Abstract :
[en] The literature on technocracy has shown that expertise is a crucial factor in driving support for technocrats. However, the literature has not investigated yet what happens when technocrats are opposed to partisan experts. In this article, we want to fill this gap by analysing the support for two potential ministers of health with relevant expertise for their portfolio but with a different relationship to partisan politics. For this purpose, we run a novel survey in 14 European countries with more than 20,000 respondents. Our main results show that non-partisan experts are preferred over partisan experts across Europe, both when citizens have a high sympathy and a low sympathy for the party appointing the minister. However, in the latter case, the effect is more evident.
Funding text :
The author(s) disclosedreceipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article:This project has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 773023).
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