European Journal of Political Research
Representation matters: Technocracy, populism, and attitudes towards international organisations
2025-09-30
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 organisations (IOs) as distant, elitist, and undemocratic. Conversely, technocratic citizens should favour IOs as they represent the pinnacle of depoliticised, expertise-driven decision-making. In this article, we provide the first joint analysis of technocratic and populist attitudes as drivers of attitudes towards IOs. We analyse a unique survey conducted in five European countries that covers four IOs and ask how individual populist and technocratic attitudes influence attitudes towards IOs. 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. Our contribution has important implications for our understanding of citizen attitudes towards various forms of political representation and the legitimacy of IOs.