Party politics shifted to professional experts lacking democratic backing after 1990.

Evidence

A narrower party base does not, of course, imply that parties now cede their role as suppliers of policy. Party bureaucrats still work their way up within party structures, but they do so less and less with democratic backing. Since the 1990s, politicians are increasingly drawn from a professional universe, be it academic or business. In place of the union leader or civic tribune, a new figure has come to the fore: the expert. The American sociologist Stephanie Mudge recently called this the “re-professionalization” of party politics, akin to the “diploma democracy” known in the Netherlands. The result is reminiscent of the nineteenth-century politics of dignitaries, but without the haughtiness of the ancien régime that shielded the rulers of the day from its rabble. The tree of the party may have been hollowed out, but even a rotten trunk still offers a route to the rewards at the top. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment, 155

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘diploma democracy’ and expert-rise parallels the party-erosion narrative in ch3 and reconnects to the center-left class betrayal in [117]-[118]. — connects to: Unelected bodies captured policy while media seized politics after the 1990s. — Arthur Borriello and Anton Jäger, The Populist Moment: The Left After the…, 146; Expertise from an authoritarian past made successor parties valuable yet discredited partners — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past: The…, 1229

Broader Connections

• Expertise from an authoritarian past made successor parties valuable yet discredited partners #expands (0.82) — Anna M. Grzymala-Busse, Redeeming The Communist Past, 1229