European Political Science Review
Beyond dualism: the hybridization of technocracy and democracy in Europe
2026-06-02
This article investigates the structural hybridization of technocracy and democracy in European governance. Moving beyond normative and binary accounts that frame the two as mutually exclusive, we conceptualize their relationship as a systemic, relational, internal, and processual dynamic. Building on this framework, we develop a typology of four ideal-type governance configurations – techno-dominant, demo-dominant, high-intensity hybrid, and low-intensity hybrid – which captures the co-evolution and institutional entanglement of democratic and technocratic logics. Empirically, we construct original composite indices of technocracy and democracy using V-Dem data, and apply them to 893 country-year observations across the EU27 and the United Kingdom (1989–2024). The findings reveal significant regional variation and temporally differentiated trajectories of hybrid governance, shaped in part by major crises. Our typology offers a replicable tool for classifying governance regimes and invites further inquiry into how hybrid forms condition democratic legitimacy, institutional resilience, and the evolving architecture of political authority in the twenty-first century.