Representation matters: Technocracy, populism and attitudes towards international organizations

Background
Under what conditions citizens accept public institutions as legitimate authorities is a key question in political science. Recent accounts suggest that populist citizens reject international organizations (IOs) as distant, elitist and undemocratic. Conversely, technocratic citizens should favour international organizations as they represent the pinnacle of depoliticized, expertise-driven decision-making. In the article "Representation matters: Technocracy, populism and attitudes towards international organizations", we provide the first joint analysis of technocratic and populist attitudes as drivers of attitudes towards, drawing on the data published in this repository.

Purpose
We analyse a unique survey conducted in five European countries that covers four international organizations and ask how individual populist and technocratic attitudes influence attitudes towards IOs.

Result
We find only conditional evidence for a structural association between technocratic and populist and IO attitudes, and credible evidence that country-specific experiences with populism in power moderate these associations.

Conclusion
Our contribution has important implications for our understanding of citizen attitudes towards various forms of political representation and the legitimacy of international organizations.