Technocratic populism and public opinion during the Covid-19 pandemic

In the vast and ever-growing literature on populism, technocratic populism is one of the most under investigated concepts. Only apparently an oxymoron, techno-populism can be defined as a political logic where competence and expertise operate as legitimizing tools of authenticity and proximity to the people, in opposition to the corrupt and incompetent political elites. After two years since the initial outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic, we register a renovated need to investigate techno-populist attitudes within public opinion and the potential effects they might have on electoral behavior. Thus, relying on a novel dataset of survey data of Italian respondents (ResPOnsE Covid-19), we address two main research questions. On the one hand, we explore the characteristics that influence the likelihood of adopting techno-populist attitudes, finding, among other things, a slightly U-Shaped relation between ideology and techno-populism, but with right-wing voters more likely to adopt such stances. On the other hand, we link technocratic populism to the propensity to vote (PTVs). We find that techno-populism increases the PTV for M5S, while reducing it for the League, a result more likely linked to the opinion on Cabinet Conte II.