The death of technocracy and the return of politics

Real political change tends to have more than one cause, and although it has become somewhat fashionable to reduce everything to a single issue – whether it is the economy, migration, demographics, technological progress, etc. – in reality, it is the interplay of multiple factors that triggers lasting change. Who still remembers that the winter of 1788–1789 in France was one of the coldest in over a century, and that the cold caused shortages of food which in turn added (but did not singularly cause) to the conditions that led to the French Revolution?

In Europe, we are closing in on yet another conflagration of factors that could lead to revolutionary outcomes: Economic frustration and failed migration policies are fuelling populist movements across the political spectrum. These grievances are absolutely justified, and collide with the vision that, after decades of warfare, Europe could solve all its problems in a technocratic manner, meaning that there are no conflicts of visions, only managerial issues that can be addressed by an ever growing bureaucracy.

This might have been the case in the immediate aftermath of World War Two, but since the 2000s problems have accumulated in a way that cannot simply be wished away. We are witnessing not merely the rise of populism, but the collapse of technocratic governance itself—and we still have no idea what will replace it.

In recent UK elections, Gaza became as important as local hospital services for some constituencies. Voters in Birmingham prioritised Middle Eastern geopolitics over the quality of their neighbourhood healthcare—not because they are ignorant or immoral, but because something fundamental has shifted in how democratic politics operates. When citizens are constantly called upon to focus on issues beyond their influence (the Middle East, Global Climate Change, etc.) while neglecting those within it (like functioning local infrastructure), we have departed from any recognisable model of representative democracy. Even the term “citizen” becomes questionable. It would be more appropriate to describe a growing number of people as wardens of the state, expecting a monthly welfare check while focusing on issues that are not directly relevant for the society one lives in. In other words, people are supposed to care about the globe, while also being incapable of taking care of themselves.

This is where technocracy reaches its dead end. For decades, European elites convinced themselves that the world could be governed through expertise, that all major questions were questions of optimisation — how to best regulate, redistribute, or “nudge” behaviour into sustainability and compliance. Politics was to be replaced by process; ideology by administration. Brussels became its highest expression: A system of governance without glory or tragedy, just permanent management. But human beings are not content to be managed, and history does not end in spreadsheets.

The cracks are now visible everywhere. The agricultural revolts in France, Germany, and the Netherlands are not merely about diesel prices or nitrate limits; they are expressions of a deeper resentment at being ruled by abstract goals—carbon neutrality, planetary health, “transition”—that have little connection to lived reality. The same pattern repeats on every level: Energy policy ruled by computer models rather than by the capacities of physics and economics, migration policy dictated by moral posturing rather than by societal cohesion, and education systems obsessed with “competences” while students fall behind in the basics. This is post-politics as paralysis: A world in which everyone feels governed, and no one feels represented.

The irony is that technocracy’s failure does not lead to more expertise, but to its total discrediting. When institutions repeatedly claim to be apolitical, yet preside over endless dysfunction, people eventually recognise the ruse. The populist backlash is not against competence — it is against the illusion of competence used to mask ideological preferences. The European Union’s bureaucracy or the UN’s climate panels are not neutral arbiters; they embody a worldview that places global management above national accountability. Once voters see this, they turn to leaders who restore the language of choice, conflict, and loyalty — in other words, the language of politics itself.

We may therefore be witnessing a return to something older and more authentic: Politics as contest between visions of the good life. That return will be turbulent. Technocrats, having denied the legitimacy of disagreement for so long, are utterly unequipped to handle it. They spent decades insisting that there are “no alternatives”, only parameter adjustments; now multiple alternatives are being offered at once, often by movements that the mainstream dismissed as impossible or dangerous. From Giorgia Meloni to Marine Le Pen, from the farmers blocking highways to the civic protests in Eastern Europe, there is a growing insistence that decisions have consequences — and that societies must be allowed to choose their course, even if it offends bureaucratic orthodoxy.

This does not mean a simple victory for so-called populists. Revolutions, once triggered, are hard to contain, and those who begin them are rarely those who complete them. The more pressing question is whether Europe still has the institutional and intellectual flexibility to rediscover political legitimacy before the centre collapses entirely. The alternative is fragmentation — technocratic elites retreating into fortified rulemaking while the governed classes turn increasingly radical and resentful.

A healthy polity requires risk. It requires the possibility that policies fail, that victories are temporary, and that compromise is not a synonym for consensus but for coexistence. Technocracy abolished that risk by imagining a perpetual peace of regulation. Now, as its logic dissolves under the strain of economic stagnation, cultural anxiety, and geopolitical irrelevance, we are being forced to relearn what self-government actually means. Politics has returned — not the polite, depoliticised kind of summit declarations, but the raw and unpredictable one born of conflict and choice.

It is telling that the most dynamic energies in Europe today do not come from ministries or commissions, but from the streets, the farms, and the independent media spaces that the system tried to marginalise. These are not yet coherent movements, but they share a refusal to be managed. They are rediscovering sovereignty not as nostalgia, but as necessity.

After a century in which bureaucratic rationality seemed the pinnacle of civilisation, the pendulum is swinging back. The death of technocracy will not be neat or painless — but perhaps it is the only way Europe can remember that politics, in the end, was never a problem to be solved, but the expression of human freedom itself.