifestation of authoritarianism and illiberalism. In this sense, technocratic tendencies across CEE would be a manifestation of democratic backsliding. This is a plausible option because technocracy is associated with the rule of unelected experts and elites as well as anti-pluralism (Caramani, 2020). (2) Technocracy can also be conversely regarded as a mode of governance or a tendency in the governance of democratic societies. It is conceivable that a system of governance that is otherwise democratic will enjoy input from various experts in order to improve the quality of policy outputs. In other words, technocratic tendencies can exist in democratic countries. And as recent research has demonstrated, this technocratic dimension of governance can be identified across traditional democratic countries (Hibbing et al., 2023; Pilet et al., 2024). Therefore, technocracy can be seen as a continuum; it cannot be a priori ascertained whether it is authoritarian or not. As Andrea Caramani noted, “As technocracy is a quality of all regimes, it is only from a certain threshold that the level of technocratic power qualifies a regime as authoritarian” (Caramani, 2020: 4).

This paper aims to find out to what extent is popular support for technocracy across CEE countries manifests authoritarian attitudes and the extent to which these popular attitudes are just a dimension of democratic governance, without strong authoritarian tendencies. The theoretical section that follows presents these two alternative understandings of technocracy.

2.1 Technocracy as Authoritarianism

There are strong and fundamental tensions between democracy and technocracy. The main one stems from the fact that technocracy is at odds with decisionist, pluralistic and participatory decision-making models. Thus, in extreme forms, technocracy will necessarily take on authoritarian characteristics (Caramani, 2017). This perspective on technocracy is already evident in the work of Jurgen Habermas. For him, technocratic decision-making has autocratic features and is incompatible with democratic legitimacy. While Habermas did not directly label technocracy “authoritarian”, he considered it fundamentally undemocratic. This was precisely because of the technocratic circumvention of the discursive processes of democratic will formation. Democratic decision-making should be based on discursive and communicative processes within the public sphere, into which citizens enter as private persons with their interests and demands, not as the decision-making of a class of experts who are precisely insulated against these processes (Habermas, 1988).

The key tenets of technocracy have been recently elaborated by Andrea Caramani (Caramani, 2017, 2020). The key underlying principle of technocracy is the assumption of general and unitary common interest, which can be uncovered by rational speculation. The source of its legitimacy is thus expertise and knowledge rather than popular will. Relatedly, technocracy is also non-pluralistic. This follows from the assumption of a single unitary common interest. It is not found or identified based on the aggregation of competing interests in society or on some deliberative processes. Pluralism, also manifested by competition between values and ideologies represented by political parties, is redundant since the common interest is imposed and stems from decisions by elites/experts. Finally, in a technocracy, the mandate to govern is based, according to Caramani, retrospectively as a “trustee” model. That is, the mandate comes not from the people but from expert and technical competence and is legitimized by the results or outputs of governing. These characteristics of technocracy show that, at its very foundations, there are features of authoritarianism that can be in tension with democratic principles. Nevertheless, as Caramani (Caramani, 2020, pp. 13–14) argues, it is of course more of an empirical question whether a given regime will have technocratic features and remain a democracy or whether technocracy will take on an authoritarian form. For example, Pastorella also reflects on a continuum where, on the one hand, we have a situation where experts are “used” by politicians; however, this is more to legitimize decisions that are otherwise made by politicians and not by experts.[1] The other pole is then strictly technocratic governance, where positions in the executive and especially in governments are filled by non-politicians and experts (Pastorella, 2016).

Technocracy, therefore, can, from a theoretical perspective, be expected to be associated with authoritarianism. There is strong empirical evidence for this association. For example, in a nine-country study, Chiru and Enyedi found that authoritarian attitudes (Chiru and Enyedi, 2022), together with political efficacy, present one of the strongest predictors of technocratic attitudes. Comparative analyses also show that technocratic attitudes are associated with both dissatisfaction with the functioning of democratic institutions and with a general rejection of democracy as such (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017). The strong association between authoritarianism and technocratic attitudes was also shown in comparative analyses beyond the European context (Vittori and Paulis, 2024). Moreover, these attitudes are strongest in those countries that have an authoritarian/undemocratic past. In this sense, it is also not surprising that technocratic attitudes are common in post-communist countries with a recent history of totalitarian regimes.

The countries of the CEE region have been described as relatively strongly technocratic (or bureaucratic) mainly while under communist regimes (Linz and Stepan, 1996; Sommer, Mrňka and Spurný, 2019). Of course, it cannot be said that these communist regimes were primarily technocratic, but they nevertheless contained relatively strong technocratic tendencies (Kopeček et al., 2019). These technocratic tendencies tended to strengthen over time as communist regimes sought to legitimize themselves also through political and economic efficiency as well as governance outcomes (White, 1986).

Interestingly, these technocratic tendencies did not disappear with the advent of the democratic regimes after 1989. These political tendencies were seen in the early societal transformation of the CEE countries as a manifestation of early democratization, a phenomenon also typical of, for example, the democratization process in Latin American countries (Centeno, 1993).

However, in the post-communist CEE region, technocratic attitudes are still very strong today (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017) and seem associated with authoritarian tendencies. For example, Putin’s regime in Russia has been described as highly technocratic, relying on experts in the executive (Huskey, 2010, 2012). In addition, across the CEE region, so-called technocratic-populist parties have found success in the last two decades (Havlík, 2019; Aprasidze and Siroky, 2020), that is to say, parties where technocracy combines with populism and plays the role of host ideology. These parties are seen as having an illiberal orientation, with some commentators even arguing that the parties have authoritarian tendencies and are gradually putting the countries in question on authoritarian trajectories (see also Cianetti, Dawson and Hanley, 2018; Hanley and Vachudova, 2018a; Aprasidze and Siroky, 2020).

These tendencies should not be surprising. It could be even argued that they arise from the very nature of what technocracy means: expert governance is, at its core, anti-pluralist.

2.2. Technocracy as a Dimension of Democracy

On the other hand, technocracy does not necessarily mean or lead to undemocratic governance and authoritarianism. There are a host of motivations for this that have nothing to do with authoritarianism. Politicians often secure expert advisors, either because they plan to follow their advice or simply to legitimize important decisions (Pastorella, 2016). It is also true that modern societies are so complex that there are arguments (Bickerton and Accetti Invernizzi, 2021) that entire societies have moved towards expertise and expert knowledge because, otherwise, it is not possible to solve the many pressing global problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change and so on. From this point of view, a certain shift towards technocracy is forced by increasing social complexity rather than by growing undemocratic tendencies.

Empirical evidence is also present in this case. For example, international comparative studies have repeatedly shown that the preference for expert governance is a dimension of democracy that is present in virtually all (both Western and Eastern European) countries. These studies are interested in citizen preferences for how democracy should be organized (Hibbing et al., 2023; Pilet et al., 2024). It is possible, for instance, to strengthen the principles of direct democracy or to emphasize consensus-building in democracy and deliberative processes. In this sense, the delegation of political power to experts outside of politics is a form of governance and a form of democratic process.

There is also an argument emerging from comparative research that the ideological and attitudinal profile of people with technocratic attitudes is by no means extreme in its overall nature. Technocratic citizens are more moderate than, for example, populists. Bertsou et al. (2024) argue that technocratic citizens tend to be economically left-wing and culturally moderate. The authors even interpret the results as suggesting that technocracy enables the depolarization of society (Bertsou, Caramani and Koedam, 2024, p. 644).

However, a certain contradiction in the existing empirical scholarly research on technocratic citizens should be pointed out. Some studies point to authoritarianism as a key predictor of technocratic values (Chiru and Enyedi, 2022; Kim, 2024; Vittori and Paulis, 2024). This is at odds with, for example, the study previously mentioned above (Bertsou, Caramani and Koedam, 2024), which points to more moderate positions on the GAL-TAN axis involving authoritarianism specifically. This contradiction could be explained by the fact that authoritarianism is only one dimension of this cultural axis and that there may be heterogeneity in relation to other components involving nationalism and tradition.

Another argument in favour of the rather moderate nature of technocracy relates to so-called caretaker, “expert” governments, which have enjoyed strong support in some countries (Pastorella, 2016). For example, in the Czech Republic, two caretaker governments have been among the most popular governments in its recent democratic history (Hloušek and Kopeček, 2014). These technocratic governments were not perceived as anti-democratic and are certainly not associated with authoritarianism. Their popularity in some CEE countries is explained by strong trust in experts compared to political governments. In the case of the Czech Republic, the non-political government of the technocratic type was perceived as more democratically legitimate than the conventional political governments (Pastorella, 2016, p. 957).

Finally, the relationship between democracy/authoritarianism and technocracy takes on rather interesting contours within the debate on technocratic populism in party politics. In the CEE countries, two parties, the Czech ANO and the Citizens for European Development of Bulgaria, have often and repeatedly been identified as combining technocracy (as a host ideology) and populism. These technocratic-populist parties have been viewed as rather moderate and, sometimes, as within the category of centrist populism (Stanley, 2017; Reiser and Hebenstreit, 2020). This is not about authoritarianism but rather a reaction related to dissatisfaction with political institutions and disappointment with democratic developments, which do not necessarily lead to extreme positions. Rather, they lead to a search for alternatives to conventional and institutionalized politics (Pop-Eleches, 2010).

However, a competing view posits that technocratic populism manifests itself as an emphasis on effective governance, a rejection of political pluralism, a strongly majoritarian vision of democracy unencumbered by a system of checks and balances. It argues that it may lead or open doors to the possibility of exiting the democratic regime (Havlík, 2019, p. 381). Other analyses are more explicit, speaking directly of democratic backsliding with authoritarian traits associated with parties (Hanley and Vachudova, 2018b).

The aim here is not to decide whether political parties described as technocratically populist can be described as problematic for democracy and defined by authoritarianism. However, the above arguments again highlight the ambiguous role and position of technocratic ideational contents in relation to authoritarianism and democracy. In other words, if we want to answer whether strong support for technocratic governance is a sign of authoritarianism or not, we find strong arguments for both positions. The results shown in Fig. 1, demonstrating the strong presence of technocratic attitudes across CEE populations, can thus be explained by both authoritarian attitudes as well as more moderate types.

In the analysis that follows, I therefore focus on the following research question: what does the strong support for technocratic governance among citizens living in CEE countries mean? Is it a manifestation of anti-democratic tendencies? Or does it rather stem from dissatisfaction with democratic developments without an authoritarian sentiment?

3.2 Data

For the main analysis, Wave 5 European Values Survey data were used. The data was collected, depending on the country, from 2017 to 2021. For a description of trends in technocratic attitudes across CEE and WE countries (Fig. 1), waves 3 and 4 were also used.

3.1 Conceptualization of key variables

The key (dependent) variable measuring technocratic attitudes was the following: “Having experts, not government, make decisions according to what they think is best for the country,” a survey item used for the measurement of technocratic attitudes across a variety of studies (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017; Kim, 2024; Vittori and Paulis, 2024). It is an item that fits the key tenets/characteristics of technocracy: anti-political decision making, elitism and anti-pluralism (Caramani, 2020).

The key independent variables were authoritarian attitudes, including several items. The first, measured on a 4-point approval Likert scale, assessed hardline authoritarianism: “Having the army rule the country.” Military intervention in governance represents an authoritarian alternative to democratic governance. The second question measured authoritarianism by asking about approval for the following: “Having a strong leader who does not have to bother with parliament and elections,” a survey item previously used for measuring political authoritarianism (Donovan, 2019).

These two dimensions were not combined into one concept due to low reliability. Because both within-group and between-group reliability had to be taken into account, a multilevel omega (from semTools R package) was used (Geldhof, Preacher and Zyphur, 2014). Both the within-group and between-group omega were too low (ω < 0.6), and therefore, these dimensions were kept separate.

Next, the following item was included: “People obey their rulers. How essential do you think it is as a characteristic of democracy?” Measured on a scale from 0 to 10 (an essential characteristics of democracy). This “obedience” item is a measure of a normative understanding of democracy because no democratic system can survive without the people respecting the decisions of the government. In other words, a certain level of obedience also belongs to democracy. Obedience is therefore not a measure of authoritarianism, but it is included because technocratic attitudes can be linked to the dimension of democracy, which is based on obedience to authority. Empirically, this is an item that belongs to a rather authoritative conception of democracy (Sokolov, 2021, p. 7). This survey item also corresponds to duty or obedience-based citizenship, as described by Dalton, for example. A competing concept to this understanding of democracy would be the participatory concept of citizenship (Dalton, 2008). In short, if the core element of technocratic governance is the strong position of unelected authorities, then the democratic source of this stance may be precisely this duty-based citizenship.

Other key variables included those measuring the assessment of democracy. A common distinction in this sense is between evaluations of specific political institutions and more general evaluations of democracy as a whole (Bertsou and Pastorella, 2017). Therefore, a variable measuring trust in political institutions, including political parties, parliament and government, was included (within-group ω > 0.8, between-group ω > 0.8). The more general attitude towards democracy was assessed as the difference between a general assessment of the importance of democracy as a regime and actual satisfaction with the given democratic regime in which the citizen lives. Both variables were measured using a 10-point scale. A variable democratic deficit was created as the difference between the importance associated with democracy and satisfaction with the actual democratic governance in the given country. This democratic deficit variable taps into the well-documented political disillusionment of people living in CEE countries, countries that are characterized precisely by the gap between trust in the general principles of democracy and the fundamental dissatisfaction with the way it is implemented (Karp and Milazzo, 2015).

Thus, overall, two groups of key variables are included in the analysis: First are variables measuring authoritarianism and second are variables measuring attitudes towards democracy. The second group also includes a variable measuring the normative understanding of democracy, specifically, support for its obedience-duty-based form. In addition to these key variables, control variables such as age, gender, education and interest in politics were included.

3.3 Method

Multilevel ordinal regression was used for the analysis. The ordinal model was chosen because the dependent variable is ordinal. The R package lme4 was used to fit the model. Countries were included in the model as random effects. No contextual variables were included. Versions of the analysis not reported here that included contextual variables (e.g., GDP, corruption indexes) were identical in terms of the effect of individual-level variables; thus, for the sake of simplicity, these contextual effects were not included in the models presented here.

The data also contained a number of missing values. These were primarily concerning attitudinal variables. For this reason, imputation was performed using the hot-deck method. The R package Statmatch and the hotdeck command were used. The results from the imputed model are shown below. However, in terms of key variables, the results with and without imputation are identical.

3.4 Hypotheses

The hypotheses reflect a theoretical discussion on the relationship between authoritarianism, technocracy and perceptions of democracy.

H1: The stronger the support for authoritarianism, the stronger the technocratic attitudes.

This first hypothesis has two versions depending on the measurement of authoritarian attitudes: hardline military vs. political authoritarianism.

H2: The stronger the perceived democratic deficit (the gap between the general perception of democracy and its actual version), the stronger the technocratic attitudes.

H3: The stronger the support for the obedience (non-participatory, duty-based) dimension of democracy, the stronger the technocratic attitudes.

Hypothesis 1

tests the association between technocratic attitudes and authoritarianism. The remaining hypotheses test the relationship between technocracy and attitudes that are not inconsistent with democracy.

The results from the analysis, a regression model covering all CEE countries, can be seen in Fig. 2. The vast majority of independent sociodemographic variables are statistically insignificant. The only significant variable was age: support for technocratic attitudes increased along with age. However, the effect was relatively small.

Second, in terms of the various measures of authoritarianism, both political authoritarianism and hardline military authoritarianism are statistically significant. The weaker the attitudes supporting it, the weaker the technocratic attitudes (Fig. 2; Table 1, Model 1 in the Appendix). Interestingly, the variable measuring the duty-based normative dimension of democracy was not found to be significant.

The democratic deficit variable, measuring the difference between the importance placed on the ideal of democracy and satisfaction with its fulfilment/realization in a given country, was found significant. The greater the democratic deficit, the stronger the support for technocratic governance. Finally, distrust in particular political institutions was found to be significant as well. The more people distrust political institutions, the stronger technocratic attitudes are.

FIGURE 2 HERE

At face value, these results do not appear surprising. Other studies expected and predicted the association between authoritarian and technocratic attitudes (Chiru and Enyedi, 2022; Vittori and Paulis, 2024). Moreover, the fact that democratic deficit is correlated with technocracy-supporting attitudes is not unforeseen either. Technocracy seems like an appealing option to those who are dissatisfied with how democracy works but are supportive of the general ideal of democracy. Given how the populace in CEE countries has been dissatisfied with political transformation, this does not come as a surprise. Yet, what is somewhat surprising is the combination of the results, which do not seem compatible. If support for technocratic governance stems from authoritarianism, this is incompatible with the fact that another source is the democratic deficit. In other words, why would hardline authoritarians exhibit attitudes of “democratic deficit”? If someone is hardline authoritarian, why would he be concerned about democracy at all? A similar contradiction can be found in other studies, where both authoritarianism and political efficiency are sources of technocracy. If support for technocracy stems from authoritarian attitudes, how is this compatible with the belief that the political system should be more responsive to the demands of citizens? These two findings are, similarly, in conflict or contradiction (Chiru and Enyedi, 2022).

These results may suggest heterogeneity in the data; different subgroups in the data could have different and incompatible attitudes. Nevertheless, both groups support technocratic governance, albeit for different reasons. The upshot is these results also hint at multiple paths for reaching technocratic attitudes, that there could be heterogeneity in the data, that is, multiple forms of technocratic attitudes. This hypothesis is explored in the following section.

4.1 Analysis of heterogeneity: latent class model

The analysis presented above implies that in relation to the understanding of democracy, there may be multiple sources of technocratic attitudes. However, regression models, due to being additive, are not ideal for uncovering this heterogeneity. To answer these questions, a latent class analysis (LCA) was therefore applied to the CEE countries instead to reveal this heterogeneity in the data – should it exist. For the analysis, the LatentClassAnalysis.jl package was used and performed in Julia[2].

The goal of an LCA is to identify unobserved classes based on observed manifest variables. LCA is based on a probabilistic model and allows for the classification of observations into these latent groups (Muthén and Muthén, 2017). The first step of LCA is to estimate the number of latent classes. The next step is a description of these classes.

There is no one exclusive criterion in determining the number of latent classes. Most often, information criteria are used to estimate the number of latent classes, taking into account the interpretability of the model as well (Vermunt and Magidson, 2004; Zhang et al., 2018). For the purpose of this analysis, the following criteria were considered: the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC) and the sample-adjusted Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC). The goal is to select a solution (in terms of number of classes) that minimizes these information criteria.

The first step aimed to use all the countries and perform the analysis on the whole sample. The variables used in the analysis were those at the core of the previous regression analysis: technocratic attitudes, perceived democratic deficit, satisfaction with institutions, the duty-obedience dimension and two measures of authoritarianism: political and military. Variables measuring democratic deficit and obedience-duty dimensions were recoded into quartiles since the other variables are in the survey data as 4-point scales. Thus, the goal was to have items on the same scale.

The first step was to identify a solution that minimizes the information criterion. However, this was not achieved because each additional class always resulted reduced information criterion. However, this is not uncommon in the case of complex samples, which is the case of this multiple-country analysis. In these cases, it is advised to look for an “elbow” point of diminishing returns, such as in a principal component analysis (Nylund-Gibson and Choi, 2018, p. 9). Based on this criterion, a solution containing five classes was identified; adding additional classes beyond five increased the quality of the model only minimally.

The results are presented in Fig. 3: Fig. 3a shows the profile of the five classes, Fig. 3b shows the process of searching for the best class and Fig. 3c shows the profile of the five respective classes based on the technocratic attitudes variable.

Of the five classes, only the two relevant classes were labelled: authoritarian technocrats and democratic technocrats. These two classes had above-average technocratic attitudes and can be seen both in Figs. 3a and 3c. As shown in Fig. 3a, the authoritarian technocrats are not only very strongly technocratic but also the most authoritarian of all classes. Compared to other classes they also relatively strongly support the obedience understanding of democracy. The other variables are not particularly significant in comparison with other classes. This class accounted for 11% of the total sample.

The second group consists of democratic technocrats. This group is characterized by above-average and strong technocratic attitudes. However, this group is also very weak or even anti-authoritarian in both dimensions measuring authoritarianism. Members of this class are also the class most strongly opposing the obedience understanding of democracy. The final characteristics that stand out are the strongest dissatisfaction with institutions and the strongest perceived democratic deficit. The characteristic feature of this class is that it combines a belief in technocratic governance with dissatisfaction with political institutions, a belief in democracy but dissatisfaction with its current functioning, non-authoritarian attitudes and an understanding of democracy that rejects duty and obedience. The size of the group is 25% of the overall sample.

These two classes share one common characteristic—technocratic attitudes. However, the two groups have incompatible and opposing profiles as regards all of the other characteristics.

FIGURE 3

FIGURE 4

The disadvantage of this solution is that the package from Julia does not allow weighting by individual countries. This is also not possible with any other freely available packages (e.g., poLCA in R). The second limitation is that the number of classes was identified based on qualitative criteria. Although the recommendation in the literature was followed (in cases of complex and large data sets, look for the point of diminishing return), two robustness tests were performed. First, the results were checked to see whether the results held for 6 or 7 class solutions. The results (not reported here) show that the two most technocratic classes always have the opposite profile in these other solutions as in the analysis above. Finally, the second robustness test replicated the analysis on a single country for certainty. Therefore, a single country was selected as a robustness test—the Czech Republic. The country is often mentioned as a case of technocratic populism, so it should be ideal case (Buštíková and Guasti, 2019; Havlík, 2019; Drápalová and Wegrich, 2021).

The results of the analysis, based on BIC, found a solution containing five classes, the profile of which is shown in Fig. 4. The AIC information criterion identified seven classes. Here, we will work with a solution with five classes (I will comment on the seven-class solution below).

The model with five classes in the Czech Republic is identical or very similar to the results from all CEE countries in terms of the main classes. Again, these are two classes with above-average technocratic attitudes and whose profile is very similar to the profiles identified in Fig. 3 on the general sample, including all countries. One of these classes has the profile of authoritarian attitudes, the other combines technocratic attitudes with democratic deficit, dissatisfaction with political institutions and non-authoritarian attitudes. In other words, these results in the Czech Republic corroborate the results of the whole sample of CEE countries. The only substantive difference is the size of the respective classes: the Czech authoritarian technocratic group was 9%, whereas the democratic technocratic class had a size of 15%.

As mentioned above, the AIC information criteria favoured a 7-class solution. When this solution was applied, the results were the same in terms of substantive results: two latent classes with strongly technocratic attitudes were identified with the same pattern of attitudes as the 5-class solution described above.

In summary, there are two distinct types of technocratic attitudes. One stems from authoritarian attitudes, while the other is clearly non-authoritarian and associated with a perceived democratic deficit. In other words, the results confirm heterogeneity in the data related to technocratic attitudes.

4.2 Analysis of heterogeneity: regression model

This analysis thus shows that there is a type of attitude that is referred to here as “democratic technocracy”. If anything characterizes it based on the above analyses (e.g., Fig. 3), it is a strong perception of a democratic deficit (the gap between the democratic ideal and reality), a rejection of an obedience-based understanding of democracy and dissatisfaction with political institutions. These traits characterize these technocratic democrats the most.

However, the original multilevel ordinal regression model can also test these differences and characteristics. Therefore, this model included the interaction between the democratic deficit and both an obedience understanding of democracy and dissatisfaction with institutions. The interaction between these variables was included because these variables significantly differentiate the above-mentioned profile of democratic technocrats. The results are shown in Figs. 5 (Appendix Table 1, Model 2) and 6 (Appendix Table 1, Model 3).

FIGURE 5

FIGURE 6

For example, Fig. 5 shows that there are two paths that lead to an increase in technocratic attitudes. Those who are high on the democratic deficit scale and think obedience/duty does not belong to democracy are likely to have an increased probability of technocratic attitudes. However, those who are low on democratic deficit and support obedience are likely to have higher technocratic attitudes as well. This interaction is not and cannot be a rigorous test of two groups of authoritarian and democratic technocrats—unlike LCA, regression analysis does not allow for this. However, two trends can be observed: technocratic attitudes can be achieved (a) by rejecting obedience to authority and expressing a strong democratic deficit and (b) through a low democratic deficit and support for the obedience dimension. This pattern can also be clearly seen in LCA analysis.

In other words, the regression model’s results also make it possible to identify the two types of technocratic attitudes. These attitudes are united only by strong technocracy, but otherwise they are oppositional in other measured respects.

Ultimately, the results could lead to an interpretation that the two types of technocracy mentioned above differ in degree. This would correspond to Andrea Caramani’s thesis that extreme forms of technocracy are authoritarian but milder forms may be compatible with democracy, or that authoritarianism can be associated with technocracy only from a certain degree of technocracy onwards. This idea would be consistent with the finding that the democratic form of technocracy is somewhat milder in the latent class profiles. However, there is a caveat. If we look at Fig. 3c, that is, the degree of technocratic attitudes by class, then the authoritarian technocrats are more technocratic—the share of the strongest category of technocrats is 80% compared to less than 50% for democratic technocrats. However, there are 2.5 times more of the latter than the former. Therefore, the number/counts of those who strongly support technocracy is similar in both classes. Nevertheless, the class of democratic technocrats is broader and includes those with milder attitudes. It may be that the authoritarian version of technocracy exists only in its extreme form, while the democratic version exists both in its strongly technocratic form as well as its softer version.

The results of the analysis show that there are two types of technocratic attitudes. These results are stable with regard to a variety of robustness tests: (i) The LCA results are stable even for a different number of latent classes (6 and 7 classes). (ii) The LCA results are the same even when applied to only one country. (iii) The same conclusions can also be reached by applying interactions in the original regression model. (iv) The results are stable with and without imputation. And finally (v) The results were also identical when contextual variables were included.

There are also certain limitations. Only one variable is available for measuring technocratic attitudes. It would also be interesting to know to what extent people distinguish between different forms of expertise. Unfortunately, there are limitations to the existing EVS data in this regard. Another limitation is that the data does not allow us to further investigate what democratic technocracy actually means and how people imagine it. The data suggests that it is anti-authoritarian and pro-democratic. But it is difficult to say more beyond this. In other words, the data does not allow for a deeper understanding of the attitude mentioned. Here are a few alternatives. It may be that citizens want politicians to be replaced by non-political experts from time to time—this is consistent with the great popularity of caretaker "expert" governments. Or it may be a deeper conviction about the advantages of experts in any form of politics and governance. Some case studies suggest the latter option (Durnová, 2021; Lokšová and Galčanová Batista, 2021). Case studies of local governance show, for example, that technocratic governance is perceived positively at the local level and even perceived as a democratic innovation because it allows for contestation and potentially changes to ossified and unresponsive political decision-making. However, this goes beyond the scope of this analysis and is a question for further research.

Strong technocratic tendencies have for several decades characterized the post-communist countries of the CEE region. This is true whether we look at political demand or political supply. These tendencies can be found both in the attitudes of citizens and in the positions of political parties.

The question of this paper was what this strong support means in relation to the region’s democratization. Is it a manifestation of undemocratic and authoritarian tendencies? Or is it dissatisfaction with the functioning of democracy and a desire to make it work better? The strategy in this article was inspired by the idea that technocracy can be a matter of degree in relation to authoritarianism and may not be binary. Therefore, some forms may belong to non-democratic forms, and some may be compatible with democracy.

The first result of the analysis is that, unsurprisingly, support for expert rule is strongly tied to hardline authoritarian attitudinal positions. However, there is also a second effect that does not come directly from authoritarianism but from the perceived democratic deficit (the gap between democratic ideal and reality) and dissatisfaction with democratic institutions. These results explain the nature of technocratic attitudes in CEE countries. It shows that they are not only a manifestation of authoritarian attitudes and a rejection of democracy. Another effect was also discovered that is linked to dissatisfaction with democracy but without authoritarian attitudes. Thus, the path to technocratic attitudes is also linked to democratic attitudes.

The results of this analysis are also relevant beyond the CEE region in three senses. First, the heterogeneity of technocratic attitudes is relevant to the discussion of the sources of these attitudes, where this finding is usually not reflected: technocratic attitudes are usually treated as one-dimensional and modelled as such. Second, while it had previously been pointed out that technocratic attitudes are a matter of degree and not binary (Pastorella, 2016; Caramani, 2017, 2020), it is not entirely clear what role these softer forms of technocracy are supposed to have in relation to democracy: hardline or extreme forms are authoritarian, but what is the relationship of softer forms to democracy? The results on the role of the democratic deficit / institutional disaffection are a step towards addressing this question. Third, the results also show the role that technocratic governance can play in democratic consolidation. Technocracy is not necessarily, and not for all, a step towards democratic backsliding and illiberalism. For a certain part of the citizenry in CEE, it represents a modification of governance, a way of addressing the failures of governance that is compatible with democracy.

What is more, it is most acceptable and attractive specifically to those most affected by the fact that democratic governance, in their eyes, is failing and not achieving the expected ideal. This finding also fits with and complements the debate on the attitudes of citizens living in CEE towards politics and political parties. The population has previously shown that rather than seeking extreme and extremist alternatives, a significant proportion of dissatisfied citizens are looking for moderate solutions to the perceived failures of democratic governance (Pop-Eleches, 2010).

The presented analysis thus demonstrates that technocracy (technocratic attitudes) should not be treated as one-dimensional. It uncovered two distinct types: authoritarian and democratic. This finding not only undermines the association of technocracy with authoritarianism but also contributes to a better understanding of democratization processes across CEE countries and beyond. It opens up a possible new research venue that can focus on how technocracy can coexist with, or even strengthen, democratic legitimacy. In this sense, the results of the analysis can help develop arguments about the role of expertise in complex modern societies (Bickerton and Accetti Invernizzi, 2021).

Author Contribution

The author is solely responsible for all steps taken while working on the article.

Data Availability

The data used in the paper comes from EVS. https://europeanvaluesstudy.eu/

Aprasidze, D. and Siroky, D. S. (2020) ‘Technocratic populism in hybrid regimes: Georgia on my mind and in my pocket’, Politics and Governance, 8(4), pp. 580–589. doi: 10.17645/PAG.V8I4.3370.
Bertsou, E. and Caramani, D. (2022) ‘People Haven’t Had Enough of Experts: Technocratic Attitudes among Citizens in Nine European Democracies’, American Journal of Political Science, 66(1), pp. 5–23. doi: 10.1111/ajps.12554.
Bertsou, E., Caramani, D. and Koedam, J. (2024) ‘The ideological profile of the technocratic citizen’, European Journal of Political Research. doi: 10.1111/1475-6765.12698.
Bertsou, E. and Pastorella, G. (2017) ‘Technocratic attitudes: a citizens’ perspective of expert decision-making’, West European Politics, 40(2), pp. 430–458. doi: 10.1080/01402382.2016.1242046.
Bickerton, C. J. and Accetti Invernizzi, C. (2021) Technopopulism. The new logic of democratic politics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Buštíková, L. and Guasti, P. (2019) ‘The state as a firm: Understanding the autocratic roots of technocratic populism’, East European Politics and Societies, 33(2), pp. 302–330.
Caramani, D. (2017) ‘Will vs. Reason: The Populist and Technocratic Forms of Political Representation and Their Critique to Party Government’, American Political Science Review, 111(1), pp. 54–67. doi: 10.1017/S0003055416000538.
Caramani, D. (2020) ‘Introduction: The technocratic challenge to democracy’, in The technocratic challenge to democracy, pp. 1–26.
Centeno, M. A. (1993) ‘The new Leviathan: The dynamics and limits of technocracy.’, Theory and society, 22(3), pp. 307–335.
Chiru, M. and Enyedi, Z. (2022) ‘Who wants technocrats? A comparative study of citizen attitudes in nine young and consolidated democracies’, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 24(1), pp. 95–112. doi: 10.1177/13691481211018311.
Cianetti, L., Dawson, J. and Hanley, S. (2018) ‘Rethinking “democratic backsliding” in Central and Eastern Europe–looking beyond Hungary and Poland’, East European Politics. Routledge, pp. 243–256. doi: 10.1080/21599165.2018.1491401.
Dalton, R. J. (2008) ‘Citizenship norms and the expansion of political participation’, Political Studies, 56(1), pp. 76–98. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2007.00718.x.
Donovan, T. (2019) ‘Authoritarian attitudes and support for radical right populists’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 29(4), pp. 448–464. doi: 10.1080/17457289.2019.1666270.
Drápalová, E. and Wegrich, K. (2021) ‘Technocratic populism and subnational governance’, Government and Opposition, 56(4), pp. 640–660. doi: 10.1017/gov.2020.16.
Durnová, A. (2021) ‘Czech postcommunist trouble with participatory governance. Toward an analysis of the cultural agency of policy discourses’, Policy Studies, 42(1), pp. 80–97. doi: 10.1080/01442872.2019.1581155.
Geldhof, J. G., Preacher, K. J. and Zyphur, M. J. (2014) ‘Reliability Estimation in a Multilevel Confirmatory Factor Analysis Framework’, Psychological Methods, 19(1), pp. 72–91. doi: 10.1037/a0032138.supp.
Habermas, J. (1988) Legitimation Crisis. Polity Press.
Hanley, S. and Vachudova, M. A. (2018a) ‘Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic*’, East European Politics, 34(3), pp. 276–296. doi: 10.1080/21599165.2018.1493457.
Hanley, S. and Vachudova, M. A. (2018b) ‘Understanding the illiberal turn: democratic backsliding in the Czech Republic*’, East European Politics, 34(3), pp. 276–296. doi: 10.1080/21599165.2018.1493457.
Havlík, V. (2019) ‘Technocratic Populism and Political Illiberalism in Central Europe’, Problems of Post-Communism, 66(6), pp. 369–384. doi: 10.1080/10758216.2019.1580590.
Hibbing, J. R. et al. (2023) ‘Who do the people want to govern?’, Party Politics, 29(1), pp. 3–15. doi: 10.1177/13540688211050064.
Hloušek, V. and Kopeček, L. (2014) ‘Caretaker Governments in Czech Politics: What to Do about a Government Crisis’, Europe - Asia Studies, 66(8), pp. 1323–1349. doi: 10.1080/09668136.2014.941700.
Huskey, E. (2010) ‘Elite recruitment and state-society relations in technocratic authoritarian regimes: The Russian case’, Communist and Post-Communist Studies, 43(4), pp. 363–372. doi: 10.1016/j.postcomstud.2010.10.004.
Huskey, E. (2012) ‘Legitimizing the Russian executive: identity, technocracy, and performance’, in Power and Legitimacy-Challenges from Russia, pp. 46–58.
Karp, J. A. and Milazzo, C. (2015) ‘Democratic Scepticism and Political Participation in Europe’, Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, 25(1), pp. 97–110.
Kim, H. (2024) ‘Technocratic beliefs and delegative democratic attitudes in states of emergency: evidence from a cross-national analysis’, Democratization. doi: 10.1080/13510347.2024.2312252.
Kopeček, M. et al. (2019) Architects of Long Change: the Expert Roots of Postsocialism in Czechoslovakia. Prague: Argo.
Linz, J. J. and Stepan, A. (1996) Problems of democratic transition and consolidation. The John Hopkins University Press.
Lokšová, T. and Galčanová Batista, L. (2021) ‘Postsocialist suburban governmentality: A shift from reactive to proactive discourse in the case of Brno, Czech Republic’, Cities, 110. doi: 10.1016/j.cities.2020.103074.
Muthén, L. K. and Muthén, B. O. (2017) Mplus. User’s Guide. Los Angeles.
Nylund-Gibson, K. and Choi, A. Y. (2018) ‘Ten frequently asked questions about latent class analysis.’, Translational Issues in Psychological Science, 4(4), pp. 440–461. doi: 10.1037/tps0000176.
Pastorella, G. (2016) ‘Technocratic Governments in Europe: Getting the Critique Right’, Political Studies, 64(4), pp. 948–965. doi: 10.1111/1467-9248.12217.
Pilet, J. B. et al. (2024) ‘Who do Europeans want to govern? Exploring the multiple dimensions of citizens’ preferences for political actors in nine European countries’, Party Politics, 30(2), pp. 367–378. doi: 10.1177/13540688231153932.
Pop-Eleches, G. (2010) ‘Throwing out the bums protest voting and unorthodox parties after communism’, World Politics, 62(2), pp. 221–260. doi: 10.1017/S0043887110000043.
Reiser, M. and Hebenstreit, J. (2020) ‘Populism versus technocracy? Populist responses to the technocratic nature of the EU’, Politics and Governance, 8(4), pp. 568–579. doi: 10.17645/PAG.V8I4.3361.
Sokolov, B. (2021) ‘Measurement Invariance of Liberal and Authoritarian Notions of Democracy: Evidence From the World Values Survey and Additional Methodological Considerations’, Frontiers in Political Science, 3. doi: 10.3389/fpos.2021.642283.
Sommer, V., Mrňka, J. and Spurný, M. (2019) Run socialism like a business. Technocratic Governance in Czechoslovakia, 1956-1989. Praha: Nakladatelství Lidové noviny.
Stanley, B. (2017) ‘Populism in central and eastern Europe’, in The Oxford handbook of populism, pp. 140–158.
Vermunt, J. K. and Magidson, J. (2004) ‘“Latent Class Analysis” in The Sage encyclopedia of social science research methods’, in The sage encyclopedia of social sciences research methods, pp. 549–553. Available at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/280940069.
Vittori, D. and Paulis, E. (2024) ‘Experts replacing governments? The socio-cultural and authoritarian roots of citizens’ preferences for experts in government in 58 countries’, Acta Politica. doi: 10.1057/s41269-024-00357-3.
White, S. (1986) ‘Economic Performance and Communist Legitimacy.’, World Politics, 38(3), pp. 462–482.
Zhang, Z. et al. (2018) ‘Exploring heterogeneity in clinical trials with latent class analysis’, Annals of Translational Medicine, 6(7), pp. 119–119. doi: 10.21037/atm.2018.01.24.

A certain decision is backed by the legitimacy of an expert or expertise even though it may be primarily political and experts did not play a significant role in it.
Julia was used because calculating LCA models on multiple countries is computationally very demanding and Julia represents a significantly faster computational alternative to R or any other alternative.

Table 1 is available in the Supplementary Files section.

No competing interests reported.

APPENDIX.docx

Download PDF

Reviewers agreed at journal
08 Jan, 2026
Reviews received at journal
05 Nov, 2025
Reviewers agreed at journal
10 Oct, 2025
Reviewers invited by journal
08 Oct, 2025
Editor assigned by journal
23 Sep, 2025
Submission checks completed at journal
23 Sep, 2025
First submitted to journal
22 Sep, 2025

You are reading this latest preprint version

Democratic Deficit, Authoritarianism and the Rule of Experts: Analysis of Political Demand in the Post-communist CEE Region

Status:

Version 1

Abstract

Figures

1. INTRODUCTION

2. RESEARCH PROBLEM AND LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1 Technocracy as Authoritarianism

2.2. Technocracy as a Dimension of Democracy

3. DATA & METHODOLOGY

3.2 Data

3.1 Conceptualization of key variables

3.3 Method

3.4 Hypotheses

4. ANALYSIS

4.1 Analysis of heterogeneity: latent class model

4.2 Analysis of heterogeneity: regression model

5. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION

Declarations

Author Contribution

Data Availability

References

Footnotes

Table 1

Additional Declarations

Supplementary Files

Status:

Version 1