Policy justifications under technocratic and populist cabinets

Abstract

Abstract Imbalances between responsiveness and responsibility risk turning representative democracies into either populist or technocratic forms of rule. This intuition has so far only been explored at the theoretical level. Based on the variation in types of government experienced in Italy between 2008 and 2019, this chapter explores the intuition empirically. The analysis confirms the expectations only partially. Qualitative evidence shows that also technocratic governments need to be to some extent responsive to domestic demands, and that through institutionalized checks and balances also populist governments are forced to be responsible to some extent. Overall, despite its unique variation in type of government, the Italian case features the same trend over time in the balance between responsiveness and responsibility as that of other eurozone countries.