Technopopulism

I have a new article out in the current edition of American Affairs: “From Technocracy and Populism to Technopopulism”. It’s a bit of an expansion on my older blogpost “Technocracy and Populism”. Be sure to check it out!

Today, developed nations such as the United States find themselves in a position of deindustrialization, which has locked them into a downward spiral of stagnation and decadence. The result in recent years has been the upsurge of populist tendencies, of both the Left and the Right, alongside a renewed push for reindustrialization and for a restoration of productive economic growth. It is unsurprising, then, that the ghosts of large-scale pushes like the New Deal will come once again to haunt the popular and political imagination, acting as a strange beacon that the technocrats currently holding power tend to disdain. If by chance their power were to be broken, and the populists were once again to ascend, the result would not necessarily look as the New Deal once did. Nor is the structure of New Deal programs, reflective of their own time and place, particularly desirable. What is needed now could very well be beyond them. What it would mean, however, is this: that the coming epoch may very well be one of technopopulism.