sage swifts

In 1976 SAGE published a series of short ‘university papers’, which led to the
publication of the QASS series (or the ‘little green books’ as they
became known to researchers). More than 40 years since the release of
the first ‘little green book’, SAGE is delighted to offer a new series of swift,
short and topical pieces in the ever-growing digital environment.

SAGE Swifts offer authors a new channel for academic research with the
freedom to deliver work outside the conventional length of journal articles.
The series aims to give authors speedy access to academic audiences
through digital first publication, space to explore ideas thoroughly, yet at a
length which can be readily digested, and the quality stamp and reassurance
of peer-review.
sage swifts
SAGE Publications Ltd © Peter Bloom and Alessandro Sancino 2019
1 Oliver’s Yard
55 City Road First published 2019
London EC1Y 1SP
Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of
SAGE Publications Inc. research or private study, or criticism or review, as
2455 Teller Road permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Thousand Oaks, California 91320 Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored
or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with
SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in
B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance
Mathura Road with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright
New Delhi 110 044 Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction
outside those terms should be sent to the publishers.
SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd
3 Church Street
#10-04 Samsung Hub
Singapore 049483

Editor: Natalie Aguilera Library of Congress Control Number: 2018964959

Editorial assistant: Eve Williams
Production editor: Martin Fox British Library Cataloguing in Publication data
Marketing manager: George Kimble
Cover design: Wendy Scott
Typeset by: C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed in the UK
A catalogue record for this book is available from
the British Library

ISBN 978-1-5264-6435-4
WEB 978-1-5264-6566-5

At SAGE we take sustainability seriously. Most of our products are printed in the UK using responsibly sourced
papers and boards. When we print overseas we ensure sustainable papers are used as measured by the
PREPS grading system. We undertake an annual audit to monitor our sustainability.
 CONTENTS

Introduction: Democracy Disrupted  1

1 The Clash of Techno-Politics 7

2 Outdated Democracy: The Fall of Capitalist Technopoly 19

3 The Rise of Techno-Populism 31

4 The Growth of Techno-Democracy 49

5 Looking Forward to Disruptive Democracy 61

References 73

Index 83
 INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRACY
DISRUPTED

In October 2018 noted scholar Yuval Noah Harari dropped a figurative

bombshell. Renowned for his groundbreaking work on technology and the
future of humanity, he had become for many a prophet of our coming
‘smart’ future – for both good and bad. In his bestselling books Sapiens,
Homo Deus and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century he predicted a coming reality
in which new technology may lead humans to seek anew for immortality
and fulfilment. Yet on this day his prophetic words were much bleaker. In
an article for the widely read US magazine The Atlantic he boldly exam-
ined in his view ‘why technology favors tyranny’, declaring that all signs
pointed to future tech such as AI, robotic and social media threatening our
freedom and democracy rather than expanding and improving them. He
proclaims:

The revolutions in information technology and biotechnology are still in their

infancy, and the extent to which they are responsible for the current crisis of
liberalism is debatable. Most people in Birmingham, Istanbul, St. Petersburg,
and Mumbai are only dimly aware, if they are aware at all, of the rise of AI and
its potential impact on their lives. It is undoubtable, however, that the tech-
nological revolutions now gathering momentum will in the next few decades
confront humankind with the hardest trials it has yet encountered. (Harari,
2018: n.p.)

The recently deceased physicist Stephen Hawking predicted in his last book
(Brief Answers to the Big Questions, 2018) that the use of genetic editing from
wealthy people may create ‘superhumans’ that could destroy humanity.
Of course, such technological forebodings are neither new nor rare.
Indeed there is an entire intellectual history of Luddite philosophy for
those who fear and reject technological advancements. This also followed
in the wake of a year-long frenzy about the role big data and social media
2 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

is playing in undermining even the most developed democracies from the

2016 US presidential election to the UK Brexit vote.
As one renowned British commentator has ominously warned, ‘Whoever
owns this data owns the future’ (Cadwalladr, 2017: n.p.). In a world increas-
ingly urbanising, with two-thirds of the world’s population living in cities
by 2050 (UN-Habitat, 2016), Meijer (2018: 203) warns us that

the ‘games’ around data are of crucial importance for the future of cities. The
actors in the datapolis try to ‘win’ these games to dominate the future of cities.

Against this backdrop, the spectre of bots and sophisticated cyber interfer-
ence by insidious foreign agents is for good reason dominating the popular
imagination.
However, it was only recently that technology was viewed more as
saviour than destroyer. Digital advances in communication and data
collection were going to shrink the world and make our systems more
responsive. Envisioned was a connected, smart and participatory society.
Social change would happen in real-time – customisable to people’s indi-
vidual needs. Algorithms, the hidden fixers of all our problems, were to
be celebrated not feared. It represented a ‘new civics for a smart century’,
where ‘putting the needs of people first isn’t just a more just way to build
cities. It is also a way to craft better technology, and do so faster and more
frugally’ (Townsend, 2013).
The question then is whether it is us or technology that has gone
so wrong. Who is to blame for this rather sudden and tragic shift from
optimism to pessimism? It is perhaps tempting to retreat back into a per-
spective of technological determinism to answer this question. Technology
shapes our possibilities, determining our potential and fates. It evokes
a Frankenstein-like image of modern humanity – we created a monster!
Obviously, so the conventional thinking goes, big data will erode our pri-
vacy and give rise to a 21st century Big Brother. Undoubtedly, social media
will destroy our actual relationships and promote a civic society of troll-
ing. Looking further ahead – unquestionably, robots will first take our jobs
before taking over our very world.
The problem though is that so much of this technological dysfunction
is human-produced. There is growing evidence that algorithms are flawed
due to human biases reproducing racism, sexism and classism (see for
example Andrews, 2018 on the wicked problem of ‘governing algorithms
 INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRACY DISRUPTED 3

and big data’). Likewise, the most invasive aspects of big data are driven
by age-old desires for greater power and wealth. The existential threat of
‘mass destruction’ has evolved into the hi-tech threat of ‘math destruction’
(O’Neil, 2016). To simply blame technology is to ignore our own social
malfunctions to our peril. Indeed, big data represents ‘not shareable under-
standings of the world, but actionable intelligence crafted to serve the
imperatives and answer the questions of those who control the databases’
(Andrejevic and Gates, 2014: 192).
Attributing all our ills to technology is also quite simply empirically
wrong. It is to pretend that science and innovation occur in a cultural and
political vacuum. Over half a century of research rejects such a simplis-
tic view. Instead, perspectives such as actor network theory (Latour, 2005)
reveal the influential role of social forces in shaping technological research
and discoveries.
Hence, if anything it is us that direct and ultimately guide technology
and not vice versa. It is more precise to say that technology and society
are mutually constitutive – dynamically co-creating each other (Bryson
et al., 2016). Such insights though, at the risk of being blasé, are arguably
beside the point. The real issue is fundamentally political. Who controls
technology and to what ideological, political and material ends? Are we
in a tyranny of technology like Yuval Noah Harari says? And what social
economic and political changes are necessary to make technology less
tyrannical and more truly democratic?

Innovation vs. Disruption

It is increasingly clear that the progress of potential democracy has been
largely sacrificed at the altar of its profitable possibilities (e.g. Stiglitz,
2009). However, if you want to take this critique seriously – which most
evidence suggests we definitely should – then it must be followed through
to its logical conclusion. More precisely, how is technology serving as a
dynamic underlying logics for structuring (Giddens, 1984) society and
politics? If it is true that society, politics and technology are increasingly
intertwined then what precisely does a viable alternative consist of?
A good place to start such an investigation is the cyclical nature of both
capitalism and technology. The market is notoriously volatile, constantly
shifting between the highest of highs and lowest of lows. Companies rise
and fall, succeed and fail. National economies grow and decline, develop
4 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

and stagnate. This is a circular process – an economic eternal return of

the same if you will. Technology, likewise, is dominantly linked with nov-
elty. It seems to follow an analogous route from discovery to adaptation
to becoming outdated. This is often portrayed as a curve or a ‘life cycle’ –
though it reflects a similar dynamic (see Beal and Bohlen, 1957). This is
further reflected in the way ideas and policies seem to be cyclical in their
own popularity (see McCarty et al., 2015).
Significantly, this gestures toward a potentially profound paradox of
capitalism, technology and politics alike. It is captured in the old adage
that ‘the more things change the more things stay the same’. Formally,
at stake is the mixing of constantly shifting conditions within a relatively
entrenched stable system. Within the economic tradition this is articulated
as creative destruction, first proposed by the economist Joseph Schumpeter.
He declares the ‘process of industrial mutation that incessantly revolution-
izes the economic structure from within, incessantly destroying the old
one, incessantly creating a new one’ (Schumpeter, [1942]1950: 83, quoted
in Kirzner, 1999: 7). Here the heroes are the entrepreneurs as drivers of
change. They are constantly in a process of destruction and creation, as
the name of the concept suggests. These ideas extend to technology and
politics as well.
In contrast are critical theories of political economy that explicitly
speak to the possibility of systematic transformation. Open Marxism, draw-
ing on the insights of Antonio Gramsci, discuss the existence of an organic
crisis that reveals the fundamental contradictions of a present status quo
and its associated social, political and economic relations (e.g. Bonefeld
et al., 1992;). In this regard:

[A] crisis occurs. … This exceptional duration means that uncurable structural
contradictions have revealed themselves … and that, despite this, the political
forces which are struggling to conserve and defend the existing structure itself
are making efforts to cure them within certain limits, and to overcome them.
(Gramsci and Hoare, 1971: 178)

At stake is moving beyond the cycle of more of the same (Roberts, 2011) –
simply believing in a different emperor without clothes for the prospect of
actually recreating how we work, live and engage with power.
This sounds like a far cry from technology perhaps. Yet it strongly ech-
oes how economists differentiate between technological innovation and
 INTRODUCTION: DEMOCRACY DISRUPTED 5

technological disruption. Innovation represents, in this regard, the updat-

ing and improvement of existing products. Disruption, conversely, is the
creation and introduction of a completely new market. Hence,

The effects of high technology always breaks [sic] the direct comparability by
changing the system itself, therefore requiring new measures and new assess-
ments of its productivity … For example, you can directly compare a manual
typewriter with an electric typewriter, but not a typewriter with a word processor.
Therein lies the management challenge of high technology. (Zeleny, 2009: 12)

Crucially, advances in computing do not allow us to make better typewriters

but rather consumers of personal computers and eventually smartphones.
This difference between innovation and disruption offers a new
potentially exciting possibility for conceiving politics generally and con-
temporary democracies specifically.
To what extent is technology reproducing social relations and to what
extent is it causing political disruptions? If politics is at its root the articu-
lation of what is socially possible, how is the political use of technology
being used to limit or expand our social horizons? Will democracy repro-
duce a broken economic and cultural order or will it catalyse and foster a
novel system that is simultaneously ‘smarter’ and more just?

Introducing the Possibility of Disruptive Democracy

It is not clear if and how representative democracy will survive in the
21st century. New ‘smart’ technologies such as AI, robotics, social media
and automation are threatening to fundamentally disrupt our politics,
economy and society. Pessimistically, these advances will only exacer-
bate existing inequalities and injustices linked to corporate globalisation.
However, they also hold the positive potential to radically transform our
democracies and civic societies, creating ones that are more responsive,
egalitarian and accountable. In these turbulent times for governing (Ansell
and Trondal, 2017), we are confronted with dramatically opposed futures
for conceiving how technology will reshape civic participation as well eco-
nomic and political governance.
This book introduces perhaps the most profound techno-political strug-
gle of the 21st century, between a progressive ‘techno-democracy’ and a
regressive ‘techno-populism’. It highlights the growing strategic use of
populism to reinforce an increasingly technologically sophisticated form
6 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

of corporate rule both economically and politically. Yet it also poses the
possibility of a new social order (Magatti, 2017) where such technology
can empower human deliberation and agency to change the status quo and
potentially create a better and less unequal world. Reflected is the clash of
competing modern ‘techno-politics’ in which the very survival of democ-
racy and progress is at stake.
The book uses critical theories to discuss the relationship between
technology, society and politics. Through a critical journey into recent
turning-point world events such as the global financial crisis and the rise
of populism, it illustrates four social technologies for governing market,
society and politics: the Capitalist Technopoly, Techno-Populism, Techno-
Democracy and Disruptive Democracy. While they all acknowledge the
crisis of the neoliberal capitalistic system, they provide different patterns
in terms of socially innovating and/or politically disrupting this system.
The book will critically investigate how different actors and movements
are exploiting new technologies and to what ideological and powerful
ends. Secondly it will take the bold step of conceiving politics – whether
democratic, populist, or authoritarian – as governing technologies defined
as sets of discursive and institutional tools for reshaping social relations.
Thirdly, it will discuss implications in terms of power, social equality and
the role of human agency.
Most importantly, we shed light on the ‘techno-politics’ behind these
four governing technologies. Because, perhaps, the defining struggle of the
21st century is between competing techno-politics rising from the ashes
of the capitalist end of history and whether democracy can recapture its
revolutionary disruptive for a new age.
 1
THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS

The end of the Cold War seemed to be signalling the beginning of a new era
of peace and prosperity. The fall of the Soviet Union promised the eternal
reign of liberal democracy and free markets. Francis Fukyuma proclaimed
the ‘end of history’, where all major political and economic questions were
answered now and forever. He declares:

What we may be witnessing is not just the end of the Cold War, or the pass-
ing of a particular period of post-war history, but the end of history as such:
that is, the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universaliza-
tion of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government.
(Fukuyama, 1989: 3)

Politically, it seemed that ‘Pax Americana’ had been declared and appeared
to be everlasting. Fast forward less than three decades and it appeared that
liberal democracy and market economies were unsustainable. The new
saviours were sovranism and nationalist economic policies from those on
the right and socialism and social democracy from those on the left. Even
financiers like Eric Weinstein, managing director of Thiel Capital, admit-
ted that ‘we may need a hybrid model in the future which is paradoxically
more capitalistic than our capitalism today and perhaps even more social-
istic than our communism of yesteryear’ (Illing, 2018: n.p.) How did this
occur? How could the end of history end so soon?
Crucial, in this regard, is to further interrogate the political cleavages
and the clash of civilisations (Huntington, 1993) emerging at the end of
the 20th century. Arising were new struggles between the local and the
global (Robertson, 1995), the secular and the fundamentalist. Ben Barber
8 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

captured this political dynamic in his now classic and still timely work
Jihad vs. McWorld, observing that

The tendencies of what I am here calling the forces of Jihad and the forces of
McWorld operate with equal strength in opposite directions, the one driven
by parochial hatreds, the other by universalizing markets, the one re-creating
ancient subnational and ethnic borders from within, the other making national
borders porous from without. (Barber, 1992: 53)

This would expand, of course, into the world-spanning and seemingly

never-ending War on Terror, initiated after the September 11th attacks.
These were significantly infused with technology as much as with military
power. Both sides drew indeed on social media to spread their message.
Drone surveillance and warfare became the modus operandi for fighting
terror. Complex financial digital methods were used to transfer funds by
both sides secretly and securely.
Tellingly, despite their obvious and profound differences these implac-
able ‘enemies’ shared a number of equally profound political assumptions.
Namely, that the point of politics was ideological (or religious) victory
achieved through a combination of military, diplomatic and propaganda
strategies. That the aim ultimately is world conquest mixed with protecting
their own people – whether it be national citizens or fellow religious believ-
ers. The ‘Jihad’ and ‘McDonaldisation’ of the world, in this sense, relied on
a very similar strategic discourse to that which came before them.
Hence, while these competing social and economic forces – however they
are phrased: ‘global vs. national/local’, ‘secular vs. fundamentalist’, ‘democ-
racy vs. terrorism’ – are seemingly opposed, they are also to a large extent
repeating the same old political myths with simply a new cast of characters.
The War on Terror was a replaying of Cold War realist politics for a new
age. It pitted a crusading West – the protector of all things free and good –
against an insidious foe who threated its ‘very way of life’. Communists
had been exchanged for Islamic extremists, the red scare for Islamophobia.
And just as before this soaring rhetoric hid a more complex history of past
and present exploitation. On the other side of the ideological divide, the
extremists tapped into empowering past discourses of anti-imperialism,
independence and radical insurgency. While they praised Allah, like so
many secular revolutionaries before them, they were dedicated to libera-
tion through a potent mix of guerrilla warfare and subversive propaganda.
 THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS 9

Their uses of technology were, therefore, to a certain extent ironically

more innovative than disruptive. New methods of waging war, whether
through drone attacks or digital attacks, ultimately fell within the well-
worn tracks of anti-insurgency combat and winning ‘the hearts and minds’
of the enemy. The strategic use of humanitarian technology similarly was
a clear rerun of the exploitation of ‘humanitarian aid’ and, even further
back, the Peace Corp for at times rather nefarious imperial purposes.
And it goes almost without saying that the fear of ‘digital Jihadists’ is an
updated version of the terror engendered by anarchists and Communist
‘extremists’ of old.
Reflected was the rise of two competing ‘techno-civilisations’ who drew
on technology to protect their perceived ‘ways of life’ as well as more fun-
damentally their shared view of politics and power. Techno-civilisations
then represent entrenched ways of seeing and being in the world, a com-
mon social construction of our realities by which new techniques and
technologies help to modernise and revise rather than reboot and reinvent.
This is not to say that the West and its enemies were precisely the
same, or that the free market Washington consensus has been completely
replaced. Rather, it is to point out that what can at first glance appear to
be quite novel, particularly when linked to fresh technological advances,
is in fact rather hegemonic, an updating of past ideas with relatively new
practices.

The Technology of Hegemony

By now it is well acknowledged by even the most fervent believers in the
power of technology that it is inexorably linked to its social context. It is
a deeply embedded part of any culture. Every civilisation engages in pro-
cesses of research and discovery, seeking out new techniques and methods
for engaging with their natural and cultural environments. These can have
a dramatic social impact. The watermill and the heavy plough transformed
medieval feudal society (see Andersen et al., 2016), for instance. However,
the direction and scope of this technological discovery heavily depend on
cultural and economic conditions. Thus, for instance, classical Rome had
discovered steam power but failed to take advantage of it due to its large
slave population.
Technology, in turn, can have a diverse civilisational effect. It can either
be ultimately negligible, innovative, or disruptive. In the first instance, it
10 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

has little to no serious impact on existing social, political, or economic rela-

tions. By contrast, an innovative technology helps to update and evolve a
status quo – it does not transform it but refashions it and resolves key prob-
lems that it encounters in its development and daily operation. Conversely,
a disruptive technology is one that directly challenges and transforms a
dominant social order.
Significantly, the same or similar technologies can be negligible, inno-
vative, or disruptive depending on how they are used and by whom. Thus
mobile phone capabilities can be exploited by employers and govern-
ments to monitor and control populations or they can be drawn upon
by marginalised and oppressed people to hold those in power to account
(Keane, 2011).
Enriching these practical insights are critical theories describing
advances in organisation and governance as ‘social technologies’. This per-
spective was influenced by the ideas of the 20th century French thinker
Michel Foucault. He proposes power as productive rather than simply
repressive – producing certain types of actions, beliefs, and social relations.
Power, in turn, is supported by the development of a range of social tech-
nologies. To this end,

Social technology transforms social expertise for a purpose, develops ideas

for the solutions for social problems. Thus, it also establishes itself as a part
of modern government, it can impact governmental decisions, it allows for a
‘technisation’, an introduction of new techniques and new procedures, new
administrative ways of politics and for a specific conception of power between
authority and subject. (Leibetseder, 2011: 14)

Understandably, the focus has been on the role of these social technologies
as a force for domination. It refers specifically to the complex and everyday
promotion of specific types of governing discourses and regimes. In the
words of Foucault, they act as a

mean(s) to apply economy, to set up an economy at the level of the entire state,
which means exercising towards its inhabitants, and the wealth and behaviour
of each and all, a form of surveillance and control as attentive as that of the head
of a family over his household and his goods. (Foucault, 1991: 92)

However, it is just as pertinent, if not even more urgent, to critically inquire

into how such social technologies can produce profound political and
 THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS 11

economic transformations. Notions of discursive hegemony popularised

by Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe (1986) are particularly useful for this
purpose. They define hegemony as the capacity of a discourse – a dominant
set of beliefs and associated actions – to shape an existing social order,
though importantly never completely so. Quoting Howarth (2000: 102),
it is an effort to ‘weave together different strands of discourse in an effort
to dominate or structure a field of meaning, thus fixing the identities of
objects and practices in a particular way’.
The social is hence formed in the continual battle for hegemony. A
hegemonic discourse is constantly seeking to define and overdetermine all
social relations. Hence,

Hegemony involves competition between different political forces to get maxi-

mum support for, or identification with, their definition of ‘floating signifiers’,
such as ‘freedom’ and ‘equality’ (terms which can assume different meanings,
depending on whether they are ‘articulated’ in, for example liberal or social-
ist discourse), or ‘empty signifiers’, such as ‘order’ or even ‘democracy’ (terms
which can be invested with a variety of meanings because they have no inherent
content and can serve to unite disparate movements). (Townshend, 2004: 271)

To do so, it creates an appealing vision of ‘social wholeness’. Consequently,

marketisation depends upon utopian promises of a free world where the
pursuit of profit leads to both individual fulfilment and shared prosperity.
In his later work, Laclau would refer to this as a state of ‘failed transcend-
ence’ or ‘failed totality’, where a hegemonic discourse is supported by a
shared vision of personal and collective harmony. He argues,

What we have ultimately is a failed totality, a place of irretrievable fullness. The

totality is an object that is both impossible and necessary. Impossible because
the tension between equivalence and difference is ultimately insurmountable;
necessary because without some kind of closure, however precarious it may be,
there would be no signification and no identity. (Laclau, 2007: 70)

Yet this totalistic domination is always finally unachievable in practice –

an impossibility that opens the space for ideological challenges. These
counter-hegemonic discourses are referred to as ‘antagonisms’ which con-
stantly threaten to subvert and replace a status quo. Returning to Laclau’s
(1996) work, he describes hegemony as forming a social imaginary which
largely limits social possibility within its horizon of meaning. The ability of
12 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

antagonisms to challenge this imaginary catalyses a new battle by contend-

ing myths for hegemony.
This continual struggle for winning and maintaining hegemony
depends on the creation and exploitation of social technologies. The social
is paradoxically both eternally ordered and dynamic. More precisely, the
establishment of order, its very stability and survival, is premised on its
capacity to adapt and change. Technologies and social technologies are
crucial for this process. Importantly, they can be either socially innovative
or politically disruptive in their aim and effect.

Socially Innovative vs. Politically Disruptive Technologies

Technology is popularly viewed as a force for change. It is therefore
counter-intuitive for many to consider technology as a tool for reinforcing
a status quo. This parallels a current irony afflicting democracy. As a politi-
cal ideal and in practice democracy is fundamentally about challenging
and replacing power, a systematic safeguard against tyranny. It is thus not
so clear what is the current role and relationship between technology and
democracy in terms of their capacity to reinforce and/or challenge existing
power relations and ideologies.
We focus here on the issue of whether technologies are innovative
or disruptive. This distinction echoes the difference between the social
and the political within critical theory (see in particular Marchart, 2007).
The former focuses on establishing and maintaining an existing order. It
is fundamentally a process of domination. One of the first and still best
descriptions of this socialisation is from Karl Marx:

In the social production of their existence, men inevitably enter into definite rela-
tions, which are independent of their will, namely [the] relations of production
appropriate to a given stage in the development of their material forces of produc-
tion. The totality of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure
of society, the real foundation, on which arises a legal and political superstruc-
ture, and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode
of production of material life conditions the general process of social, political, and
intellectual life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence,
but their social existence that determines their consciousness. (Marx, 1977)

The political, by contrast, is the unsettling order that challenges assumed,

practices, and regimes of power. Quoting once again from Gramsci and Hoare
(1971: 168):
 THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS 13

An appropriate political initiative is always necessary to liberate the economic

thrust from the dead weight of traditional policies (and ideas) – i.e. to change
the political direction of certain forces which have to be absorbed if a new
homogenous political–economic historic bloc, without internal contradictions,
is to be successfully formed.

It is dangerous though tempting to view these as mutually exclusive, to

establish a strict separation between the social and the political. Indeed,
even within the most revolutionary moment there are entrenched cultural,
historical and organisational features. The French philosopher Alain Badiou
(Badiou and Feltham, 1987) offers a compelling perspective to reconsider
this relationship. He proposes the notion of the event that introduces new
guiding truths for the structuring of the subject and the social. The clas-
sic and perhaps most famous example of a Badiou-type event would be
the Copernican Revolution. This new truth that the Earth revolves around
the Sun completely reconfigured the very basis of the social as such. It
provided not only radical new truths to believe it but also an entirely new
framework for exploring and legitimising what counts as truth – namely
scientific method and science generally.
Within this new ‘situation’ there are obviously socialising and politi-
cal forces. Politics stands as a technique for enacting change within
this broader ‘field of meaning’ to borrow another phrase from Laclau
and Mouffe. These truths quite literally become the basis for our shared
reality – it is the common sense that binds us together and provides a
sense of ontological security as individuals. The recent theory of social and
political logics proposed by Jason Glynos and David Howarth (2008) is
especially useful for conceptually understanding this always contextually
rich and dynamic relationship. Social logics, as may be surmised from the
above analysis, are those discourses and associated practices that stabilise
and strengthen an existing hegemony. Political logics, conversely, threaten
dominant social orderings. In doing so they challenge prevailing cultural
fantasies and as such a seemingly permanent and unalterable ‘social real-
ity’. While not explicit, governance acts as the hegemonic fantasies that
organise, regulate and mobilise individuals’ subjectivities and identities.
According to Žižek, it is

the element which holds together a given community that cannot be

reduced to the point of symbolic identification: the bonds linking together its
14 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

members always implies [sic] a shared relationship to the Thing, toward enjoy-
ment incarnated. … If we are asked how we can recognise the presence of this
Thing, the only consistent answer is that the Thing is present in that elusive
entity called our ‘way of life.’ (Žižek, 1993: 201)

Technologies play a prominent role in this continuous process of hegem-

ony. They represent the physical and cultural techniques and capabilities
necessary for advancing and updating a social order. Interestingly, Laclau
and Mouffe early on in their theories recognise the opposing but always
inexorable relation between contingency with necessity. Yet it is mis-
leading to exclusively link contingency with the political and therefore
disruptive and necessity with the social and therefore merely innovative.
Rather, contingency is an ever-present force that requires eternal nego-
tiation and management. That which is considered ‘socially necessary’,
furthermore, always demands the creation of new social technologies and
capabilities. As Foucault observes, a novel social ordering

must not be seen as a sudden discovery. It is rather a multiplicity of often minor

processes, of different origin and scattered location, which overlap, repeat,
or imitate one another, support one another, distinguish themselves from
one another according to their domain of application, converge and gradu-
ally produce the blueprint of a general method ... [O]n almost every occasion
[, however,] they were adopted in response to particular needs. (Foucault and
Sheridan, 1979: 138)

Significantly, it is the very fact that the social is so contingent that it

requires so much technological innovation. Bloom and Dallyn (2011) thus
speak of the construction of dominant antagonisms within a shared social
imaginary – witnessed, for instance, in the framing of politics and social
relations within the US between ‘Hawks and Doves’ at the height of the
‘War on Terror’. Each of these were innovative responses to the accepted
‘necessity’ of addressing dangerous extremism.
Returning to the insights of Foucault, he critically discusses the notion of
‘operations’ as those mechanisms and strategies that allow for a prevailing dis-
course to continue to run effectively. He describes them as fundamental to the
maintenance and success of different types of social technologies, declaring

we must understand that there are four major types of these ‘technologies,’
each a matrix of practical reason: (1) technologies of production, which per-
mit us to produce, transform, or manipulate things; (2) technologies of sign
 THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS 15

systems, which permit us to use signs, meanings, symbols, or signification;

(3) technologies of power, which determine the conduct of individuals and
submit them to certain ends or domination, an objectivizing of the subject;
(4) technologies of the self, which permit individuals to effect by their own
means or with the help of others a certain number of operations on their own
bodies and souls, thoughts, conduct, and way of being, so as to transform them-
selves in order to attain a certain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection,
or immortality. (Foucault et al., 1982: n.p.)

Particularly relevant, in this regard, is the vital role of technologies to

refashion and update hegemony so that it can tame contingency and pre-
vent deeper political disruptions. Laclau and Mouffe’s (1987) example of
a football match is telling. They relate how the very framing and physical
cultivation of a piece of land as a ‘pitch’ is based on its discursive con-
struction as being needed to play football. Further, the rules of the game
are established and guide the actions of the players. Nevertheless, within
this hegemonic framework of ‘the football match’ there is much room
for experimentation and improvement. Social technologies such as new
schemes and stratagems can help to regularly refresh how the game is
understood and played. New advances in equipment can result in similarly
dramatic changes. Yet neither of these technological developments can be
said to be disruptive in that it does not fundamentally alter the use of the
objects (e.g. the land, the ball, etc.) or the aims of the game.
These insights obviously intersect with existing and emerging politics.
The techniques and technologies used to achieve change (whether it be
innovative or disruptive) are a key part of any social ordering – especially so
in times of heightened uncertainty over past ‘truths’ combined with rather
dramatic and rapid technological advances.

The Rise of ‘Techno-Politics’

A central aim of this book is to broadly reconsider the critical relationship
between technologies, society and politics. Conventionally, this relation
is understood in one of two general ways. Either technology determines
politics or vice-versa. Recent efforts to complicate this relation do much
to break down this dichotomy. Nevertheless, they fail to fully account
for their dynamic role sustaining and challenging prevailing hegemonic
orders. Moreover, they do not fully engage with how in the contempo-
rary era technological advances are profoundly altering the conception and
16 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

practices of governance (Peters, 2016) along with what is deemed presently

socially and politically possible.
For this purpose we are introducing the concept of ‘techno-politics’.
It refers to the techniques and technologies that shape how individuals
and groups seek to take power and enact change within and against a
dominant social order. To this end, it can contain both socially innova-
tive and politically disruptive elements. At a general level, this concept of
‘techno-politics’ interrogates how technologies are expanding or reinforc-
ing existing horizons of possibility. Accordingly, the term ‘techno-politics’
takes seriously the need to critically investigate how different forms and
instances of governance exploit technologies – both scientific and social –
and to what socialising and political ends.
These insights build upon a growing literature that directly engages
and links ideas of social innovation with governance. Jenson and Harrison
(2013: 15) in a report for the European Commission have referred to social
innovation as a ‘quasi-concept’, a ‘hybrid, making use of empirical analysis
and thereby benefitting from the legitimising aura of the scientific method,
but simultaneously characterised by an indeterminate quality that makes it
adaptable to a variety of situations and flexible enough to follow the twists
and turns of policy, that everyday politics sometimes make necessary’. The
Stanford Center for Social Innovation, for example, describes it as ‘the pro-
cess of inventing, securing support for, and implementing novel solutions
to social needs and problems’ (Phillis et al., 2008: 34). In this respect, it
stands ultimately for:

‘new ideas that work’. This differentiates innovation from improvement, which
implies only incremental change; and from creativity and invention, which are
vital to innovation but miss out the hard work of implementation and diffu-
sion that makes promising ideas useful. Social innovation refers to new ideas
that work in meeting social goals. Defined in this way the term has, poten-
tially, very wide boundaries – from gay partnerships to new ways of using
mobile phone texting, and from new lifestyles to new products and services.
We have also suggested a somewhat narrower definition: ‘innovative activi-
ties and services that are motivated by the goal of meeting a social need and
that are predominantly developed and diffused through organisations whose
primary purposes are social.’ This differentiates social innovation from business
innovations which are generally motivated by profit maximisation and diffused
through organisations that are primarily motivated by profit maximisation.
(Mulgan et al., 2007: 8)
 THE CLASH OF TECHNO-POLITICS 17

Yet what is often unexplored is the paradoxical role these new ideas may
have for not only improving but also updating and thus preserving a status
quo (Teasdale, 2012). New technologies can often mix with these novel
ways of thinking for this ironic purpose. The political occurs, hence, when
these changes go beyond the innovative and seek a more fundamental sys-
tematic transformation.
The prospect of such disruptive ‘techno-politics’ is particularly impor-
tant during times of social and economic uncertainty and crisis, where
once-sacred truths have been substantially questioned and people are
searching for new ideas. The previously discussed Marxist philosopher
Antonio Gramsci refers to these periods as the ‘interregnum’ – a middle
period between hegemonies. In these eras, technologies are particularly
likely to be politically disruptive. This is perhaps particularly so in our
contemporary moment where technology is so heavily associated with
technological discovery. Witnessed, in the wake of the 2008 financial
crash and great recession, is the growing use of cutting-edge technology
like ICTs for challenging the status quo and its dominant understandings.
Past hegemonies associated with neoliberalism are being dislocated as the
inviolable belief in the free market is suddenly crumbling. Technologies
such as big data, social media and smart phones are upsetting previous
social, economic, political and cultural arrangements. Hence, technol-
ogy supporting clashing ‘techno-politics’ has been replaced by competing
‘techno-politics’.
 2
OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL
OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY

It is perhaps hard to remember in retrospect, as inequality grows, the threat

of climate change looms and democracy is increasingly globally under
attack, that the free market was originally greeted by many with a sense
of profound hope and optimism. In the US, where it in many ways first
achieved victory, it came on the back of President Jimmy Carter’s declara-
tion in the late 1970s that the US was suffering a ‘crisis of confidence that
strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will’. By contrast,
Reagan and his free market acolytes were promising a new dawn that cele-
brated individual freedom and the entrepreneurial spirit. Across the Atlantic
the victory of Margaret Thatcher in the UK similarly ushered in a new era
of hyper-capitalism throughout much of the European continent. The wel-
fare state gradually transformed from a system meant to shield people from
the worst excesses of the market to a perceived tyrannical force linked to a
bloated bureaucracy and state (King et al., 1998). The point of this brief his-
tory is to remind us that the foundation of the free market revolution was as
much affective and emotional as it was rational and evidence-based.
By the beginning of the 21st century the religiosity of this movement
was increasingly on display. Despite its claims to objective truth, the ide-
ological basis was becoming ever clear. Indeed, even Nobel Prize winner
Joseph Stiglitz famously referred to it as a dangerous form of ‘market fun-
damentalism’. He argued that

[f]rom a historical point of view, for a quarter of century the prevailing religion
of the West has been market fundamentalism. I say it is a religion because it was
not based on economic science or historical evidence. (Stiglitz, 2009: 346)
20 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

At the heart of this fundamentalism was a compelling cultural fantasy of

individual and collective prosperity. To this end, our ontological security is
rooted in an ongoing battle between forces of good and evil, representing
respectively stabilising and destabilising fantasies. Specific to the free mar-
ket was a tantalising dream of a meritocratic and personally liberated world
opposed by dangerous forces that would seek to empower the state and all
those who refused to work for their success. Revealed is a new ‘authoritar-
ian fantasy’ supporting modern neoliberal capitalism in which

[t]he traditional assumption that markets will lead to democracy has been
transformed into a twenty-first century story of authoritarian progress, where
a fiscally self-disciplining state and disciplining international institutions will use
their power to ensure that countries around the world develop and prosper.
Required is not democracy, deliberation, debate, experimentation or a rethink-
ing of core values. Instead all that is needed is for governments and IFIs to rule
populations with a firm and ‘responsible’ hand’. (Bloom, 2016)

Central to this project and this fantasy was a belief in the saving power
of technology. Technological progress was already prominent within the
post-war Western imagination. Discovery was linked to human advance-
ment. Belief in mass industrialisation evolved into a fascination with how
much humans could possibly technologically achieve and how fast. This
modern faith in the human spirit arguably reached its peak in the Space
Race and the moon landing. Its nightmarish counterpart were legitimate
apocalyptic fears over the threat of nuclear war. Technology was just
framed as both the key to our salvation and the deliverer of our extinction.
It was a post-war fantasy of technological progress that was made possible
and intimately linked to public investment and international cooperation
on the one hand and dangerous realpolitik on the other.
The coming of neoliberalism did not immediately appear to usher in
a new era of technological progress. If anything it seemed to promote the
decidedly non-technological notion of an idealised past captured in the
image of the US frontier (see Fisher, 1982) or in the UK good old-fashioned
British values promoted under Thatcher. It was an example of what has
been referred to as ‘Conservative capitalism’ in which

Reagan and Thatcher have assembled a rationale and a series of policies for
what I will identify as conservative capitalism. Rather than dealing incrementally
within a general consensus on reformist policies, they have reversed the growth
 OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY 21

of taxation, shifted resources away from human service programs, resuscitated

traditionalist prescriptions for personal behavior, and advanced the apparent
substitution of the market for government as the key institution of the society.
(Hoover, 1987: 245)

Nevertheless, the free market catalysed a new and different type of tech-
nological fantasy – not surprising perhaps given its proud embrace of a
hyper-capitalist worldview. It was notably manifested in desires for fresh
products as consumerism was transformed into a veritable ‘way of life’
(Miles, 1998).
It also played on themes of the individual visionary, the great man
leader and business executive hero who could single-handedly save
humanity through their discoveries (Grint, 2005). There arose a cult from
the right around the libertarian and free market ideologies of Ayn Rand,
whose protagonist John Galt in her most famous book, Atlas Shrugged
(1957), was held up as a type of entrepreneur idol and was given such sage
advice as ‘Run for your life from any man who tells you that money is evil.
That sentence is the leper’s bell of an approaching looter.’ Predictably, the
entrepreneur inventors such as Edison and Ford were put forward as prime
historical examples of the power of the individual spirit of curiosity com-
bined with a strong sense of business acumen.
Tellingly, the ideologies and everyday practices of the free market were
also reinforced through being continually linked in the popular imagination
to technological innovation. The introduction of ‘trickle down econom-
ics’ was justified by fresh objective economic modelling and forecasting
that was thought to be at the cutting edge of human social understand-
ing. The perception was further supported by the continuous presentation
of these models as being computer-driven as they were considered far
too complicated and contained far too much information processing for
human intellect alone. Rather similarly, the suddenly all-important finan-
cial sector was associated with the high-tech imaginary of the neon green
digital ticker-tape of the New York Stock Exchange and the bold tech-savvy
stockbroker. These contemporary Masters of the Universe combined the
individual business pluck of the past with the number-crunching hi-tech
sophistication of the future. To paraphrase Gordon Gecko from the movie
Wall Street, greed is good ... and technology only makes it better.
By the end of the last decade of the 20th century the world had evolved
into a technopoly. This concept, introduced by Neil Postman, depicted a
22 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

society where ‘the culture seeks its authorisation in technology, finds its
satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology’ (2009:
71–2). A covert assault on democracy was critical to this emerging capi-
talist technology. It tacitly and explicitly promoted the need for strong
executive leadership, individual competition and strong managerial rule.
Governance was at its best a technical process meant to appease the free
market. Technology was directed in the service of this technocratic vision
of ‘good government’ for well-functioning markets delivering high GDP
type of growth.

The Era of Responsible Innovation

In a profound historical irony, the predicted global triumph of democracy
ended up being not very democratic indeed. In the present era where elec-
tions are seemingly increasingly under attack it is perhaps tempting to
point to the most obvious examples of modern day autocracy and dicta-
torship. Notably, demagogue leaders have arisen and become increasingly
powerful since the financial crash, creating an easy narrative that despot-
ism and illiberalism are merely the culmination of a chronic economic
and social anxiety. Yet such simple though not entirely illegitimate nar-
ratives miss the potentially anti-democratic logic running throughout the
free market.
While ostensibly about the reduction of government as a minimal State
(Rhodes, 1996), actually existing neoliberalism has sought instead the
transformation of governments and governance to reflect capitalist values
and interests. The state has a new and quite significant role in educating
the public to be willing and able free market subjects. As Gilbert (2013: 9)
observes, neoliberalism

advocates a programme of deliberate intervention by government in order to

encourage particular types of entrepreneurial, competitive and commercial
behaviour in its citizens, ultimately arguing for the management of populations
with the aim of cultivating the type of individualistic, competitive, acquisi-
tive and entrepreneurial behaviour which the liberal tradition has historically
assumed to be the natural condition of civilised humanity, undistorted by gov-
ernment intervention.

Here past conceptions of democratic citizenship and liberal civic engage-

ment are largely jettisoned. According to Wendy Brown (2016: 17),
 OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY 23

neoliberal reason, ubiquitous today in statecraft and the workplace, in juris-

prudence, education and culture, and a vast range of quotidian activity,
is converting the distinctly political character, meaning and operation of
democracy’s constituent elements into economic ones.

In its place, hence, is a vision of individuals who associated freedom and

the possibility of the social with taking personal responsibility for their
economic destiny.
Moving beyond the narrow limits of liberal democracy, the reign of the
free market was clearly openly hostile to any forms of social or industrial
democracy. It certainly launched a full-scale attack on the post-war welfare
state. Within the space of two decades, neoliberal politicians worked to
dismantle or substantially weaken the basic safety net against the worst
excesses of capitalism. Even today one British newspaper commentator
opined

Thatcher rescued us from all that. She broke the power of the unions and gave
birth to a brand new era of British entrepreneurism, where individuals were left to
profit from the fruits of their labour and ingenuity. (quoted in Beynon, 2014: 214)

This mode of destruction framed the state as the enemy and eschewed any
distinction between democratically mandated public accountability and
conventional authoritarian rule. The threat came from an ‘ill-assorted mix
of elitists and special-interest groups who see government as the principal
vehicle of social change, who believe that the only thing we have to fear is
the people, who must be watched and regulated and superintended from
Washington’ (quoted in Weiler and Pearce, 1992: 237).
The assault on the welfare state was hence a political lambast against
the power of democratic rule and decision-making more generally. The
very notion of democratic power was being eroded and framed as illegiti-
mate. The state, whatever its popular credential, was a byword for tyranny
and inefficiency. It also promoted an immoral idea of society and com-
munity that was counter to human nature. As Margaret Thatcher famously
declared:

there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women and there
are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and
people must look after themselves first. It is our duty to look after ourselves and
then, also, to look after our neighbours.
24 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

This underlying disdain – or at least tacit rejection of mass democracy –

infected even so-called liberals of the centre-left. In a landmark 1996 State
of the Union address, then US President Bill Clinton declared unequivo-
cally that ‘The era of Big Government is over’ and that it was imperative to
shift ‘the emphasis from dependence to empowerment’. Even more damn-
ing was the observation of Thatcher with regard to Labour’s new Prime
Minister, Tony Blair, that ‘We forced our opponents to change their minds.’
Tellingly, the claim here is not that democracy is necessarily equivalent
to a strong and pastoral state. Rather, it is to highlight that at its very core,
neoliberalism sought to retell the history of social democracy from a mass
popular challenge to oligarchy via elections and protests to that of the
victory of an unaccountable and oppressive bureaucratic governing elite.
Consequently,

[the radicalism of the 1960s] decayed fast. It decayed not because it was ground-
less, but because it was not grounded. What began as the most radical sounding
generation for half a century turned into a random collection of youthful style
gurus who thought the revolution was about fashion; sharp toothed entrepre-
neurs and management consultants who believed revolution meant new ways
of selling things; and Thatcherites who believed that freedom meant free mar-
kets, not free people. At last it decayed into New Labour, who had no idea of
what either revolution or freedom meant, but rather liked the sounds of the
words. (Beckett, 2010: ix)

This anti-democratic fervor was even more pronounced as regards indus-

trial democracy. Not surprisingly, unions and collective bargaining were
viewed as mere interest groups who held back innovation, profits and pro-
gress. Their presence as a force for democratising employment relations
and the economy was completely dismissed. Power sharing was a value
completely scoffed at in favour of capitalist demands for productivity and
competitiveness. For these reasons, neoliberalism is often linked to pro-
cesses of ‘depoliticization’ (Flinders and Wood, 2014). To a large degree,
and certainly according to the theoretical terms we have drawn upon and
introduced in this book, the age of the ‘free market’ has undoubtedly been
one where the potential for political disruption of even small-scale politi-
cal change has been considerably lessened. Political change has thus been
managerialised, both at micro-level by letting managers manage and shift-
ing politics away, and at macro-level by New Public Management type of
reforms being exported to the developing countries (Ferlie et al., 1996).
 OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY 25

Significantly, this ideological move away from democracy catalysed, in

turn, a lessening of individuals’ and groups’ practical democratic power.
In his classic work Labour and Monopoly Capital, Harry Braverman directly
links the growth of industrial capitalism processes of economic degradation
and deskilling. Speaking of his own experiences as a worker he observes

I had the opportunity of seeing firsthand, during those years, not only the trans-
formation of industrial processes but the manner in which these processes are
reorganized; how the worker, systematically robbed of a craft heritage, is given
little or nothing to take its place. (Braverman, 1974: 6)

People themselves become interchangeable human parts of a market-driven

production process. Their alienation from the means of production means
they lose valuable capabilities to personally produce things. Moreover,
gradually degraded was their ability to learn, create and experiment as
labourers. Likewise, the practical decaying and democratic culture under
neoliberalism led over time to a dramatic democratic deskilling of the
masses. Democracy became reduced to regularised but increasingly empty
choices between ideologically similar and elite approved candidates.
Power-sharing and collective decision-making were stripped of their daily
or economic relevance, relegated to a progressively hollowed out political
sphere in which an ever-narrower set of ideological choices and policies
was fought over with an ever-higher degree of passionate partisanship.
As Noam Chomsky (1998: 43) cynically but aptly notes, ‘the smart way
to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of
acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum’. It
was simply common sense, in this regard, that democracy was an ineffec-
tive substitute for corporate rule. In a profound historical irony it was the
maintenance of democracy, at least formally, that permitted such a thor-
oughgoing elimination of it socially and economically in practice.
Yet such democratic deskilling also fostered new and more developed
capitalist economic capabilities. Foucault describes this interlocking aspects
of power – specifically what he terms the paradoxically mutually reinforc-
ing relation between ‘the economic’ and ‘the political’. He writes that

discipline increases the force of the body (in economic terms of utility) and
diminishes these same forces (in political terms of obedience). In short, it dis-
sociates power from the body; on the one hand, it turns it into an ‘aptitude’, a
‘capacity’, which it seeks to increase; on the other hand, it reverses the course
26 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

of the energy, the power that might result from it, and turns it into a relation of
strict subjection. If economic exploitation separates the force and the product of
labour, let us say that disciplinary coercion establishes in the body the constrict-
ing link between an increased aptitude and an increased domination. (Foucault,
1979: 138)

Hence, ironically obtaining marketable skills becomes the key to profes-

sional success and personal fulfilment.
Technological advancements played a crucial part in this marketisation
of agency. Digital advances gaining traction at the turn of the 21st century
made finding a job a ‘hi-tech’ exercise. Castells (1997) spoke prophetically
about the rise of a ‘network’ society in which

[a]long with the technological revolution, the transformation of capitalism and

the demise of statism we have experienced in the past 25 years, the widespread
surge of power expressions of collective identity that challenge globalization
and cosmopolitanism on behalf of cultural singularity and people’s control over
their lives and environment. (1997: 2)

What he could not perhaps have imagined is just how literally accurate he
would end up being. The decrease in democratic agency and skills led to
an increase in individual market capabilities – an expansion of one’s eco-
nomic abilities within a much narrower political culture As Flinders (2015)
highlights, ‘the dominant political culture is no longer one in which indi-
viduals either trust or join political institutions’. Levels of political literacy
and political trust seems to have fallen among large parts of society and the
civic culture seems to have become ‘anti-political’ or ‘post-political’.
Fresh technologies, especially those linked to ICTs, were supposed to
help people develop, promote and capitalise on their ‘skills’. Emerging
was a culture of a technologically ‘innovative’ market subject. What was
reflected was a novel disciplining discourse for shaping and reconfigur-
ing the purpose and responsibility of the government. Theories abound
of course about the role of the state in the survival and reproduction of
capitalism. Such demands to coordinate capitalism and conform to its
ideologies are readily apparent within the contemporary context of neolib-
eralism. According to noted Marxist scholar David Harvey (2005: 2),

The role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework appro-
priate to such practices. The state has to guarantee, for example, the quality
 OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY 27

and integrity of money. It must also set up those military, defence, police and
legal structures and functions required to secure private property rights and to
guarantee, by force if need be, the proper functioning of markets.

It is perhaps not surprising that corporate globalisation soon began to focus

on fostering ‘good governance’. The goal was to ensure that states worked
diligently to change their institutions and activities to create ‘business
friendly’ environments. Significantly,

[f]rom the early 1990s onwards, the call for less state has gradually been substi-
tuted by a call for a better state. This new approach should not be confused with
a plea for a return to the strong (Keynesian or socialist) state. Rather it implies
better and transparent governance of what is left of the state after neoliberal
restructuring has been implemented. (Demmers et al., 2004: 2)

This further became a moral governing imperative. Present was an arising

moral economic centred on fighting corruption and decreasing irrational
popular resistance.
Yet these disciplining political and moral demands for ‘good govern-
ance’ were not merely a matter of conformity. It was also a dynamic call
to be creative in these efforts. There was an entrepreneurial spirit in these
expectations. States should find new ways to maximise market penetration
within their boundaries. Created within very narrow ideological and regu-
latory boundaries was the managerial state, one where responsibilisation
was shifted to governments to promote capitalism.
It is a ‘misrecognition’ of structural oppression as an opportunity.
Drawing on the developing context of Cambodia, Springer (2010: 931)
states that

[a]s disciplinary rationalities, strategies, technologies, and techniques coagulate

under neoliberal subjectivation in contemporary Cambodian society through
the proliferation of particular discursive formations like good governance, the
structural inequalities of capital are increasingly misrecognized. This constitutes
symbolic violence, which is wielded precisely inasmuch as one does not perceive
it as such.

Interestingly, as the profound social and economic costs of neoliberalism

began to reveal themselves, this expectation for innovation was transferred
to discovering and implementing novel ways to balance marketisation with
economic and social justice. Or more accurately, to use competitive free
28 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

market tools or government funding for these broader purposes. Brandsen

et al. (2014) talk about manufactured civil society in this respect.
These governmental demands for innovation trickled down, of course,
also to the individual. The mantra of our neoliberal times is to be entre-
preneurial and responsible. Responsible has a double-edged connotation
in terms of innovation. One is predominantly economic, to be resource-
ful, resilient and creative in order to successfully navigate an increasingly
competitive and progressive market society. On the other hand, this has
evolved into the demands to be ‘social entrepreneurs’ (Dey and Teasdale,
2015), whether informally in regard to fostering personal wellbeing and
an ethical lifestyle or formally by creating environmentally sustainable
and economically empowering managers and business owners. Hence, the
new aim of employment was to ensure the ‘increased physical and men-
tal health of employees’, including their ‘advanced spiritual growth and
enhanced sense of self-worth’ (Krahnke et al., 2003: 397). Cederstom and
Spicer point to the dark side of such discourses, referring to it as a veritable
present-day ‘syndrome’, observing that

Today wellness is not just something we choose. It is a moral obligation. We must

consider it at every turn of our lives. While we often see it spelled out in advertise-
ments and life-style magazines, this command is also transmitted more insidiously,
so that we don’t know whether it is imparted from the outside or spontaneously
arises within ourselves. This is what we call the wellness command. In addition to
identifying the emergence of this wellness command, we want to show how this
injunction now works against us. (Cederström and Spicer, 2017: 5)

Revealed was a new era of ‘responsible innovation’. It reflected the intro-

duction of a logic of social innovation. The real responsibility of the
modern-day capitalist was to continually update the free market so as to
ensure its expansion and sustainability (Porter and Kramer, 2011). It bore
witness to how simultaneously insatiable and restrictive hyper-capitalist
economic and social reproduction really is in practice. It flexibly disciplines
people, organisations and governments to conform to its strict free market
ideology while acting constantly to refresh and improve upon it.

The Fall of Capitalist Technopoly

This dynamic though ideologically narrow culture of neoliberal innovation
reinforced an ascendant capitalist technopoly. While it praised the individual,
 OUTDATED DEMOCRACY: THE FALL OF CAPITALIST TECHNOPOLY 29

it empowered experts and government bureaucracies to promote capitalist

knowledge and practices. This also extended to the creation of a vibrant
technocracy, ‘a system of governance in which technically trained experts
rule by virtue of their specialized knowledge and position in dominant
political and economic institutions’ (Meynaud, 1969: 31).
Those who were perceived to understand the secrets of market success
were increasingly socially reified. It represented

the widespread belief that a business-style leadership is necessary for solving

organisational, social and economic problems. The chief executive officer is put
forward as the embodiment of the strong, capable and forward thinking leader
who can get things done. The prominence of the CEO therefore is not just
economic but ideological. It is the idealisation of the figure who encapsulates
capitalist freedom and success; the individual who is able to achieve their goals
regardless of what gets in their way. (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018: 43)

Interestingly, this directly intersected with perceptions of technological

genius. By the 1990s, the tech CEO was progressively idolised. Figures
such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were portrayed as social ‘visionaries’.
Indeed

Just a few decades ago tech entrepreneurs like Microsoft boss Bill Gates and
Apple supremo Steve Jobs started to be propounded as possessing the thinking
that would push us toward a bright future. Today that same mantle has been
passed on to the likes of Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg and Google’s Larry Page.
(Bloom and Rhodes, 2018: 72)

These reinforced a wider and more pernicious discourse of economic

inevitability associated with globalisation and constantly conformed by
its technocratic handmaidens (see Bloom, 2016; Deudney and Ikenberry,
2009; Spicer and Fleming, 2007).
This resulted in a demand for people to innovatively cope with this
inevitable capitalist change. It was discursively evolved from a structural
challenge to a personal opportunity. Hence, the emphasis in the early
1990s onward on reskilling. There was an expectation that people can
become entrepreneurs in negotiating this inevitable shift. Their social and
economic displacement could not be avoided. Yet providing people with
the skills to be creative and resilient in the face of this change certainly
could offer them a sense of renewed agency and empowerment.
30 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Nevertheless, this technopoly was already beginning to be questioned

by the turn of the 21st century. The election of George W. Bush gestured
to a growing ‘anti-elitism’ among wide swathes of the population. Despite
coming from a wealthy background and being the son of a former President,
his folksy manner indicated his popular rather than academic and techno-
cratic credentials. The fact that he was also a businessman further fed into
this anti-elitist image. He was the ‘MBA President’ who used this education
and experience to be decisive, efficient and when necessary utterly ruthless
(Bloom and Rhodes, 2017).
Yet this anti-elitist sentiment soon developed into something much
more politically dangerous to the status quo. The failures of the Iraq War
exposed not only the literal ‘faulty’ military intelligence of the government
but also the figurative faulty intelligence of political elites overall. Across
the world technocracy was progressively out of fashion. The ‘Pink Tide’
that engulfed much of Central and South America reflected this shift as
well as creeping political radicalisation (see especially Reyes, 2012; Yates
and Bakker, 2014).
The faith in capitalist technopoly was thus severely weakened. There
was a growing disjuncture between the growing excitement surrounding
the private use and consumption of technology with the widely accepted
failure of politicians to use it for the public good. This weakened founda-
tion would soon lead to a more fundamental existential crisis of market
fundamentalism and its once-sacred technocratic leaders.
 3
THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM

In September 2008 the capitalist world came close to tumbling down. It

witnessed the largest economic crash since the Great Depression nearly
a century beforehand. As august banking institutions such as Lehman
Brothers fell in the space of days, the spectre of mass unemployment and
material scarcity seized the popular imagination. Amidst these profound
worries was nevertheless a perverse hope. After decades of being told
that ‘There is no alternative’ to the free market, suddenly everyone was
acknowledging the need for something new. Even the staunchest capitalist
supporter seemed quickly to sing a new tune and recognise that indeed the
times were a-changing.
The financial crisis represented something far greater than merely an
unexpected economic downturn. It was a profound existential crisis –
reflecting the need for humanity to reconsider its present existence and
future destiny anew. In a sense, it forced on societies a fresh choice con-
cerning what they stand for and what they would like to be. To this end,

A crucial question of our time then is whether we can give up our bad faith
in the free market. The degree to which individually and collectively we can
dramatically reimagine the meaning and practice of freedom. If we no longer
accept that capitalism represents the limit of social possibility. Can we wake up
from our dogmatic capitalist slumber to embrace and explore new potentialities
for our personal and shared existence? (Bloom, 2018: 1)

Of course, those in charge were either unwilling or simply did not desire
to make or allow for such a profound existential choice. Phillip Mirowski
sums up the emerging ethos nicely in his aptly titled book Never Let a
Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Financial Meltdown:
32 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Conjure, if you will, a primal sequence encountered in B-Grade horror films

where the celluloid protagonist suffers a terrifying encounter with doom yet on
the cusp of disaster abruptly awakes to a different world which initially seems
normal but eventually is revealed to be a second nightmare more ghastly than
the first. Something like that has become manifest in real life since the onset of
the crises which started in 2007. (Mirowski, 2013: 1)

And indeed in the immediate aftermath of the crash from both the right
and the official left the emphasis was on ‘recovery’ not revolution.
This played into a broader crisis narrative built on an ironic nostalgia
for a once seemingly guaranteed prosperous future that now appeared lost
(Bloom, 2016). Hence, this turning away from the possibility of serious
change was linked to a heightened sense of deeper ontological insecurity
and a belief that financial capitalism could be resurrected with just a few
little tweaks.
There remained though a need to properly explain what happened and
create a new post-crisis sense of political community and ideological pur-
pose. In much of the world this took the form of austerity (Pollitt and
Bouckaert, 2017). In this respect,

The present moment is marked by anxieties about society falling apart, and
nostalgia for a lost era of social cohesion These anxieties shape the dominant
narrative about the causes of the recession – which are seen as resulting not
from the excesses of the financial sector but from a profligate welfare system
and an overly permissive immigration system, which has given the wrong peo-
ple access to public services – the unemployed, the disabled, single parents and
immigrants. (Forket, 2014: 41)

Here the fault lay with people and government who spent beyond their
means. The solution naturally was for everyone, including profligate states,
to simply tighten their proverbial belts and spend less. Tellingly, this was
framed as a matter of shared national sacrifice, as happened for example in
Italy with the Monti Government. This discourse and its associated policies
would, of course, have a global impact.
Across the Atlantic in the US there were publicly made efforts to reinvest
in the economy and reform capitalism. The US House of Representatives
approved a $700 billion bailout for the financial system, reversing course
to authorise what may be the most expensive US government intervention
in history (Herszenhorn, 2018).
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 33

In the impassioned words of Matt Taibbi (2013: n.p.):

It was all a lie – one of the biggest and most elaborate falsehoods ever sold to
the American people. We were told that the taxpayer was stepping in – only
temporarily, mind you – to prop up the economy and save the world from
financial catastrophe. What we actually ended up doing was the exact opposite:
committing American taxpayers to permanent, blind support of an ungovern-
able, unregulatable, hyperconcentrated new financial system that exacerbates
the greed and inequality that caused the crash, and forces Wall Street banks like
Goldman Sachs and Citigroup to increase risk rather than reduce it

Despite their subtle and not so subtle differences, conservative and lib-
eral responses produced the same ultimate response. Notably, it was widely
questioned ‘who is the government, politics, and the economy working
for?’ Emerging was a distinct popular crisis to both the free market and the
status quo.

Updating ‘The People’ for the New Millennium

Nearly a decade after the financial crash, a new restless political energy was
beginning to stir. Old accepted truths about what made a good economy
and who was electable were suddenly under severe threat. The free mar-
ket, once seen as permanent in its existence and unchallengeable in its
rightness – was increasingly under attack from ideological sides. The power
of the mainstream political class was similarly besieged. Arising was the era
of anti-establishment politics (Nineham, 2017).
The conventional account of this anti-establishment upsurge was that
it was born out of economic anxiety, social resentment and widespread
dissatisfaction with elites. Not surprisingly, this led to widespread prog-
nostication that populism was once again on the rise. According to a 2016
Time magazine article

For more than a generation, the Western elites settled into a consensus on most
major issues—from the benefits of free trade and immigration to the need for
marriage equality. Their uniformity on these basic questions consigned dissent-
ers to the political fringe—further aggravating the sense of grievance that now
threatens the mainstream. (Shuster, 2016: n.p.)

This label was equally applied to all groups challenging the status quo –
regardless of whether they were coming from the left wing or the right
34 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

wing, like in a horseshoe where the extremes tend to converge (the so-called
‘horseshoe theory’, Faye, 1996). While undoubtedly these movements
share certain affinities – particularly an increasingly broad-scale rejection
of the status quo – it is misleading to assume that all of them are populist
per se and there are of course varieties of populism occurring throughout
the world (Caiani and Graziano, 2016). The term, hence, is not simply a
catchall for any and all bottom-up movements demanding radical change.
Rather it denotes (at least within mainstream academic thinking) (1) a pri-
oritisation of ‘the people’, (2) the emergence of a demogogic leader and
(3) a desire to overthrow the status quo (Canovan, 1982). It is crucial,
therefore, to identify where populism is occurring and what this reflects fun-
damentally about contemporary politics. Most obviously, this populism links
to a prevailing dissatisfaction with the current order. It encompasses those
who claim to have been ‘left behind’ and those who proclaim themselves to
be part of the ‘99%’. Their anger is indeed a potent disruptive political force.
They critically reflect the later theories of Laclau (2007) in regard to pop-
ulism. Building upon and expanding existing understandings of populism,
he highlights the important role of ‘the people’ – especially during times
of social crisis and political upheaval – for transforming social relations.
Their significance rests in the supposed separation between a given order
and ‘the people’ it is meant to represent and serve. Specifically, he describes
what he refers to as a ‘populist reason’ that revolves around the discursive
creation of a ‘people’ – itself an empty signifier that across contexts binds
societies together according to the diverse ways in which it is meaningfully
filled. Additionally, he puts forward a radically revised conception of popu-
list politics. In particular, he stresses how chronically unfulfilled demands
by a status quo foster solidarity amidst otherwise disparate social groupings
to forge a shared political identity desiring full-scale change.
In the modern context, ‘the people’ portrays an entirely new basis for
organising social and political relations. At the heart of this new order is
the requirement that leaders challenge elites and ‘shake things up’. In this
respect, it is principally built on an ethics of disruption – one whose ide-
ology is ultimately secondary. Crucial, here, is what Laclau describes as a
popular ‘demand’. It begins as a concrete demand against those in power –
fix the bus system, stop crime, reduce poverty – and translates over time
into fully fledged calls for total and complete socio-political change. Hence,
the popular demand is fundamentally impossible for those in charge to
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 35

either adequately meet or politically dispense with. It has morphed into a

passionate cry for those on the top to be replaced.
As such, populism by definition combines hopefulness to a certain
degree with nihilism. On the one hand, it is utterly optimistic that radical
change can and must occur. Elites are seen not so much as impeachable
social features but easily and rapidly replaceable. It follows an ‘us vs. them’
mentality. Politically,

The nihilists have won this election because being ‘pragmatic’ does not address
the large-scale systematic changes that are needed to fight rising inequality.
Nevertheless, the impulse of joyful destruction as expressed through Trump –
and indeed Brexit – threatens to make an already bad situation much worse. It
would take radical moves to shatter institutionalised racism and make progress
on climate change, but no one can be expecting those moves to be made by
President Trump. (Bloom, 2016)

This underlying spirit is certainly reflected in the current examples of pop-

ulism. ‘The people’ has translated into a defence of the beleaguered and
‘real majority’. Predictably, this has readily availed itself of cultural, racial
and ethnic essentialism. Put differently, the abstract ‘people’ are in prac-
tice bound by perceived commonalities rooted in race and nationality. The
new political battle is defining and redefining who ‘the people’ are and
who genuinely is perceived to represent them.

From Popular to Populist Technologies

To briefly review, the defining features of populism are an identifica-
tion with ‘the people’ against a perceived entrenched and corrupt elite.
This, of course, has strong resonances with concurrent movements for
social change that centre upon democracy. However, they differ both in
terms of their overall conception of politics and their use of technology
for realising these radical political ambitions. Notably, the goal is to
win and wield power for and by the people by any technological means
necessary.
Tellingly, the roots of this hi-tech populism are found in the linkages
of popular will with ongoing technological advances. Social media was
meant to allow for a more connected society – literally and figuratively.
It gave people direct access to services and supposedly power holders in a
way that was both close to instantaneous and personally oriented. It had
36 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

quite empowering effects, in this respect. Not surprisingly, these technolo-

gies gave birth to Internet campaigns aimed at righting widely perceived
wrongs. Seemingly demands for cancelled TV shows to be renewed epito-
mised this tech-driven popular politics. This reflected a broader trend of
internet activism (see especially Kahn and Kellner, 2004; Meikle, 2014).
Technology, hence, provided for the popularisation of power (Meijer,
2016). More precisely, it shrunk the distance between leaders and follow-
ers (or service providers and customers) as well as between like-minded
people themselves. It was thus a vertical and horizontal reconfiguration
of politics. In the immediate aftermath of the financial crisis the first new
shoots of this soon to blossom techno-populism were beginning to show.
The much commented upon Tea Party exemplified this trend (see Skocpol
and Williamson, 2016). Though criticised for being funded and secretly
driven by the agenda of large corporations, their rhetoric and tactics were
revealing. What it reflected specifically are the two key features of this bur-
geoning techno-populism. Firstly, that ‘elites’ were seen to be pressurised
to serve the needs of the people and secondly, that traditional norms and
institutions were viewed as mere temporary inconveniences.
Yet there was a parallel and less perhaps immediately apparent effect
of technology ushering in an era of populism. Namely, advances in ICT
and big data combined to create a trending culture. What mattered seem-
ingly above all was how many likes one has. Hence, popularity became
at once easily quantifiable and dominantly influential. Culture became a
truly mass experience, giving voice and access to an increasing number
of ordinary people. Suddenly, it appeared that everybody had an opinion
and that they were worthy of being heard. Once vaunted tastemakers
were gradually being supplemented and to an extent replaced by hidden
algorithms and big data that tracked what was ‘hot’ and what was ‘not’
in real time.
There was one final technological component to this populist upsurge.
It was one that also helps explain why a movement that is so against elites
can so readily embrace the market. It is that technology was meant to make
things more efficient, breaking down existing barriers to allow people to
get what they want whenever they want. Mobile apps made reading direc-
tions, ordering food, booking taxis and making appointments as easy as
literally tapping a button on a touch screen. Streaming services offered the
opportunity to choose your entertainment and consume it on your own
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 37

schedule. Delays, processes, government regulations – they seemed to be

the very antithesis to progress and the antiquated tools of ‘special interests’.
These technology infused elements – popular politics, trending culture
and the convenience economy – would combine to forge a fresh populist
politics updated for the 21st century. It ably mixed these components to
produce a novel governing paradigm for the post-crisis era. This popular
politics exploited technology to serve ‘the people’. It signalled an emerg-
ing vision and cultural fantasy of governance and power revolving around
‘techno-populism’.

The Rise of ‘Techno-Populism’

The recent rise in populism has been fuelled by a growing distrust and
anger with elites. Almost by definition populism is anti-elitist. However, in
the present conjuncture this has taken on a distinctly technological tinge.
In the present age the people is set against a ‘smart’ class of political, eco-
nomic, cultural and even scientific experts. It is a popular uprising that is
at once anti-technocratic and to an extent anti-technological while being
infused and driven by the latest technological breakthroughs.
To this end, it is important to emphasise how much this movement is
driven by a hatred of elites and the perceived ‘mainstream’. This may be
repeating the obvious but it is worth investigating deeper what was under-
pinning this elite rejection. Notably, traditional explanations of economic
anxiety and racial resentment only tell part of the story. It also resulted
from a dramatic and widespread perceived failure of modern intelligence.
Indeed, those at the top of the cultural and political mainstream were often
lauded for their expert credentials (Bloom and Rhodes, 2018).
The free market itself was thought to be based on objective facts that
could not be challenged. The financial crisis revealed how utterly hollow
this expertise actually was. It led to a wider calling into question of existing
knowledge wholesale. Additionally, there was a creeping cynicism infect-
ing popular discourses – whereby everyone and everything was corrupted
and driven by their own selfish interests. Hence, the neoliberal idealisation
of self-interest evolved into a general distrust of a self-interested elite.
This cynicism was matched by the profound popularisation of knowl-
edge brought about by digitalisation. Crucially, populism relies in part on
processes of popularisation in which knowledge and truth are understood
38 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

to be universally accessible. A prime example is the 19th century farm pop-

ulist in the US whose Protestant belief that divine wisdom could be gained
by all those who read the Bible translated into a secular belief that their
own understandings were just as valid as the supposed expertise of the
gilded urban industrialists (Hild, 2007).
Analogously, social media has made information almost universally
accessible to anyone with modern and mobile technology. While the
global digital divide persists, within many countries economic inequal-
ity has been matched in intensity by an increasing information equality.
This has created a liberating but also dangerous culture where everyone is
simultaneously an expert and no experts are to be trusted – the so-called
‘post-truth’, which was named as word of the year in 2016 by the Oxford
English Dictionary (Flood, 2016).
Technology has had another significant effect on updating traditional
populist politics. Namely, it has produced a discourse of those who have
been left behind in a new ‘smart’ global economy. There is much discus-
sion, in this respect, of the role economic anxiety has played in fuelling
contemporary populism. It is though perhaps more accurate to describe it
as techno-economic anxiety. Specifically, it is a fear that people are miss-
ing out from technology’s benefits, that it is serving elite interests and that
they are being controlled by a tech-savvy elite. Emerging then is a new
political fantasy of techno-populism. It centres upon people being able to
take back control of technology, their lives and their society.
It thus reifies and psychologically invests in an idealised figure who
can use technology to shape and direct technology for the benefit of the
people. It also frames politics and, fundamentally, social existence as a
continual struggle to obtain and wield such total control. Revealed is a
new affective political economy – one based on the ontological security in
being part of ‘the people’. This identity entails so much more than being a
member of the majority – silent or otherwise. Instead it involves an identi-
fication with feeling victimised as part of a forgotten population which is
being exploited and ignored by elites. Moreover, it embraces a belief that
others are stealing what is rightfully theirs – non-deserving ‘non-people’
who are taking advantage of the system.
Technology is, hence, the saviour and enemy. It is opposed as a tool
of the technocratic experts who use it to rule against ‘the people’s’ inter-
ests. By contrast, it is celebrated as a resource to break through these elitist
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 39

institutions and lies to more directly engage with power and discover the
truth. Tellingly the very notion of ‘the people’ is never completely defined
or clear. This echoes Lacan’s concept of ‘the real’ – the fragmented incoher-
ent heart of our actual existence. The construction and embrace of a given
social reality is thus an effort to continually cover over our incoherent ‘real’
selves.
Here, the constant evoking of ‘the people’ is around trying to establish
an essential self, to feel connected and whole in a world in which iden-
tity and progress can seem to be increasingly ambiguous and under threat.
Techno-populism reflected the rise of fresh desires to take control of tech-
nology and society at any cost!

Techno-Populism at Work
Techno-populism is rapidly on the rise. Throughout Europe, Asia and the
Americas in particular there has been a global uprising challenging the
‘Washington Consensus’ and the free-market agenda. At the core of this
politics is an ideological engagement and concrete use of smart technology
to promote ‘the people’s interests’.
Crucially uniting these disparate movements is a commitment to recov-
ering power from an existing political and economic technocracy. Elites
and special interests are railed against as self-interested and ineffective. On
the surface, technology is also an enemy or at least the devious tools of
mistrusted elites. However, digging deeper technology is completely inter-
twined with this populist growth. Populist leaders and activists specifically
exploit social media to build its popular network and bypass ‘mainstream
culture’ to forge powerful and direct connections with each other. This has,
in turn, produced related but wide-ranging cultural fantasies that paradoxi-
cally reinforce political authoritarianism, economic technocracy and social
control.

Techno-Populist Rule
While populism is an avowedly ‘bottom-up’ movement it typically, if not
universally, results in a top-down often demagogic form of authoritarian
leadership (Fuchs, 2018). The most famous populists conventionally are
charismatic strongmen who can singularly represent the anger and needs
of the people against an array of entrenched and nefarious elites.
40 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Technology has always played a strong part in the spread and strength-
ening of this popular leadership. Mass media has allowed populist leaders
to speak directly to a vast amount of the population (see Blumler, 2003).
However, this has been dramatically enhanced in the contemporary period.
Populists are now exploiting ICT tools such as Facebook and ‘WhatsApp’
to reach a huge popular audience in a way that feels both personal and
subversive. President Trump famously uses Twitter regularly to directly
communicate to his large number of followers, seeing it as an opportunity
to present his views free from any misrepresentation by the mainstream
media. The Five Star Movement, which has now become the biggest politi-
cal movement in Italy, started from a blog written by Beppe Grillo and was
spread through digital websites and other online tools (an e-democracy
platform called Rosseau) with no territorial offices. President Bolsonaro in
Brazil relied heavily on WhatsApp groups to spread his message as well.
The second aspect of this techno-populist leadership is the explicitly
anti-technocratic rhetoric. The enemy, as has been noted, is above all ‘elites’ –
both economic and political. Their greatest sin has been not only working
against the popular interest but also being utterly ineffectual in doing so.
Revealed is a certain paradox of the contemporary populist discourse. The
ruling elite are at once considered evil geniuses, trying to sell out the ‘real
people’ and supposedly completely helpless to get anything done even if they
desired to do so. Notions of technology and power play into both of these
tropes. On the one hand elites are criticised for using technology to exploit
everyday citizens. On the other, they are accused of being technology smart
without also being effective. Revealed is a simultaneous critique of a techno-
logical elite and the stifling bureaucratic effects of technocracy overall.
The fantasy of the populist strongmen draws upon and bridges this
seemingly contradictory discourse. It promotes a charismatic ‘winner’ who
can use technology ‘to get things done’ on behalf of ‘the people’. Returning
to the example of Trump, he continually brags about his being ‘the best’
and having the ability to ‘make deals’ as well as his (largely imagined)
record of unprecedented accomplishments as president. Parroting these
ideas was one of Trump’s key advisors, Jared Kushner, who described their
election strategy by stating:

We ran the campaign like a business. We tried a lot of new things. We weren’t
afraid to make changes. We weren’t afraid to fail. I found in politics is people
build these big, bureaucratic machines designed not to make mistakes and not
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 41

to have anyone to blame. We tried to do things very cheaply, very quickly. And if
it wasn’t going to work, we would kill it quickly. The media would write a quick
story saying, ‘They don’t know what they’re doing.’ But we were just saying,
‘Look, we tried, it didn’t work. Move onto the next.’ (Bertoni, 2017: n.p.)

Social media is especially conducive to spreading and sustaining such pop-

ulist rule. Significantly, populism is largely a ‘thin’ ideology (Mudde, 2013)
that ‘only speaks to a very small part of a political agenda’, while

An ideology like fascism involves a holistic view of how politics, the economy,
and society as a whole should be ordered. Populism doesn’t; it calls for kicking
out the political establishment, but it doesn’t specify what should replace it. So
it’s usually paired with ‘thicker’ left- or right-wing ideologies like socialism or
nationalism. (Friedman, 2017: n.p.)

For this reason it treads more on passion than a firm belief in an entrenched
set of political or ideological principles. This makes it especially suited to
the age of digital connections and communications. Quoting from a 2017
Brookings Report:

Social media is particularly conducive to the emotional appeals embraced by

populists. Candidates attract many supporters by responding viscerally to feel-
ings of injustice and anxiety, a political approach readily employed in the wake
of terrorist attacks ... Populists consistently experience surges in social media fol-
lowing and engagement after specific news events, especially terrorist attacks.
This suggests that populists turn to social media following major national trag-
edies to identify enemies to the nation and make calls for swift action. Most
centrist politicians are wary of doing the same, favoring deliberate messaging
that seeks to assuage a frightened nation while upholding multicultural and reli-
gious tolerance. Evidently, a populist narrative translates well into short tweets
and posts that reinforce the tendencies of some and spark feelings of outrage in
others. (Hendrickson and Galston, 2017: n.p.)

Populist Technocracy
Populism is almost universally connected to a rejection of technocracy and
technocrats. Indeed the attraction of present populist leaders is precisely
their rejection of elite experts and bureaucratic governing institutions. Their
popularity rests precisely on their capacity to challenge those at the top in
the name of ‘the people’. Yet ironically, the contemporary era is witness-
ing the use of populist rhetoric and ideas to reinforce a technocratic-based
42 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

neoliberal status quo. In particular, it represents a mass movement rallying

behind a charismatic ‘rational’ leader who can restore order and decency
in the face of rising political extremism. Central to this emerging ‘rational’
politics is the promise that this populist technocracy can use technology to
deliver ‘reasonable’ progress combining free market principles with osten-
sible desires for social and economic justice.
Absolutely critical, in this regard, is the construction of a new ‘rational’
populist resistance. The Global Financial Crisis made formerly popular
political identities of ‘centrism’ and ‘moderation’ suddenly very politically
unfashionable to say the least. However, the explosion in populism has
created a definite desire for a supposed ‘return to political sanity’. Arising
thus, is a ‘rational people’ – a supposed majority who rejected the perceived
extremist barbarian hordes on both sides of the ideological divide who are
destroying their country and society from the inside out.
Tellingly, these movements have taken on key aspects of the very
populist politics they so vehemently reject. The shocking loss of the 2016
Presidential election by Hillary Clinton reinvigorated an anti-Trump ‘resist-
ance’ that relied heavily on social media for mobilising and connecting
its members. While these groups are commonly divided in terms of their
underlying ideological commitments, there is a prominent element that
has turned Clinton into not only a questionable feminist icon but a bona
fide populist hero to many. In 2017, she proclaimed ‘I’m now back to being
an activist citizen and part of the resistance. … Activism is more important
than ever, and it’s working, from the women’s marches across the country
and around the globe to helping to bring down the Republicans’ terrible
health care bill. … But we have to keep going’ (Merica, 2017: n.p.).
Importantly, these are not the results of centrist astro-turfing efforts.
Rather, they are relatively organic expressions of an enraged ‘people’ who
feel marginalised and left behind by the far right takeover of politics, and
who see the moderate part of the Democratic Party as delivering us from
these extremist evils. Even more worrying, it fosters a new popular embrace
by the centre–left ‘majority’ for establishment figures and institutions that
were once reviled or at the very least morally questioned. This has been
referred to as ‘Trumpwashing’ where

[n]ot so long ago, the idea of liberals hankering nostalgically for Bush, hanging
on Kissinger’s words or cheering assertions of American exceptionalism would
have been unthinkable. Likewise the idea of rooting for the rightwing attorney
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 43

general Jeff Sessions, the former FBI director and registered Republican Robert
Mueller, and other mandarins of the so-called ‘deep state’. Yet old certainties
have been shaken, roles reversed and loyalties scrambled by Trump’s profoundly
unorthodox presidency. (Smith, 2018)

Thus, in a supreme historical irony, human rights lawyer and professor

Dan Kovalik observes that

liberals have decided that ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’, especially

when ‘my enemy’ is Donald J Trump. And so, bizarrely, liberals have decided
that the CIA and FBI – despite their well-known history of suppressing civil liber-
ties and civil rights in this country and abroad – are now noble institutions which
should be believed and respected. This is because the CIA and FBI have largely
taken an oppositional stance towards Trump. Even George W Bush, who was
hated by liberals especially because of the Iraq war (which the CIA helped lie
us into, by the way), is now considered a sweet, old grandpa figure who liber-
als coo over, especially when he is bantering with Michelle Obama. (quoted in
Smith, 2018: n.p.)

In this respect, neoliberal technocracy is reinvented as a techno-

populist vehicle to ward off the ‘irrational’ politics of both the right
and the left in the name of a more inclusive and ‘smart’ status quo. The
French President, Emmanuel Macron, similarly to Matteo Renzi earlier
in Italy, epitomises this type of paradoxical populist politics. On the
surface, he exemplifies the free market technocrat graduating from the
highly selective Ecole Nationale d’Administration and serving in
the Ministry of Economics and Finance as the ‘Inspector of Finance’
followed by a period where he worked as an investment banker for the
Rothschilds. Yet his victory was built on drawing widespread popular
support in directly challenging the far right upsurge of Marine Le Pen
and the far left popularity of Jean-Luc Mélenchon. His rhetoric was
one of representing ‘all the French people’ and was invigorated by an
anti-establishment spirit against the outdated French political class. He
claimed, thus, that he was attempting to

reconciliate memories. … A fraction of the left constructed a memory con-

nected to class struggles and anticolonialism. … At the same time, a fraction
from the right chose a historical view reduced to an identitarism, with which
it builds its relationship with the Republic [to create] a new, fresh politics of
the Centre, liberal in economics and social in sensibility. (quoted in Henry,
2017: n.p.)
44 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

This effort to unite ‘the people’ was connected to a fundamental ideolog-

ical project to transform France into ‘a startup nation, meaning both a
nation that works with and for the startups, but also a nation that thinks
and moves like a startup’ (Bock, 2017).
Just as importantly, he alone could break through the establishment
and protect the French people against Conservative elites from the top and
the irrational masses from below. Once in power, he exploited this popu-
list rhetoric to implement further market oriented reforms. He criticised
existing political parties for creating ‘barriers ... between politicians and
the people’. He further justified his free market ‘modernisation’ agenda
as a populist attack on a supposedly privileged set of protected workers,
proclaiming

On the side of those who benefit from a stable and permanent contract, there
are millions of people condemned to perpetual precariousness. …. Our country
needs regulations. …. But our current regulations, elaborated at the end of the
Second World War, do not correspond any more to today’s challenges. They
favour insiders, that is to say those who are in employment and more protected
than others, on the back of outsiders, that is to say younger people, the less
educated and the more fragile. (Macron, 2017: 123)

These sentiments were further infused with a strong contemporary techno-

logical component. Specifically, he linked social mobility and progress to
the broader ‘Uberisation’ of the economy. He stated:

Go to Stains [a suburb north of Paris characterised by high levels of poverty and

a concentration of ethnic minorities] and explain to young people who work
as drivers for Uber that it is better to stay in their projects or be drug dealers.
The neighbourhoods in which Uber hires people are neighbourhoods in which
we have nothing to offer them. In fact, they work 60 or 70 hours to make the
minimum wage. But they get dignity …, they wear a suit, a tie … Did we do
anything better in the last 30 years? (quoted in Gedron, 2017)

Revealed in the cases of Clinton and Macron are the ironic possibilities of
a reinvigorated techno-populist technocracy. The techno-populist tech-
nocracy is well epitomised by the Yellow–Green (Five Star–The League
coalition) Italian populist government which has appointed a technocrat
as prime minister. The neoliberal order is refreshed as a popular demand
for ‘smart reforms’ that enhance social inclusion while defending the
‘rational people’ against the entrenched ‘unimaginative’ elites and the
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 45

extremism of ‘deplorables’ on both sides of the ideological spectrum. It

views itself as subversive, anti-establishment and technologically sophis-
ticated. In this respect, it is an attempt to bring about a new day for an
old politics.

Establishing Techno-Populist Control

Techno-populism is at its core a politically disruptive movement. It is aim-
ing to shake up the status quo, even ironically in the name of saving it via a
new techno-populist technocracy. Yet it also offers an updated framework
for exerting popular control. Specifically, it advocates the use of innovative
technological resources to serve and hold people accountable for their eve-
ryday actions and views. It reflects a bottom-up form of disciplining that is
equally anti-establishment and oppressive.
Highlighted are wider desires to popularly take back and reassert
control over technology and populations. It is witnessed in the efforts
to inject a strong dose of techno-populism against reigning technopoly
and its discourses of top-down innovation led by experts. Here it is ‘the
people’ exploiting technology and not the other way around. In prac-
tice this often means the implementation of invasive and oppressive
regimes of both top-down surveillance and bottom-up ‘sousveillance’
(Mann and Ferenbok, 2013). It is channelled into the transformation of
techno-populism into a ‘smart’ and increasingly totalistic form of popu-
lar disciplining and control. The case of the far right populist Philippine
President Rodrigo Duterte is instructive, in this respect. Behind his brag-
gadocio lies a regime that combines toxic populist appeal with brutal
human rights offences. Indeed,

[s]ince being elected in May 2016, Duterte has turned Facebook into a weapon.
The same Facebook personalities who fought dirty to see Duterte win were
brought inside the Malacañang Palace. From there they are methodically taking
down opponents, including a prominent senator and human-rights activist who
became the target of vicious online attacks and was ultimately jailed on a drug
charge. (Etter, 2017: n.p.)

Importantly, while often implemented from the top down, these regimes are
often viewed as horizontal in their actual implementation and operation.
Returning again to the Philippines, Duterte built this hi-tech oppression on
a social media-fuelled popular movement. Notably,
46 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Duterte, a quick social media study despite being 71 at the time of the elec-
tion, took it from there. He hired strategists who helped him transform his
modest online presence, creating an army of Facebook personalities and
bloggers worldwide. His large base of followers—enthusiastic and often
vicious—was sometimes called the Duterte Die-Hard Supporters, or sim-
ply DDS. No one missed the reference to another DDS: Duterte’s infamous
Davao Death Squad, widely thought to have killed hundreds of people.
(Etter, 2017: n.p.)

Likewise, such techno-populist control is commonly used to target ‘unde-

sirables’ that are deemed a threat to ‘the people’. As such, it provides the
tools for a rebooted form of vigilante justice where social media and mobile
technologies are used to report undesirables. These new techno-populist
regimes of control are significantly not limited to exclusively populist
governments. They are also infiltrating and transforming how states and
corporations in general monitor and discipline their citizens. This is epit-
omised in China’s new ‘social credit score’, which has been ominously
described as ‘big data meets Big Brother’:

Imagine a world where many of your daily activities were constantly monitored
and evaluated: what you buy at the shops and online; where you are at any
given time; who your friends are and how you interact with them; how many
hours you spend watching content or playing video games; and what bills and
taxes you pay (or not) ... now imagine a system where all these behaviours are
rated as either positive or negative and distilled into a single number, according
to rules set by the government. (Botsman, 2017: n.p.)

Yet despite these dystopian visions, many Chinese have embraced it as a

means of enacting daily forms of popular control. According to 32-year-old
entrepreneur Chen, ‘I feel like in the past six months, people’s behaviour
has gotten better and better. For example, when we drive, now we always
stop in front of crosswalks. If you don’t stop, you will lose your points.
At first, we just worried about losing points, but now we got used to it’
(Ma, 2018: n.p.).
At stake is the transformation of populist anger into a tech-driven poli-
tics of increasingly total popular control. Everyone is being progressively
monitored, judged and disciplined to prove that they are a good member
of ‘the people’. Enemies are easily identified and targeted for scorn and
retribution. The hated status quo is being rapidly replaced with an even
stronger and more empowered invasive elite regime.
 THE RISE OF TECHNO-POPULISM 47

The Challenges of Techno-Populism

This chapter introduced the concept of ‘techno-populism’ as a novel tech-
nologically enhanced and fuelled politics threatening to engulf countries
across the world. It is driven by legitimate economic worries and barely
repressed racial and ethnic resentments. Its appeal is precisely in being
acknowledged and publicly feted by leaders in a modern global society
that they once thought had ‘left them behind’. In its place they are will-
ing to revive old hatreds combined with cutting-edge ways to avoid once
again being politically marginalised, socially disparate and economically
ignored.
While it is tempting to dismiss these feelings, there is a reason they are
so inspiring to increasingly so many. It is built above all else on an impas-
sioned spirit of ‘hopeful nihilism’. It represents the possibility to tear down
a system perceived to be rotten to its very core, regardless of the ultimate
social or economic costs. Accordingly, it reflects a disruptive political ethos
that despite its ethically troubling aspects and real world consequences is
inspiring for many after decades of being told we had reached the prover-
bial ‘end of history’.
Yet there are key challenges holding such techno-populism back from
being a contemporary force for progressive change. The first is its rooted-
ness in nostalgia. Its railing against elites is seemingly an end in and of
itself. The future that will be created after the popular uprising is much
murkier. In its place has arisen a deep seated embrace of a past golden age.
This slogan is not just an ominous dog whistle to the country’s worst rac-
ist, xenophobic, sexist, jingoistic instincts. It also reveals a complete lack
of critical imagination toward the future. Thus while techno-populists are
certainly hopeful and increasingly tech-savvy, they remain uninspiring as
to what a different type of society may look like and could be created. They
sustain their commitment to believing in seemingly nothing better than a
nostalgic past that was always more fantasy than reality in the first place.
The second challenge is the ability to escape tribalism to actually cre-
ate a genuine popular resistance to elites. At present ‘the people’ have
become dominantly associated with essentialism ideas around race, geog-
raphy, culture and nation. Yet populist reason is actually meant to dispel
these parochial allegiances. It is instead meant to forge a new identifica-
tion around shared desires for fundamental systematic change and popular
empowerment. It is this price that has always plagued populist movements
48 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

historically. Without such a political commitment it can easily be exploited

to further victimise historically disenfranchised groups and all the while
continuing to entrench the power of elites. Finally, while there is a passion-
ate populist faith in ‘the people’ it has no such belief or seeming concern
about the survival of democracy. For this reason, it easily exchanges demo-
cratic rights for popular rule, dangerously conflating the constitutional and
democratic space (Mudde, 2013).
 4
THE GROWTH OF
TECHNO-DEMOCRACY

The 21st century was meant to be the golden age of democracy. Instead,
the first decades of the new millennium have witnessed a distinct erosion
of the popular faith in democracy (Mounk, 2018; Roberts, 2016). It is now
viewed as not only almost irredeemably corrupted by elites and special
interests but also as fundamentally ineffectual and irrational.
The constant neoliberal refrain that ‘there is no alternative’ has, as
shown, fundamentally degraded democracy itself. It became an exercise
in at best choosing the ‘lesser evil’ and at worst becoming complicit in
reproducing a fatally flawed social and economic order. The belief in the
changing power of democracy was decreased, making it appear less as the
driving motor of social transformation and more a reordering of the deck-
chairs on the sinking capitalist Titanic.
As a result people look to other less than fully democratic avenues to
challenge the status quo. From the bottom, this could be seen in the resur-
gence of street protests throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s railing
against corporate globalisation (Smith, 2001). Globally, this was witnessed
in struggles such as the Peasants land movement in Brazil (Soriano and
Nunes, 2017). Yet it also saw the growing belief that truly disruptive social
change could only happen from the top down – notably via the genius
of ‘visionary’ entrepreneurs. As discussed previously, the most famous
of these are perhaps the likes of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. They reflected
an emerging idolising of the business executives as driving human and
social progress. Elon Musk, for instance, boldly claimed that it would
be his company – not any technocratic government – that would be
50 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

responsible for colonising the moon (BBC, 2018). Likewise this is the new
age of ‘philanthropic executives’, those CEOs who cover over their own less
than ethical labour, production and taxation practices by giving away their
money to good causes (Rhodes and Bloom, 2018). These executives are
held up as exemplars of creating change quickly and effectively. Beneath
their PR-driven generosity lies a profound and growing crisis of democracy.
Fundamentally, people were losing faith in their ability to transform
society. Decision-making increasingly appeared to be in the hands of an
unelected elite few (Vibert, 2007). Not surprisingly, perhaps, people turned
their attention inward to individual transformation. Just as troubling, for
many it seemed that such non-democratic executive rule was a far bet-
ter alternative than traditional forms of collectivised power and popular
decision-making. This crisis was only exacerbated by the rising opportuni-
ties and threats posed by emerging technologies.

The Trouble with E-Democracy

Technology is now more and more portrayed as bringing about democracy’s
doom. From social bots to Internet trolls, the digital enemies of democracy
are seemingly everywhere. However, it was not so long ago that technol-
ogy was meant to save democracy – or at the very least vastly improve it.
At the dawn of the new millenium, e-democracy in particular was on the
rise (Thomas and Streib, 2005). Digital advances were expected to make, in
this respect, public services more efficient and responsive (Howard, 2001),
as in the exemplary case of Estonia (Kattel and Mergel, 2018). It painted an
inviting almost utopian picture of a hi-tech liberal democratic future.
The reality, of course, was in many contexts much less welcom-
ing. In practice e-democracy suffered from serious technical and
political malfunctions. Technologically, its promise of greater efficiency
and responsiveness was undermined by continual system breakdowns
and costly IT infrastructure projects with some fundamental threats to
electronic voting in free elections, as in the case of hackers’ attacks on
the voter registration databases in Arizona and Illinois before the US 2016
elections or in other cases during elections in Latin America and Ukraine
(see Akpan, 2016). Politically, this led to a culture of consultation rather
than genuine empowerment participation and decision-making (Cooke
and Kohtari, 2001). It further encouraged people to participate in what
felt like a rigged system.
 THE GROWTH OF TECHNO-DEMOCRACY 51

Learning, thus, more about the biographies and plans of political elites
did not translate into the fostering of a responsive modern democracy
system. Logging in is not the same as having genuine democratic power.
What is crucial, in this regard, is that this growing digitalisation of cul-
ture transformed democracy from being a system built on wielding power
and influence into one based largely on greater access to information and,
in principle, services. E-Democracy did not make elections more competi-
tive or policy decisions less technocratic and elite-driven, or ideologically
expand what was considered politically possible. Rather, in most cases it
provided people with increased access to official information and wider
forums to voice their displeasure. In essence e-democracy was data-rich
and power-poor.
This extended also to the workplace. The late 20th century saw the
rapid and sustained decline of industrial democracy, as already discussed.
In its place arose employer friendly and quite controlling HR regimes.
E-processes did little to stem this tide. Instead it analogously gave people
access to information about their processes and contracts with little about
how to increase their actual collective and individual power.
E-democracy, hence, represented in many cases the hi-tech hollow-
ing out of real democratic power sharing and accountability, rather than
relocating participation within a radical politics of development (Hickey
and Mohan, 2005). It reflected, by contrast, the ability of people to know
more about the elites who rule them. When participatory systems were
experimented with they were subject to fit within quite narrow ideological
limits. For example, many diverse experiences of participatory budgeting
(Ganuza and Baiocchi, 2018) gave just a limited amount of public money
for citizens to decide how to allocate. As such, it contributed in many cases
to deepening this general crisis of democracy where it was viewed as both
ineffectual at best and utterly co-optive at worst.
It did have one disruptive effect though, it led to a stronger democra-
tisation of entertainment and vice-versa. The Internet served even from
its earliest popular incarnations as a place for making politics more lurid
and voyeuristic, as for example occurred in the Starr report (CNN, 1998).
It fed into the scandal industry, turning politicians into easy fodder for
the tabloid press and contributing to the trivialisation of the public debate
(Flinders and Wood, 2014). Likewise, where e-democracy really thrived
was in the entertainment world. Reality competitions harnessed digital
52 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

advances to allow viewers to decide winners and losers. Perhaps ironically,

the most vibrant democratic culture in terms of participation, passion and
demands for accountability seemed to be in popular entertainment not for-
mal politics. Paradoxically, e-democracy helped make real elections mere
spectacles and official spectacles more genuinely democratic.
It is then no wonder that people were quickly losing faith in the power
of democracy. It gave people voice with little actual possibility of translat-
ing it into real action. This democratic deficit reached far into the future
as well. Indeed, if democratic institutions and processes couldn’t solve pre-
sent problems, how could it ever be dreamt that democracy might address
the more disruptive pressures of tomorrow? It appeared that the future and
the spectre of a new tech industrial revolution would have little need or
use for democracy.

The Rise of Techno-Democracy

Contemporary democracy suffers from a range of malpractices (e.g. the
Cambridge Analytica scandal, trolls, fake news, private money influence) such
that the authenticity of its results is in some cases in doubt. In the US officially
approved gerrymandering alongside wide-ranging claims of voter suppression
of minorities and the poor have done much to discredit the sanctity of democ-
racy in practice. Yet from these rotting foundations, have arisen like a phoenix
attempts to technologically and socially reboot democracy.
In the aftermath of the financial crisis, new protest movements
emerged against the power of economic elites. The self-proclaimed ‘Occupy
Movement’ publicly contested the role of the ‘1%’ through innovative
forms of civic disobedience and community building (Uitermark and
Nicholls, 2012). What distinguished it, in part, from similar movements,
such as the anti-globalisation protests of the late 1990s, was its innovative
use of technology (Costanza-Chock, 2012). It proposed a new type of daily
democratic culture that was both people-centred and hi-tech.
This infusion of technology for rebooting 21st century democracy was
not consigned to the streets. Instead it formed a common cause with more
established forms of electoral politics. While not, of course, ultimately suc-
cessful, it should be remembered that before condemning the practices of
Trump, the Clinton campaign trumpeted their own innovative use of big
data. The most notable example though is most certainly Barack Obama’s
campaign. What made it so historic was not simply that it witnessed not
 THE GROWTH OF TECHNO-DEMOCRACY 53

only the election of the first non-white President but also its then ground-
breaking use of technology for achieving this landmark result (Miller, 2008).
Coming into clearer view is a new politics of ‘techno-democracy’. It
is composed of three distinct but interrelated elements. First, it is all together
committed to revealing the contingency of the present social order – its utter
changeability – as well as the power of democracy to achieve such funda-
mental change. Secondly, it is linked either explicitly or implicitly with the
use of technology to disrupt the present order in the name of a new hi-tech
political identity – in this case the ‘smart democratic citizen’. Finally, it
rests on a governing fantasy in which a corrupt status quo can be held more
accountable through the force of democratic protest and norms heavily
aided by recent digital and big data advances.
It is worth here quickly comparing and contrasting techno-democracy
from techno-populism. Both are similarly focused around the desire to
exploit technology to disrupt and replace the power of technocratic elites.
They are analogously anti-establishment and each suffers, though in dra-
matically different ways, the critical propensity to paradoxically ultimately
strengthen the very elites they are ostensibly railing against. However,
there are also real and profound differences.
Namely, techno-democrats seek to promote the ‘democratic’ citizen, pri-
oritising the ability of the largest number of people to vote, protest and have
their voices heard. They aim to establish not merely popular rule but inclu-
sive democratic governance. Further, their deployment of technology directly
targets not just a status quo or set of ‘elites’ but also the need to keep those
in authority in check. Its emphasis is on preserving the rights of the individ-
ual and the sanctity of democratic principles. Lastly, its governing fantasy is
grounded in its efforts to preserve and perfect democracy rather than an essen-
tialised identity or tribal nationalism. It promises to disrupt a corrupt status
quo that perverts democracy for its own elite interest. They are the proclaimed
saviours of democracy not the people – a galvanising evangelical mission that
is both its progressive strength and at times its most radical tragedy.

Practising ‘Techno-Democracy’
Technology has the ability to massively transform and even revolutionise
contemporary democracy. It can digitally enlarge what is considered politi-
cally possible with both established and new democratic frameworks. It
can challenge prevailing democratic elites and expand how democracy is
54 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

practised and by whom. However, it can also cling to preserving an out-

dated system and status quo in the name of protecting democracy against
the proclaimed ‘deplorable’ and ‘irrational’ masses.

‘Techno-Democratic’ Renewal
After decades of being told they had been thrown on the ‘ash heap of his-
tory’, the social democratic left is once more on the rise within the left
spectrum. Politicians from the avowedly and unashamedly progressive and
socialist tradition have emerged in renewed force, putting the political and
economic establishment on notice (DePillis, 2018). Their victories reflect
the renewed promise of present-day democracy founded in the evolution
from mere hope to genuine revolution.
Perhaps the most obvious examples of this social democratic resurgence
have been Jeremy Corbyn in the UK and Bernie Sanders in the US, respec-
tively. They represent an insurgency from within – an opportunity to renew
an increasingly ossified democracy. Their proposed renewal is two-fold. The
first is the updating of established actually existing democratic practices and
norms with a radical anti-establishment energy (Chadwick, 2017). Secondly,
they aim to systematically challenge prevailing hegemonic values. They are
seeking to directly contradict the belief that there is no alternative to neo-
liberalism. Instead they propose that capitalism is both reformable and even
potentially replaceable. Quoting Sanders at length, in this regard:

When I talk about a political revolution, what I am referring to is the need to

do more than just win the next election. It’s about creating a situation where
we are involving millions of people in the process who are not now involved,
and changing the nature of media so they are talking about issues that reflect
the needs and the pains that so many of our people are currently feeling. A
campaign has got to be much more than just getting votes and getting elected.
It has got to be helping to educate people, organize people. If we can do that,
we can change the dynamic of politics for years and years to come. If 80 to 90
percent of the people in this country vote, if they know what the issues are (and
make demands based on that knowledge), Washington and Congress will look
very, very different from the Congress currently dominated by big money and
dealing only with the issues that big money wants them to deal with. (Sanders,
2015: 344)

Their efforts have been strongly aided and abetted by the innovative use
of technology. Returning to the previous examples of Sanders and Corbyn,
 THE GROWTH OF TECHNO-DEMOCRACY 55

social media played a huge role in spreading their broader movement and
ideology. Here bottom-up democratic empowerment is inexorably linked
to harnessing mostly young digitally savvy supporters. Far from being
‘armchair activists’ as some more traditional prognisticators claim, they
have translated their social media passion into concrete campaigning (see
Chakelian, 2017). According to noted scholar of youth and politics Sarah
Pickard:

Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership election campaign in 2015 (and his re-election in

2016) involved three intertwined factors: mass mobilisations, grassroots sup-
port, and digital technologies … Part of the attraction of Momentum for young
people resides in its horizontal, social movement network way of doing poli-
tics, as opposed to the rigid, hierarchical Labour Party structure. Similarly, for
Momentum sympathisers, the network generates a feeling of belonging to a
constructive and positive community that offers hope and potential for change.
The very active and interactive use of digital technologies – that comes naturally
to many young people – is another part of the appeal and an effective method
for both diffusing information and mobilising support. (Pickard, 2017: n.p.)

Similarly, those inspired by the Sanders campaign have begun their own
social media-fuelled progressive politics called ‘Our Revolution’ that
embodies the same spirit and aims.
This also extended to more grassroots movements, particularly invigor-
ated efforts to revive industrial democracy linked to wildcat strikes. The
so-called ‘red state rebellion’ which saw teachers across the US heartland in
states like West Virginia all the way to Arizona walk out and wage wildcat
strikes to demand higher pay epitomises this growing digital democratic
insurrection. Hence,

This is a #MeToo movement, bread and roses, even though it doesn’t announce
itself as such. Participants, many of whom self-identify as conservative and are
Republicans, might even disavow that description. Still, in countless signs, slo-
gans, and messages on social media, teachers in these red states announce
that they will be heard. By demanding recognition and respect for their labor
and the rights of their students, teachers are reviving the most essential ele-
ment of labor unionism: respect for democracy and the dignity of work.
(Weiner, 2018: n.p.)

Yet this underlying spirit of techno-democratic renewal also has at points a

quite conservative character. It harkens back to a social democratic history
56 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

that combines a desire for the welfare state and a strong union movement.
Hence, techno-democracy is often rather Janus faced – looking simultane-
ously toward an uncertain future and backward to an idealised past.

Techno-Democratic Elitism?
Techno-democratic movements, even amidst their ideological differences,
share a commitment to a sense of anti-elitism, at least in principle. In com-
mon with techno-populism is a desire to explicitly take on and replace a
corrupted and entrenched political and economic ruling class. Yet techno-
democracy has a much more complicated relationship with expertise, for
admittedly both good and bad. It still invests in the ability of experts to
assume and influence democratic leadership and guide progress. It thus
rejects present elites while potentially reinforcing the belief in more demo-
cratic forms of technocracy.
Significantly, techno-democracy has its roots in actual revolutionary
movements. Notably, it took its inspiration from the civil rights move-
ment and more recently the Arab Spring (Khondker, 2011). Ostensibly, this
reflected a large-scale rejection of elites (Nineham, 2017). However, it was
a revolution waged in part by those who felt educated but underemployed
and valued. These same qualities were found in the square protests to a
certain extent. Here, educated activists and youth were fighting for social,
economic and environmental justice as well as decrying the lack of intelli-
gence of their uninformed democratically elected leaders. This was perhaps
the first hi-tech ‘smart’ revolution, whose ‘definining image’ is

a young woman or a young man with a smartphone. She’s in the Medina in

Tunis with a BlackBerry held aloft, taking a picture of a demonstration outside
the prime minister’s house. He is an angry Egyptian doctor in an aid station
stooping to capture the image of a man with a head injury from missiles thrown
by Mubarak’s supporters. Or it is a Libyan in Benghazi running with his phone
switched to a jerky video mode, surprised when the youth in front of him is shot
through the head. All of them are images that have found their way on to the
internet through social media sites. And it’s not just images. In Tahrir Square I sat
one morning next to a 60-year-old surgeon cheerfully tweeting his involvement
in the protest. The barricades today do not bristle with bayonets and rifles, but
with phones. (Beaumont, 2011)

Nevertheless, techno-democracy also seeks to reorient values of control and

accountability. It supports the reversal of traditional control mechanisms.
 THE GROWTH OF TECHNO-DEMOCRACY 57

It is premised on using technology to track the actions and relationship

of elites (see for example the activity of the website www.opensecrets.org/
tracking campaign donations of US politicians). For techno-democracy, val-
ues of transparency are both prioritised and radicalised. Yet it also must
grapple with the question, which it seems to do not enough, with a certain
tension at the heart of any and all efforts to achieve greater transparency.
This relative paradox of transparency extends to emerging techno-
democratic movements as well.
In tracking the economic interests of specific elites, for instance, there
can be a distraction from larger ideological questions of the need for elites
or top-down forms of leadership itself. There is a risk of fantasising the
just and ‘ethically clean’ leader – one who embodies an almost republican
ideal of the wise and disinterred popular rule. This translates to the desire
for an uncorrupted techno-democratic leader who is untainted by special
interests and uses technology to widen their base of support. It requires
politicians charismatic enough and ideologically pure enough to reject
elite patronage for popular support.
On the other hand, it aims to establish more democratic cultures. It
establishes a growing demand for – often confidential and at times ille-
gally obtained – information about political and economic elites. The
most famous of these arguably have been the Panama Papers released
by the controversial WikiLeaks and the whistleblower Edward Snowden
concerning the widespread but heretofore hidden scale of mass gov-
ernment surveillance in the US. These actions certainly provide the
beginnings of a more ‘open-sourced’ form of democratic politics. They
reveal the secrets of power holders, exploiting the technical skill of
those would like to expose their misdoings for a mass audience. They
present, to this effect, a rebooting of the lauded ‘fourth estate’, provid-
ing a technological update to the traditional watchdog function of what
has increasingly become an ideologically compromised and sycophantic
mainstream media.
However, as important as these attempts are, they also risk establishing
a new democratic technocracy, a collection of tech-savvy organisations and
actors who decide what should or should not be publicly released, and what
are the ethical norms and limits for such actions. Who decides ultimately
the limits of such uncoverings? Who holds these techno-whistleblowers
accountable?
58 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Finally, it lends itself to the recapturing of this techno-democratic ethos

for the reinforcing of past and future forms of elitism. This is readily appar-
ent in the ‘Trumpwashing’ mentioned in the previous chapter. They can
also be used to support a neoliberal status quo, even while ostensibly pro-
testing the current order. Equally troubling is the justification for these
political elites linked to discourses of ‘smart’ policy – with little to no evi-
dence to sustain such claims.
This is balanced, of course, to an extent by the legitimate faith of
techno-democrats in a range of experts, such as scientists informing the
climate change debate for example (Kitcher, 2010). Importantly, techno-
democrats commonly position themselves as the defenders of these elites
against the ‘irrational’ populist masses.
Tellingly, techno-democracy has also led to novel instances of popular
based and even explicitly populist forms of elitism. The electoral success of
the Five Star Movement in Italy was derided by the mainstream as another
victory for the populist far right. However, often missed in these other-
wise legitimate fears, is the strong techno-democratic component of this
movement (Deseriis, 2017).
What emerges, then, from these insights is the ironic and complex role
that techno-democracy can play in fostering and challenging elites and
technocracies. It represents a potent force for technologically expanding
democracy as both a concept and practice in the new millennium.

Expanding Techno-Democracy
Technology is not just prospectively renewing and improving democracy
but also dramatically expanding its present and future possibilities. In
particular it enlarges the demos – who literally and figuratively counts as
a democratic citizen while helping to create a ‘smarter’ demos and widen
the potentialities for democratic action. Hence, it is simultaneously
reviving democratic norms and pointing to the possibility of completely
reinventing them.
At perhaps the most basic level techno-democracy is producing a
much larger deliberative civic space. It uses social media and mobile tech-
nologies to reintroduce historically marginalised populations as central
democratic actors. The Black Lives Matter movement has mobilised resist-
ance against police brutality and systematic racism precisely on this base
 THE GROWTH OF TECHNO-DEMOCRACY 59

(Carney, 2016). In this respect, it serves as a direct counterpoint to the

Foucauldian idea of ‘biopolitics’ – by the governance of the health of
the body politic both collectively and personally stating simply, repeat-
edly, and loudly that their lives and bodies matter, they reveal how
restrictive and fraught current democracy is for much of the population
it claims to include and represent.
Additionally, it expands the scope and radical potential of e-democracy.
It now goes far beyond improving access to service or greater consultation.
It now encompasses the reconfiguration of democratic cultures to use com-
munity data to transform governance itself (Meijer, 2018), as for example
well illustrates the case of Barcelona smart city (Forster, 2018). It creates,
in turn, new democratic demands for stronger digital participation and
decision-making power. Officially sanctioned programmes such as ‘m-voting’
in South Korea exemplify this new techno-democratic spirit – allowing
people to use their app to informally vote and provide feedback on a range
of government proposals.
Gradually being revealed is a potential new dawn for democracy,
whether technology refreshes and reinvents power relations, governance
and civic society.

The Opportunities of Techno-Democracy

Techno-democracy holds the possibility to change the very ways we theo-
rise, understand and practise democracy. It harkens back to a democratic
past while gesturing to an alternative and exciting democratic future. Yet
it also can contribute to limiting these democratic possibilities to historic
horizons of social democracy while also paradoxically reinforcing the
power of present day economic and political elites. Can and how can this
tech-driven democracy be truly politically disruptive as opposed to merely
socially innovative?
The opportunities of techno-democracy are tantalising and obvious.
Notably, it directly connected democratic renewal to pressing demands for
economic and social justice. It recaptures, in this regard, the existential
power of democracy – its ability to grant people the agency to choose their
form of existence rather than be told there is no alternative. This is fuelled
by ICTs that permit a more inclusive, networked and participatory demo-
cratic culture.
60 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

However, it also poses profound challenges. These moments struggle

with the understandable embrace of a range of knowledge expertise with
the threat of configuring and creating new democratic technocracies.
Ideologically, it remains trapped to a worrying degree in the ideas of the
20th century, aiming to revive the welfare state and industrial democ-
racy. It is in this respect as much about recapturing democracy as it is
reinventing it.
At stake though are clear distinguishing features of techno-democracy
as a force to oppose techno-populism. Techno-democracy is about greater
inclusion and the expansion of democratic power, rather than simply
the representing of the ‘people’ and the replacement of one set of elites
for another. It concerns the expansion of human and democratic rights.
Critical, however, is again whether they are simply reviving traditional
solutions to new problems or coming up with new ones. Importantly, the
question of whether this is disruptive or innovative is not to assume that to
be innovative is in and of itself all bad. It certainly challenges how limited
the current democratic imaginary remains – showing the need to extend
basic democratic rights to still disenfranchised groups and reintroducing
democracy as a ‘revolutionary’ social force. Again, after decades of being told
that we had reached the end of history, suddenly everyone is looking to the
future for something radically different.
 5
LOOKING FORWARD TO
DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

The new millenium could spell the end of democracy or its radical renewal.
Any optimism for its future is inexorably intertwined with its ability to
become once more a force for revolutionising social, economic and political
relations. At present, it remains trapped between the two poles of either sup-
porting or partially interrupting a broken status quo. It doubles as an elite
resource or a tool for resistance. What it is only now beginning to recap-
ture is its fundamentally existential spirit and power, its role as a historical
vehicle for people to critically and collectively transform their very shared
existence. To do so, it must become a disruptive political technology.
The need for such a disruptive democracy has arguably never been so
urgent. The threat of an exploitive industry 4.0 looms large. It is telling
that advances in AI, big data, the Internet of Things, and virtual reality
conjure up as much fear as they do excitement. Just as at the outset of the
first industrial revolution, we are once again arriving at a crossroads of his-
tory. It will almost certainly be completely technologically rebooted. In the
19th century this demanded the creation and evolution of novel political
democratic technologies to counter, cope with and transform this grow-
ing and all-encompassing capitalist reality. The pressing question is, can
21st century democracy be updated and refreshed to similarly respond to
and meet these new capitalist challenges?
Absolutely crucial, is that this does not become confined to mere social
innovations. Undeniably, the protection of basic democratic rights and
norms is vital. For democracy to survive and society to progress, it must do
more than simply seek to defend and recapture past gains. It must move
62 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

beyond merely extending its traditional franchise to all people in both

principle and fact. Instead it must democratise how we use and benefit
from technology, in the process expanding our individual and collective
human potential.

Democracy 4.0?
We are supposedly at the cusp of a new and total economic revolution. It
will bring to the fore rapidly advancing technologies in a way that could
inalterably reshape social relations and shatter our traditional social con-
tract. Indeed the

[p]revious industrial revolutions liberated humankind from animal power, made

mass production possible and brought digital capabilities to billions of people.
This Fourth Industrial Revolution is, however, fundamentally different. It is char-
acterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and
biological worlds, impacting all disciplines, economies and industries, and even
challenging ideas about what it means to be human. (Schwab, 2016)

Yet it is also a distinct opportunity for producing democracy 4.0.

While it is common to think of economic development and associated
stages of capitalism, this same sense of dynamic growth and evolution is
rarely applied to democracy. Perhaps the closest comparisons are notions of
different chronological democratic waves (see Diamond, 1996). However,
this chronological and geographical based perspective risks missing the
deeper changes to democracy both in terms of its overall purpose and spe-
cific processes within the modern era. They are briefly:

• the revolutionary stage following the liberal revolutions and the indus-
trial revolution;
• the social democratic stage starting roughly at the turn of the 20th
century in which social and economic rights became democratically
enshrined;
• the liberal stage in which human and social rights were expanded
alongside the spread of the free market.

Each of these stages reflected a particular historical instance of democrati-

sation. The first was the need to expand the right for authority and power
to be subject to popular consent. The second was the effort to place the
 LOOKING FORWARD TO DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY 63

social and economic spheres under similar democratic control. The third
and most recent stage was the demand that democratic and human rights
be made universal and as such create a more inclusive and representative
governance both politically and economically.
Each of these instances of democratisation, moreover, was born out of
the one that came before it. The managing ethos of the initial stage was
directly premised on the need to establish popular control in the wake of
a half century of previous social upheavals and revolution. This political
need played into and drew inspiration from the early capitalist attempts
to discipline a newly industrialising workforce both at home and in the
colonies (see for instance Mintz, 1986). Yet it was precisely this manage-
ment spirit and reality that led to a new stage of democracy – one that
asked why it was not also possible to manage social resources for the pub-
lic good? This catalysed the progressive and political labour movements
into the creation of social democracies and the welfare state. However, the
legacies of racism, sexism and classism persisted, thus opening up this new
socialised form of democracy to legitimate and profound criticisms. The
most current stage, hence, focuses on the requirement to make democracy
both inclusive and universal.
Revealed in this admittedly very brief history as well is the complex and
intimate relationship between democracy in the formal political sphere and
within the broader cultural and economic ones. The labour struggles of the
late 19th century against economic management helped build the politi-
cal movements and coalitions for social democracy mere decades later. It
provided workers with the knowledge and tools necessary for organising
themselves as a group and engaging in difficult political negotiations of
democratic power-sharing. Conversely, the call for greater inclusiveness,
representation and diversity offered latter day capitalists the discourses and
tools to refashion themselves as ‘progressive’ actors seeking to create more
multicultural, meritocratic and people-centred institutions and economies.
Further, it shifted the debate from enlarging social equality to expanding
financial inclusion.
At stake, then, is how democracy is always a historically specific phe-
nomenon that is usually at once both socially innovative and politically
disruptive. For it to advance forward it should build on the structural eco-
nomic and social contradictions of its present moment and effectively
identify and politicise its arising forms of struggle for the creation of something
64 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

culturally new. In the contemporary era this entails recognising calls for
people to have equal access to the material and social capital to shape their
own personal economic destiny in a way that allows them to radically
exploit new technologies for this purpose. Hence, democracy 4.0 will be
premised upon the core disruptive values of radical openness, personalisa-
tion and emancipation.

Democratising the Future

The task of present day democracy must be to an extent completely reori-
ented. It is not how it can be saved or even renewed. Instead, it is what
role it can play in democratising the future. More precisely, how can it
turn contemporary grievances into a forward thinking politics that both
inspires political hope, expands our concrete possibilities and reduces the
forces of social domination?
Critical, in this respect, is expanding upon and ultimately transcending
a politics of inclusion. It requires respecting but ultimately going beyond
demands of inclusiveness for a society of openness. The ethos of openness
asks for more than just including subjects in an existing social order –
whether democratic, liberal, or otherwise. The previous chapter discussed
the potential creation of more ‘open source’ democracies centred on the
mass release of information about the actions and misdoings of elites. At
present this remains largely a whistleblowing activity and about those that
can fit relatively comfortably in principle (though certainly not in practice
as recent history starkly reveals) within existing liberal notions of transpar-
ency (Fung et al., 2007). In a recent interview, Edward Snowden’s lawyer,
Robert Tibbo, declared:

… working with Mr Snowden you come in contact with – in a very significant

way – with fundamental rights and freedoms, such as freedom of expression,
association, assembly, and this all comes back to how our lives, our private lives
are affected, our personal lives, such as freedom of thought, conscience, and
freedom of religion, mobility. How we practice our religion comes out of free-
dom of expression. What clothes we wear, where we pray, where we congregate,
where we assemble. Working with Mr Snowden, you realise how significant his
disclosures are, and the impact of government enacting greater security laws
and how it effects people, and how people have modified their behaviour …
Fear, people have a fear in expressing themselves. It [mass surveillance] has
had what I call a constructive violation of people’s fundamental rights, such as
 LOOKING FORWARD TO DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY 65

expression, assembly, association and religion. Snowden’s revelations are the

most significant for this century so far. (quoted in Munro, 2017: 109)

However, it is also expanding in quite radical directions. Blockchains and

time stamping, for instance, can track the labour practices of major cor-
porations in real time. In a recent 2017 report to the European Parliament
these implications were made clear, as it was noted that Blockchain

makes it possible to establish and maintain complete ownership histories, which

can help counteract fraud and support police and insurance investigators track-
ing stolen gems. It also allows consumers to make more informed purchasing
decisions, e.g. to limit their search to diamonds with a clean history that is free
from fraud, theft, forced labour and the intervention of dubious vendors who
are linked to violence, drugs or arms trafficking. (Boucher, 2017: 16).

Similarly, these same technologies can be potentially deployed to expose

how big banks and financial institutions are being capitally funded and
how major economic actors avoid and evade taxes. Even Forbes magazine
noted its potential, in this respect, in relation to the IRS (Internal Revenue
Service), the tax collection agency of the United States federal government:

Blockchain and its digital ledger platform can revolutionize the way data is ana-
lyzed, exchanged and stored by the IRS. Blockchain can help the IRS lower costs
and increase security, as well as enhance the speed in which it accesses and
reviews taxpayer data. Here are just a few small examples of some of the issues
the IRS is currently experiencing. (Bergman, 2018: n.p.)

There are also more politically disruptive implications offered by this

emphasis on openness rather than simple inclusion. It is the capacity to
reimagine and select between different alternative futures. Here, inclusion
is an engine for allowing marginalised groups to have their voices heard in
shaping the present and future. It also means opening up these potentialities –
turning what is considered into the plausible. In her viral campaign video,
recently elected Congressperson democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-
Cortez passionately pushed back against the seemingly ‘idealistic demands’
being put forward by progressives. She proclaims that what is needed is
‘Medicaid for all, tuition free college, a federal jobs guarantee, and criminal
justice reform. We can do it now. It does not take a hundred years to do
this. It takes political courage.’
66 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

While these policies are not in and of themselves revolutionary, they

starkly reveal an emerging democratic spirit that rails against neoliberal
politicians who claim even such basic social democratic reforms are eco-
nomically and politically impossible. This sets the stage for more robust
contemporary debates and movements for ensuring that tomorrow’s world
is decided democratically rather than being framed as an unavoidable eco-
nomic inevitability.
These disruptive possibilities also encompass the need to go beyond
identity politics. Importantly, this is not meant to repeat or reinforce the
now familiar leftist critique of identity based politics for one that focuses
on class struggle and economic justice. Conversely, it stresses the expan-
sion of the possibility of identity as a form of social liberation and radical
exploration. Theories of intersectionality touch on the expansive and dis-
ruptive potentialities of such a revolutionary form of identity politics. It
speaks of multiple selves, focusing on the diverse ways people face discrimi-
nation. The contemporary era is witnessing

the reformulation of the self as a site constituted and fragmented, at least par-
tially, by the intersections of various categories of domination/oppression such
as race, gender, and sexual orientation. Thus, far from being a unitary and static
phenomenon untainted by experience, one’s core identity is made up of the
various discourses and structures that shape society and one’s experience within
it. (Powell, 1996: 1484)

Digital technologies allow people to use this as a basis to explore multiple

forms of self-hoods (Bloom, 2019). In this regard, technology can become a
force for allowing people to engage with and experience multiple identities
over the course of their lifetime. This speaks to Donna Haraway’s revolu-
tionary ‘Cyborg Manifesto’, in which she declares

Cyborg writing must not be about the Fall, the imagination of a once-upon-a-
time wholeness before language, before writing, before Man. Cyborg writing
is about the power to survive, not on the basis of original innocence, but on
the basis of seizing the tools to mark the world that marked them as other.
(Haraway, [1985] 2016: 55)

Going even further, in this regard, is the ability of all individuals, especially
those in historically excluded groups, to repurpose and reuse technolo-
gies to take back control of their identity and experiment with alternative
 LOOKING FORWARD TO DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY 67

modes of social relations. The recent landmark book by Helen Hester,

Xenofeminism, proposes ‘a technomaterialist, anti-naturalist, and gender
abolitionist form of feminism’ (2018: 1). She argues thus:

any emancipatory techno-feminism must take the form of a concerted political

intervention, sensitive to the fused character of the structures of oppression
that make up our material world. It is in this spirit that xenofeminism seeks
to balance an attentiveness to the differential impact that technology can
have on gender, queers, and gender non-conforming with a critical openness
(to the constrained but genuine) transformative potential of technologies.
(Hester, 2018: 11)

This politics of openness and abolitionism demands, in turn, a demo-

cratic ethos that avowedly goes beyond reformism. It entails constructing
movements and political processes that are charged with developing sys-
tematic change in both their vision, policy proposals and actions. The
appeal to social democracy should serve as a springboard for more eman-
cipatory social and economic alternatives. It means expanding our critical
imagination to reconceive economy and society. To this end, acclaimed
theorist Will Davies writes of the possibility of ‘economic science
fictions’, asking

Is it still possible to go back in search of the future? ... To write science fictions
about the economy is to insist on the possibility that imagination can intrude
into economic life in an uninvited way that is not computable or accountable.
To imagine wholly different systems and premises of calculation, for example, is
in itself to resist the dystopian ideal promised by Wall Street and Silicon Valley,
that there is nothing that can evade the logic of software algorithms, risk, and
finance. At a time when capitalism and socialism have collapsed into each other,
obliterating spaces of alterity or uncalculated discourses in the process, simply
to describe unrealised (maybe unrealistic) economic possibilities is to rediscover
a glimpse of autonomy in the process. (Davies, 2018: 22)

Crucial for all these future-oriented politics is the radical democratisation

of the present. ICTs have produced novel modes of power. Arising is what
can be termed ‘virtual power’. Hence, while these distinct but connected
political disruptions do not always explicitly speak to the expansion of
democracy, they share a commitment to a dramatic democratisation of
contemporary and prospective socio-economic relations, linked to the dis-
ruptive potential of democracy.
68 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Disrupting Democratic Power

Current technologies contain the seeds of new radical presents and futures
to bloom and flourish. Advances in ICTs connect people with power in
such a way as to reveal their capability for not only improving but also
completely transforming their social existence. Yet these incipient ideas
and revolutionary struggles do not necessarily explicitly speak to how they
could be democratically realised or in what way existing democratic norms
and practices will need to be updated to meet these revolutionary opportu-
nities and challenges.
Fortunately, there are vibrant democratic movements and technolo-
gies that are pointing toward a future that is simultaneously radical and
democratic. Civic technologies – commonly referred to as Civtech – open
the space for empowering and reconceiving public participation for 21st
century democracy and the reach of democratic power (e.g. Fung, 2004;
Nabatchi and Leighninger, 2015; Tsagarousianou et al., 2002.) They explic-
itly use ICT and big data for addressing ‘global’ public affairs challenges
(Mergel et al., 2016). These technologies are reinforced by the develop-
ment of social technologies that encourage the fostering of ‘participatory
futures’ (Meijer, 2012). This technologically rebooted civic culture can help
to inform existing experimentation with radical democratic community
building around the world. It opens up the possibility for digital network-
ing and political activism in a glocalised public sphere where leaders and
politicised civil society organisations (Della Porta, 2018) may engage in
a new progressive world politics inspired by global human advancement
and by a new humanism. It also offers the possibility of creating more
exportable models for drawing upon these technologies to promote radi-
cally democratic forms of politics and life. Such a radical experiment is
being launched in Taiwan by its self-proclaimed ‘hacker minister’ Audrey
Tang. She helped launch ‘vTaiwan’

experimenting with bringing citizens and public servants together in a civic

deliberation process utilising state of the art technologies for crafting digital legis-
lation. The adoption of these technologies brings a more transparent, responsive,
and participatory deliberation process, which is the core of public participation
and the open government movement. By openly aggregating shared wisdom
from the society on a regular basis, the experiments created a recursive public,
an open and interactive community environment that kept track of [an] updated
rough consensus for crafting legislation and regulation. (Lin, 2018: n.p.)
 LOOKING FORWARD TO DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY 69

There is further need to transform the democratisation of technology into

novel types of democratic rights and responsibilities linked to technological
exploration. The recent work on trans-humanism and the enhancement of
human capabilities speaks directly to these themes. In his celebrated book
SuperIntelligence, philosopher Nick Bostrom concludes the following:

(1) at least weak forms of superintelligence are achievable by means of biotech-

nological enhancements; (2) the feasibility of cognitively enhanced humans
adds to the plausibility that advanced forms of machine intelligence are
feasible—because even if we were fundamentally unable to create machine
intelligence (which there is no reason to suppose), machine intelligence might
still be within reach of cognitively enhanced humans; and (3) when we con-
sider scenarios stretching significantly into the second half of this century and
beyond, we must take into account the probable emergence of a generation of
genetically enhanced populations—voters, inventors, scientists—with the mag-
nitude of enhancement escalating rapidly over subsequent decades. (Bostrom,
2014: 44)

These themes additionally bring to the fore serious philosophical concerns

of how to balance the radical potentialities of technologies with broader
questions of social responsibility and non-harm. It is precisely to this
debate that James Hughes’ (2004) influential book Citizen Cyborg remains
so timely and relevant a contribution. He maps out an updated vision of
citizenship that, as suggested by the title, revolves around the use of tech-
nology for expanding human potentiality.
Finally, the radical re-envisioning of the future gestures toward the
possibilities of fostering a more explicitly democratic form of what can be
termed virtual governance. Technology is progressively allowing people to
immersively experience a wide range of alternative realities. Building on
these efforts are more directly political or at least socially empowering pro-
jects in which mobile technology is used to expand local knowledge as well
as foster solidarity within and among marginalised groups across the globe
in a glocal perspective, where a global civil society is networked to foster
a collective (Ospina and Foldy, 2015) and place-based leadership (Jackson
and Parry, 2011) action towards democratic and public value aims (Crosby
and Bryson, 2005).
The revolutionary implications of these virtual advancements are
equally profound and democratic. One can now just begin to imagine a
politics in which realtime data is mixed with hi-tech virtual simulations to
70 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

allow people to ‘experience’ different social options and make democratic

choices on this basis. Think for instance if referendums such as Brexit
were informed not just by competing ideologies or projections of what
might happen but also by immersive experiences that would realistically
allow people to explore these different futures from a range of diverse first
person perspectives.
Even more radically, perhaps, is the virtual creation of alternative
societies linked to ‘post-capitalism’ or a ‘world without prisons’ permit-
ting individuals and groups to ‘experience’ what a more radical future
may look and feel like. This opportunity to virtually time travel could
transform the revolution from an exercise in resistance and vague pre-
monitions of a better tomorrow to come, into vibrant virtual scenarios
that actively challenge the limits of our present day concrete existence.
(Bloom, 2016b). These technological interventions would serve as the
foundations for reimagining and democratically struggling for more liber-
ated and emancipated worlds.

The Real Possibilities of Disruptive Democracy

This book highlights the coming clash between techno-populism and
techno-democracy. Neoliberalism and the free market continue to face
a deep ideological, political and existential crisis. Arising in its place are
‘techno-politics’ that stress the rights of re-empowered people and citizens
to take power and control their collective social destinies. Each shares a
rejection of the establishment and a desire to exploit and repurpose tech-
nology for this politically disruptive purpose. Yet while techno-populism
is clinging to essentialised identities and increasingly hi-tech autocratic
rule, techno-democracy holds the promise of reinventing social, economic
and political relations in a more open and egalitarian way. Nevertheless,
this revolutionary potential is put at risk through a continual embrace of
20th century political solutions and knowledge in a brave new 21st cen-
tury world.
These insights serve to technologically revolutionise existing theo-
ries of radical democracy. Laclau and Mouffe end their famous book on
hegemony with a novel perspective for radicalising democratic relations.
Mouffe, in particular, has developed these ideas into a model democracy
that stresses values of agonism, the allowance for radical difference within
 LOOKING FORWARD TO DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY 71

a shared democratic framework of norms and values. What this work pro-
poses, building on but ultimately seeking to transcend these ideas, is the
need to understand democracy as composed of a set of social technologies
that have the potential to reinforce or disrupt hegemony. The question
here is how can these technologies be used to democratise and politically
expand the limits of social possibility? Can they create radically new fields
of meaning that retain a commitment to core democratic values of open-
ness, equality and collective power?
For techno-democracy to survive and thrive it must do more than be
satisfied with remaining simply a socially innovative technology. Instead
it is imperative for it to strengthen its commitment to its radical potential.
Democracy should stand for new ways of organising, decision-making, and
recreating our economic material relations and social realities. At its most
revolutionary, democracy can still transform the very ways we govern our-
selves (Fung, 2016) and experiment with ways of existing in the world. In
the midst of so much political uncertainty, social anxiety and economic
insecurity – faced with an industrial revolution that augurs our literal and
figurative dehumanisation – can democracy once more become a disrup-
tive force for revolutionary optimism?
 REFERENCES

Akpan, N. (2016) Here’s how hackers might mess with electronic voting on
Election Day. PBS News Hour, 8 November. Retrieved from www.pbs.org/
newshour/science/heres-how-hackers-could-mess-with-electronic-voting.
Andersen, T., Jensen, P. and Skovsgaard, C. (2016) The heavy plow and the
agricultural revolution in Medieval Europe. Journal of Development Economics,
118: 133–49. doi: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.08.006.
Andrejevic, M. and Gates, K. (2014) Big data surveillance: Introduction.
Surveillance & Society, 12 (2): 185–96. doi: 10.24908/ss.v12i2.5242.
Andrews, L. (2018) Public administration, public leadership and the con-
struction of public value in the age of the algorithm and ‘big data’. Public
Administration. E-pub ahead of print doi: 10.1111/padm.12534.
Ansell, C. and Trondal, J. (2017) Governing turbulence: An organizational-
institutional agenda. Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 1 (1):
43–57. doi: 10.1093/ppmgov/gvx013.
Badiou, A. and Feltham, O. (1987) Being and Event. London: Continuum.
Barber, B. (1992) Jihad vs. McWorld. The Atlantic Monthly, 269(3): 53–65.
BBC News (2018) Elon Musk unveils first tourist for SpaceX ‘Moon loop’. BBC
News Science & Environment, 18 September. Retrieved from www.bbc.
co.uk/news/science-environment-45550755.
Beal, G. M., and Bohlen, J. M. (1957) The Diffusion Process. Agricultural
Experiment Station, Iowa State College.
Beaumont, P. (2011) ‘The Truth about Twitter, Facebook and the Uprisings in
the Arab World’, The Guardian, 25 February.
Beckett, F. (2010) What Did the Baby Boomers Ever Do for Us? London: Biteback.
Bergman, A. (2018) How blockchain technology can save the IRS. Forbes,
4 June. Retrieved from www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2018/06/04/
how-blockchain-technology-can-save-the-irs/#5a12f026e7ab.
Bertoni, S. (2017) Jared Kushner in his own words on the Trump data operation
the FBI is reportedly probing. Forbes, 26 May. Retrieved from www.forbes.
com/sites/stevenbertoni/2017/05/26/jared-kushner-in-his-own-words-on-
the-trump-data-operation-the-fbi-is-reportedly-probing/#6186ae5da90f.
Beynon, H. (2014) ‘Still too much socialism in Britain’: The legacy of Margaret
Thatcher. Industrial Relations Journal, 45 (3): 214–33. doi: 10.1111/irj.12051.
Bloom, P. (2016a) Authoritarian Capitalism in the Age of Globalization. Cheltenham:
Edward Elgar.
74 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Bloom, P. (2016b) Beyond Power and Resistance: Politics at the Radical Limits.
New York: Rowman and Littlefield International
Bloom, P. (2018) The Bad Faith in the Free Market: The Radical Promise of Existential
Freedom. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature.
Bloom, P. (2019) Monitored: Business and Surveillance in the Time of Big Data.
London: Pluto Press.
Bloom, P. and Dallyn, S. (2011) The paradox of order: reimagining ideological
domination. Journal of Political Ideologies, 16(01): 53–78.
Bloom, P. and Rhodes, C. (2017) Political Leadership in the 21st Century:
NeoLiberalism and the Rise of the CEO Politician. The Routledge Companion
to Leadership. Abingdon: Routledge.
Bloom, P. and Rhodes, C. (2018) CEO Society: The Corporate Takeover of Everyday
Life. London: Zed.
Blumler, J. G. (2003) Foreword: Broadening and Deepening Comparative
Research. In G. Mazzoleni, J. Stewart and B. Horsfield (eds), The Media and
Neo-populism: A contemporary comparative analysis. Westport, CT: Praeger.
Bock, P. (2017) The startup president: how Macron built a party like a
business—and conquered France, Prospect. Retrieved from https://www.
prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/the-startup-president-how-macron-built-a-
party-like-a-business-and-conquered-france.
Bonefeld, W., Gunn, R. and Psychopedis, K. (1992) Open Marxism Volume 1:
Dialectics and History. London: Pluto Press.
Bostrom, N. (2014) Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies. Oxford: Oxford
University Press.
Botsman, R. (2017) Big data meets Big Brother as China moves to rate its
citizens, WIRED, 21 October. Retrieved from www.wired.co.uk/article/chi-
nese-government-social-credit-score-privacy-invasion.
Boucher, P. (2017) How blockchain technology could change our lives. Retrieved
from www.europarl.europa.eu/RegData/etudes/IDAN/2017/581948/EPRS_
IDA(2017)581948_EN.pdf.
Brandsen, T., Trommel, W. and Verschuere, B. (eds) (2014) Manufactured Civil
Society: Practices, Principles and Effects. London: Palgrave.
Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capitalism. New York: Monthly
Review.
Brown, W. (2016) Undoing the Demos. New York: Zone Books.
Bryson, J., Sancino, A., Benington, J. and Sørensen, E. (2016) Towards a multi-
actor theory of public value co-creation. Public Management Review, 19 (5):
640–54. doi: 10.1080/14719037.2016.1192164.
Cadwalladr, C. (2017) The Great British Brexit Robbery: How our democracy
was hijacked, The Guardian, 7 May. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/
technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy.
Caiani, M. and Graziano, P. (2016) Varieties of populism: insights from the
Italian case. Italian Political Science Review/Rivista Italiana Di Scienza Politica,
46 (2): 243–67. doi: 10.1017/ipo.2016.6.
Canovan, M. (1982) Two strategies for the study of populism. Political Studies,
30 (4): 544–52. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.1982.tb00559.x.
 REFERENCES 75

Carney, N. (2016) All lives matter, but so does race. Humanity & Society, 40 (2):
180–99. doi: 10.1177/0160597616643868.
Castells, M. (1997) The Rise of the Network Society. Malden, MA: Wiley–Blackwell.
Cederström, C. and Spicer, A. (2017) The Wellness Syndrome. Cambridge: Polity
Press.
Chadwick, A. (2017) Corbyn, Labour, digital media, and the 2017 UK election.
In E. Thorsen, D. Jackson and D. Lilleker (eds), UK Election Analysis 2017:
Media, Voters and the Campaign: Early Reflections from Leading Academics.
Poole: The Centre for the Study of Journalism, Culture and Community,
Bournemouth University. p. 89.
Chaeklin, A. (2017) ‘The Manifesto Won it’ Progress Magazine 12 July.
Chomsky, N. (1998) The Common Good. Tucson, AZ: Odonian Press.
CNN (1998) Explosive Starr report outlines case for impeachment. Investigating
the President, 11 September. Retrieved from http://edition.cnn.com/
ALLPOLITICS/stories/1998/09/11/starr.report/.
Cooke, B. and Kothari, U. (2001) Participation: The New Tyranny? London: Zed.
Costanza-Chock, S. (2012) Mic check! Media cultures and the Occupy
Movement. Social Movement Studies, 11 (3–4): 375–85. doi: 10.1080/
14742837.2012.710746.
Crosby, B.C. and Bryson, J.M. (2005) Leadership for the Common Good. Chichester:
Wiley.
Davies, W. (ed.) (2018) Economic Science Fictions. London: Goldsmiths Press.
Della Porta, D. (2018) Innovations from below: Civil society beyond the crisis.
In International Society for Third Sector Research Conference, Free University of
Amsterdam.
Demmers, J., Fernandez Jilberto, A. and Hogenboom, B. (2004) Good Governance
in the Era of Global Neoliberalism. London: Routledge.
DePillis, L. (2018) White House issues 70-page rebuttal to rise of socialist eco-
nomics. Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2018/10/23/economy/
cea-socialism/index.html.
Deseriis, M. (2017) Direct parliamentarianism: An analysis of the politi-
cal values embedded in Rousseau, the ‘Operating System’ of the Five Star
Movement. Jedem – Ejournal of Edemocracy and Open Government, 9 (2): 47–67.
doi: 10.29379/jedem.v9i2.471.
Deudney, D. and Ikenberry, G. J. (2009) The myth of the autocratic revival:
Why liberal democracy will prevail. Foreign Affairs, 88(1): 77–93.
Dey, P. and Teasdale, S. (2015) Deviance, ignorance and the ‘Art of Governing’:
Revisiting post-Foucauldian governmentality studies. In 7th International
Social Innovation Research Conference (ISIRC), York, UK.
Diamond, L. (1996) Is the Third Wave over? Journal of Democracy, 7 (3): 20–37.
doi: 10.1353/jod.1996.0047.
Etter, L. (2017) What happens when the government uses Facebook as a weapon?
Bloomberg Business Week, 7 December. Retrieved from www.bloomberg.com/
news/features/2017-12-07/how-rodrigo-duterte-turned-facebook-into-a-
weapon-with-a-little-help-from-facebook.
Faye, J. (1996) Le Siecle des Ideologies. Paris: Arman Colin.
76 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Ferlie, E., Fitzgerald, L. and Pettigrew, A. (1996) The New Public Management in
Action. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Fisher, W. (1982) Romantic democracy, Ronald Reagan, and presidential
heroes. Western Journal of Speech Communication, 46 (3): 299–310. doi:
10.1080/10570318209374088.
Flinders, M. (2015) The problem with democracy. Parliamentary Affairs, 69 (1):
181–203. doi: 10.1093/pa/gsv008.
Flinders, M. and Wood, M. (2014) Depoliticisation, governance and the state.
Policy & Politics, 42 (2): 135–49. doi: 10.1332/030557312x655873.
Flood, A. (2016) ‘Post-truth’ named word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries.
The Guardian, 15 November. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/
books/2016/nov/15/post-truth-named-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-
dictionaries.
Forket, K. (2014) The new moralism: Austerity, silencing and debt morality.
Soundings, (56): 41–530.
Forster, R. (2018) How Barcelona’s smart city strategy is giving ‘power to the
people’. Retrieved from https://cities-today.com/power-to-the-people/.
Foucault, M. (1991) Governmentality. In G. Burchell, C. Gordon and P. Miller
(eds), The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press. pp. 87–104.
Foucault, M. and Sheridan, A. (1979) Discipline and Punish. London: Penguin
Books.
Foucault, M., Martin, L., Gutman, H. and Hutton, P. (1982) Technologies of the
Self. Amherst, MA: University of Massachusetts Press.
Friedman, U. (2017) What is a populist? And is Donald Trump one? The
Atlantic, 27 February. Retrieved from www.theatlantic.com/international/
archive/2017/02/what-is-populist-trump/516525/
Fuchs, C. (2018) Digital Demagogue. London: Pluto Press.
Fukuyama, F. (1989) The end of history? The National Interest, (16): 3–18.
Fung, A. (2004) Empowered Participation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Fung, A. (2016) Our desperate need to save US democracy from our-
selves. The Hill, 7 December. Retrieved from https://thehill.com/blogs/
pundits-blog/presidential-campaign/309232-our-desperate-need-to-save-
american-democracy-from.
Fung, A., Graham, M. and Weil, D. (2007) Full Disclosure: The Perils and Promise
of Transparency. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Ganuza, E. and Baiocchi, G. (2018) The power of ambiguity: How participatory
budgeting travels the globe. Retrieved from www.publicdeliberation.net/
jpd/vol8/iss2/art8/.
Gendron, G. (2017). Quartiers populaires: Macron, chasseur de têtes. Libération,
30 March.
Giddens, A. (1984) The Constitution of Society. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Gilbert, J. (2013) What kind of thing is ‘neoliberalism’? New Formations, 80 (80):
7–22. doi: 10.3898/newf.80/81.introduction.2013.
Glynos, J. and Howarth, D. (2008) Logics of Critical Explanation in Social and
Political Theory. London: Routledge.
 REFERENCES 77

Gramsci, A. and Hoare, Q. (1971) Selections from the Prison Notebooks of Antonio
Gramsci. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
Grint, K. (2005) Leadership: Limits and Possibilities. London/Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Harari, Y. (2018) Why technology favors tyranny. The Atlantic, October. Retrieved
from www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/10/yuval-noah-harari-
technology-tyranny/568330/.
Haraway, D. ([1985] 2016) A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology and social-
ist feminism in the late twentieth century. In Manifestly Haraway. University
of Minnesota Press. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/y7lhog6s.
Harvey, D. (2005) A Brief History of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hendrickson, C. and Galston, W. (2017) Why are populists winning online?
Social media reinforces their anti-establishment message. Brookings, 28 April.
Retrieved from https://www.brookings.edu/blog/techtank/2017/04/28/why-
are-populists-winning-online-social-media-reinforces-their-anti-establishment-
message/.
Henry, Z. (2017). How Emmanuel Macron aims to make France a “Startup
Nation”.. Inc., 15 June .
Herszenhorn, D. (2018) Congress approves $700 billion Wall Street bailout.
New York Times, 3 October. Retrieved from www.nytimes.com/2008/10/03/
business/worldbusiness/03iht-bailout.4.16679355.html.
Hester, H. (2018) Xenofeminism. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Hickey, S. and Mohan, G. (2005) Relocating participation within a radi-
cal politics of development. Development and Change, 36 (2): 237–62. doi:
10.1111/j.0012-155x.2005.00410.x.
Hild, M. (2007) Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists. Athens, GA:
University of Georgia Press.
Hoover, K. (1987) The rise of conservative capitalism: Ideological tensions
within the Reagan and Thatcher Governments. Comparative Studies in Society
and History, 29 (2): 245. doi: 10.1017/s0010417500014493.
Howard, M. (2001) E-government across the globe: How will ‘e’ change govern-
ment. E-Government, 90: 80.
Howarth, D. (2000) Discourse. Buckingham: Open University Press.
Hughes, J. (2004) Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic Societies Must Respond to the
Redesigned Human of the Future. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
Huntington, S. (1993) The clash of civilizations? Foreign Affairs, 72 (3): 22. doi:
10.2307/20045621.
Illing. S. (2018) Why capitalism won’t survive without socialism, Vox, 4 July. Retrived
from https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/7/25/15998002/eric-
weinstein-capitalism-socialism-revolution.
Jackson, B. and Parry, K. (2011) A Very Short, Fairly Interesting and Reasonably
Cheap Book about Studying Leadership, 2nd edn. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.
Jenson, J. and Harrison, D. (2013) Social innovation research in the
European Union: approaches, findings and future directions. In European
Commission (ed.), Policy Review. Luxembourg: Publication Office of the
European Union.
78 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Kahn, R. and Kellner, D. (2004) New Media and internet activism: From
the ‘Battle of Seattle’ to blogging. New Media & Society, 6 (1): 87–95. doi:
10.1177/1461444804039908.
Kattel, R. and Mergel, I. (2018) Is Estonia the Silicon Valley of digital govern-
ment? UCL IIPP Blog, 28 September. Retrieved from https://medium.com/
iipp-blog/is-estonia-the-silicon-valley-of-digital-government-bf15adc8e1ea.
Keane, J. (2011) Monitory democracy. In S. Alonso, J. Keane and W. Merkel (eds),
The Future of Representative Democracy. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press. pp. 212–35.
Khondker, H. (2011) Role of the New Media in the Arab Spring. Globalizations,
8 (5): 675–9. doi: 10.1080/14747731.2011.621287.
King, C., Stivers, C. and Box, R. (1998) Government Is Us. London: Sage.
Kirzner, I. M. (1999) Creativity and/or alertness: A reconsideration of the
Schumpeterian entrepreneur. The Review of Austrian Economics, 11(1–2): 5–17.
Kitcher, P. (2010) The climate change debate. Science, 328: 1230–4.
Krahnke, K., Giacalone, R. and Jurkiewicz, C. (2003) Point–counterpoint:
Measuring workplace spirituality. Journal of Organizational Change
Management, 16 (4): 396–405. doi: 10.1108/09534810310484154.
Laclau, E. (1996). Emancipation(s). New York: Verso.
Laclau, E. (2007) On Populist Reason. New York: Verso.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1986) Hegemony and Socialist Strategy. London: Verso.
Laclau, E. and Mouffe, C. (1987) Post-Marxism without apologies. New Left
Review, I166.
Latour, B. (2005) Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Leibetseder, B. (2011) A critical review on the concept of social technology.
Social Technologies, 1 (1): 7–24.
Lin, S. (2018) How Taiwan’s online democracy may show future of humans
and machines. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 August. Retrieved from www.smh.
com.au/technology/how-taiwan-s-online-democracy-may-show-future-of-
humans-and-machines-20180809-p4zwe1.html.
Ma, A. (2018) China has started ranking citizens with a creepy ‘social credit’
system – here’s what you can do wrong, and the embarrassing, demean-
ing ways they can punish you. Business Insider, 29 October. Retrieved from
http://uk.businessinsider.com/china-social-credit-system-punishments-and-
rewards-explained-2018-4.
Macron, E. (2017) Révolution. Paris: Pocket
Magatti, M. (2017) Cambio di paradigma: uscire dalla crisi pensando il futuro.
Milan: Feltrinelli Editore.
Mann, S. and Ferenbok, J. (2013) New Media and the power politics of sous-
veillance in a surveillance-dominated world. Surveillance & Society, 11 (1/2):
18–34. doi: 10.24908/ss.v11i1/2.4456.
Marchart, O. (2007) Post-Foundational Political Thought. Edinburgh: Edinburgh
University Press.
Marx, K. ([1859] 1977) A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. Moscow:
Progress Publishers.
 REFERENCES 79

McCarty, N., Poole, K. and Rosenthal, H. (2015) Political Bubbles. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Meijer, A. (2012) The Do It Yourself State. Information Polity, 17 (3,4): 303–14.
doi: 10.3233/ip-2012-000283.
Meijer, A. (2016) Coproduction as a structural transformation of the public sec-
tor. International Journal of Public Sector Management, 29 (6): 596–611. doi:
10.1108/ijpsm-01-2016-0001.
Meijer, A. (2018) Datapolis: A public governance perspective on ‘Smart Cities’.
Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, 1 (3): 195–206. E-pub
ahead of print doi: 10.1093/ppmgov/gvx017.
Meikle, G. (2014) Future Active. New York: Routledge.
Mergel, I., Rethemeyer, R.K. and Isett, K. (2016) Big data in public affairs. Public
Administration Review, 76 (6): 928–37.
Merica, D. (2017) Clinton to lauch ‘resistance’ PAC. CNN politics, 4 May.
Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2017/05/04/politics/clinton-pac-
resistance-trump/index.html.
Meynaud, J. (1969) Technocracy. New York: Free Press.
Miles, S. (1998) Consumerism as a Way of Life. London: Sage.
Miller, C.C. (2008) How Obama’s internet campaign changed politics.
New York Times, 7 November. Retrieved from https://bits.blogs.nytimes.
com/2008/11/07/how-obamas-internet-campaign-changed-politics/.
Mintz, S. (1986) Sweetness and Power. New York: Penguin Books.
Mirowski, P. (2013) Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste. London: Verso.
Mounk, Y. (2018) The People vs. Democracy: Why Our Freedom Is in Danger and
How to Save It. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Mudde, C. (2013) Are Populists Friends or Foes of Constitutionalism? Policy Brief,
The Social and Political Foundations of Constitutions. The Foundation for
Law, Justice and Society, Oxford University. Retrieved from https://ora.ox.ac.
uk/objects/uuid:fc657de0-ab0c-4911-8d2b-646101599b65.
Mulgan, G., Tucker, S., Ali, R. and Sanders, B. (2007) Social Innovation: What
it is, Why it Matters and How it can be Accelerated. Skoll Centre for Social
Entrepreneurship. Retrieved from http://eureka.sbs.ox.ac.uk/761/1/Social_
Innovation.pdf.
Munro, I. (2017) An interview with Snowden’s lawyer: Robert Tibbo on whistle-
blowing, mass surveillance and human rights activism. Organization, 25 (1):
106–22. doi: 10.1177/1350508417726548.
Nabatchi, T. and Leighninger, M. (2015) Public Participation for 21st Century
Democracy. Oxford: Wiley.
Nineham, C. (2017) How the Establishment Lost Control. Alresford: Zero
Books.
O’Neil, C. (2016) Weapons of Math Destruction. Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Ospina, S. and Foldy, E. (2015) Enacting collective leadership in a shared-power
world. In J. Perry and R. Christensen (eds), Handbook of Public Administration.
San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Peters, B.G. (2016) Governance and the media: Exploring the linkages. Policy &
Politics, 44 (1): 9–22.
80 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Phillis, J., Deiglmeier, K. and Miller, D. (2008) Rediscovering social innovation.

Stanford Social Innovation Review, Fall.
Pickard, S. (2017) How Momentum got Britain’s youth interested in politics.
LSE Blog, 5 December.
Pollitt, C. and Bouckaert, G. (2017) Public Management Reform: A Comparative
Analysis Into the Age of Austerity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Porter, M.E. and Kramer, M.R. (2011) The big idea: Creating shared value.
Harvard Business Review, 89 (1): 2–17.
Postman, N. (2009) Technopoly. New York: Random House.
Powell, J. (1996) The multiple self: Exploring between and beyond modernity
and postmodernity. Minnesota Law Review, 81.
Reyes (2012) Those Students Again? State-civil society relations during student
mobilisations in Chile in 2006 and 2011’. In B. Cannon and P. Kirby (eds)
Civil Society and the State in Left-Led Latin America: Challenges and Limitations
to Democratization. London: Zed Books. pp. 94–111.
Rhodes, R. A. W. (1996) The new governance: Governing without government.
Political studies, 44(4): 652–67.
Rhodes, C. and Bloom, P. (2018) The trouble with charitable billionaires. The
Guardian – The Long Read, 24 May. Retrieved from www.theguardian.com/
news/2018/may/24/the-trouble-with-charitable-billionaires-philanthro
capitalism.
Roberts, A. (2011) The Logic of Discipline: Global Capitalism and the Architecture of
Government. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Roberts, A. (2016) Four Crises of American Democracy: Representation, Mastery,
Discipline, Anticipation. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Robertson, R. (1995) Glocalization: Time–space and homogeneity–heterogeneity.
Global Modernities, 2: 25–45.
Sanders, B., with Gutman, H. (2015) An Outsider in the White House. New York:
Verso.
Schumpeter, Joseph A. ([1942] 1950) Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. New
York: Harper and Row.
Schwab, K. (2016) The Fourth Industrial Revolution. Geneva: World Economic
Forum.
Shuster, S. (2016) The Populists. Time Magazine, 8 December. Retrieved from
http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-populism/.
Skocpol, T. and Williamson, V. (2016) The Tea Party and the Remaking of
Republican Conservatism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Smith, D. (2018) ‘Trumpwashing’: the danger of turning the Republican resist-
ance into liberal heroes. The Guardian, 19 September. Retrieved from www.
theguardian.com/us-news/2018/sep/19/trumpwashing-republican-resistance-
trump-dangers-history.
Smith, J. (2001) Globalizing resistance: The Battle of Seattle and the future of
social movements. Mobilization: An International Quarterly, 6 (1): 1–19.
Soriano, R. and Nunes, D. (2017) Transforming society as capitalism crum-
bles: lessons from Brazil’s Peasant Movement. In These Times, 14 September.
Retrieved from http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/20521/Brazil-MST-
Landless-Workers-Peasants-coup-capitalism.
 REFERENCES 81

Spicer, A. and Fleming, P. (2007) Intervening in the inevitable: Contesting glo-

balization in a public sector organization. Organization, 14(4): 517–41.
Springer, S. (2010). Neoliberal discursive formations: On the contours of sub-
jectivation, good governance, and symbolic violence in posttransitional
Cambodia. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 28(5): 931–50.
Stiglitz, D. (2009) Moving beyond market fundamentalism to a more balanced
economy. Annals of Public and Cooperative Economics, 80 (3): 345–60. doi:
10.1111/j.1467-8292.2009.00389.x.
Taibbi, M. (2013) ‘The Secrets and Lies of the Bailout’, Rolling Stone, 4 January.
Teasdale, S. (2012) What’s in a name? Making sense of social enterprise dis-
courses. Public Policy and Administration, 27(2): 99–119.
Thomas, J.C. and Streib, G. (2005) E-democracy, E-commerce, and E-research:
Examining the electronic ties between citizens and governments.
Administration & Society, 37 (3): 259–80.
Townsend, A.M. (2013) Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers, and the Quest for a
New Utopia. New York: WW Norton & Company.
Townshend, J. (2004) Laclau and Mouffe’s hegemonic project: The story so far.
Political Studies, 52 (2): 269–88. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9248.2004.00479.x.
Tsagarousianou, R., Tambini, D. and Bryan, C. (2002) Cyberdemocracy: Technology,
Cities and Civic Networks. London: Routledge.
Uitermark, J. and Nicholls, W. (2012) How local networks shape a global move-
ment: Comparing Occupy in Amsterdam and Los Angeles. Social Movement
Studies, 11 (3–4): 295–301.
UN-Habitat (2016) Urbanization and Development: Emerging Futures. World Cities
Report 2016. Nairobi: United Nations Human Settlements Programme.
Vibert, F. (2007) The Rise of the Unelected: Democracy and the New Separation of
Powers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Weiler, M. and Pearce, W. (1992) Reagan and Public Discourse in America (Studies
in Rhetoric and Communication). Tuscaloosa, AL: University of Alabama Press.
Weiner, L. (2018) Labor renaissance in the heartland. Jacobin Magazine, 6 April.
Retrieved from https://jacobinmag.com/2018/04/red-state-teachers-strikes-
walkouts-unions.
Yates, J. S. and Bakker, K. (2014) Debating the ‘post-neoliberal turn’ in Latin
America. Progress in Human Geography, 38(1): 62–90.
Zeleny, M. (2009) Technology and high technology: Support net and barriers to
innovation. Acta Mechanica Slovaca, 13(1): 6–19.
Žižek, S. (1993) Tarrying with the Negative. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
 INDEX

actor network theory, 3 fall of, 28–30, 70

agonism, 70–71 innovation and, 22–28
algorithms, 2–3 Carter, J., 19
Andrejevic, M., 3 Castells, M., 26
anti-elitism, 30, 35–40, 47–48, 56 Cederström, C. and Spicer, A., 28
anti-globalisation protests, 52 China, 46
Arab Spring, 56 Chomsky, N., 25
The Atlantic (magazine), 1 Citizen Cyborg (Hughes), 69
Atlas Shrugged (Rand), 21 civic technologies (Civtech), 68–69
austerity, 32 climate change, 58
authoritarian leadership, 39–41 Clinton, B., 24
Clinton, H., 42
Badiou, A., 13 Cold War, 7, 8
Barber, B., 7–8 Conservative capitalism, 20–21
Barcelona, 59 Copernican Revolution, 13
Beaumont, P., 56 Corbyn, J., 54–55
Beckett, F., 24 ‘Cyborg Manifesto’ (Haraway), 66
Beynon, H., 23
big data, 1–3, 52, 68 Dallyn, S., 14
biopolitics, 59 Davies, W., 67
Black Lives Matter movement, 58–59 Demmers, J., 27
Blair, T., 24 democracy
Bloom, P., 14, 20, 29, 31, 35 capitalist technopoly and, 22–27
Bock, P., 44 e-democracy, 50–52
Bolsonaro, J., 40 erosion of the popular faith in,
Bostrom, N., 69 49–50
Botsman, R., 46 stages of, 62–64
Brandsen, T., 27–28 See also disruptive democracy;
Braverman, H., 25 industrial democracy;
Brazil, 40, 49 techno-democracy
Brown, W., 22–23 democracy 4.0, 62–64
Bush, G. W., 30 demogogic leadership, 34
depoliticization, 24
Cadwalladr, C., 2 deskilling, 25–26
capitalism, 3–4 disruption, 4–5
capitalist technopoly disruptive democracy
concept and origins of, 19–22 as democracy 4.0, 62–64
e-democracy, 22–27 future of, 64–67
84 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

need for, 61–62 inclusion, 63, 64–67

real possibilities of, 5–6, 70–71 industrial democracy, 23, 24, 51, 55, 60
technologies and, 68–70 innovation, 4–5, 22–28. See also social
Duterte, R., 45–46 innovation
intersectionality, 66
e-democracy, 50–52 Italy, 32, 40, 43, 44–45, 58
elitism, 56–58. See also anti-elitism
‘end of history,’ 7 Jenson, J., 16
entertainment, 51–52 Jihad vs. McWorld (Barber), 7–8
Estonia, 50 Jobs, S., 29, 49
Etter, L., 45–46
European Parliament (EP), 65 Kovalik, D., 43
Krahnke, K., 28
Five Star Movement, 40, 58 Kushner, J., 40–41
Flinders, M., 26, 51
Forbes (magazine), 65 Labour and Monopoly Capital
Forket, K., 32 (Braverman), 25
Foucault, M., 10, 14–15, 25–26, 59 Lacan, J., 39
France, 43–44 Laclau, E., 11, 13, 14, 15, 34–35, 70
free market, 19–22 Latin America, 30, 50
Friedman, U., 41 leadership, 57
Fukuyama, F., 7 Leibetseder, B., 10
Lin, S., 68
Galston, W., 41 Luddite philosophy, 1–2
Gates, B., 29, 49
Gates, K., 3 m-voting, 59
gerrymandering, 52 Ma, A., 46
Gilbert, J., 22 Macron, E., 43–44
Global Financial Crisis, 17, 31–33, 42 market fundamentalism, 19–20
Glynos, J., 13 Marx, K., 12
good governance, 27 Marxism, 4
Gramsci, A., 4, 12–13, 17 Merica, D., 42
grassroots movements, 55 Meynaud, J., 29
Grillo, B., 40 Mirowski, P., 31–32
Mouffe, C., 11, 13, 14, 15, 70–71
Harari, Y., 1, 3 Mulgan, G., 16
Haraway, D., 66 Musk, E., 49–50
Harrison, D., 16
Harvey, D., 26–27 neoliberal capitalism, 19–22. See also
Hawking, S., 1 capitalist technopoly
hegemony, 9–12, 14–15, 70 network society, 26
Hendrickson, C., 41 New Public Management, 24
Hester, H., 67 nihilism, 35
Howarth, D., 11, 13 nostalgia, 47
Hughes, J., 69
Obama, B., 52–53
identity politics, 66 Ocasio-Cortez, A., 65
Illing. S., 7 Occupy Movement, 52
 INDEX 85

openness, 64–67 South Korea, 59

operations, 14–15 Spain, 59
Springer, S., 27
Panama Papers, 57 Stanford Center for Social
Pearce, W., 23 Innovation, 16
‘the people,’ 33–35. See also populism; Stiglitz, J., 19–20
techno-populism SuperIntelligence (Bostrom), 69
philanthropic executives, 50 surveillance, 45
Philippines, 45–46
Phillis, J., 16 Taibbi, M., 33
Pickard, S., 55 Taiwan, 68
Pink Tide, 30 Tang, A., 68
political logics, 13 Tea Party, 36
populism, 5–6, 33–35, 37–38, 41. techno-civilisations, 7–9
See also techno-populism techno-democracy
‘post-truth,’ 38 elitism and, 56–58
Postman, N., 21–22 key elements of, 53
Powell, J., 66 opportunities and challenges of,
59–60
Rand, A., 21 present and future possibilities of,
Reagan, R., 19, 20–21 53–54, 58–59, 71
‘the real,’ 39 as renewal, 54–56
red state rebellion, 55 rise of, 52–53
Renzi, M., 43 vs. techno-populism, 5–6, 53, 70
reskilling, 29 techno-politics, 6, 15–17, 70
Rhodes, C., 29 techno-populism
anti-elitism and, 36, 37–39, 40,
Sanders, B., 54–55 47–48, 56
Schumpeter, J. A., 4 authoritarian leadership and, 39–41
Schwab, K., 62 challenges of, 47–48
science, 58 origins of, 35–37
Shuster, S., 33 popular control and, 45–46
Snowden, E., 57, 64–65 rise of, 37–39
social democratic left, 54–55, 63 vs. techno-democracy, 5–6, 53, 70
social entrepreneurs, 28 technocracy and, 41–45
social equality, 63 technocracy, 29, 41–45
social innovation, 16 technological determinism, 2–3
social justice, 27–28 technology
social logics, 13 cyclical nature of, 3–5
social media hegemony and, 9–12, 14–15
anti-Trump ‘resistance’ and, 42 as socially innovative or politically
democracy and, 1–2 disruptive, 4–5, 10, 12–15
techno-democracy and, 54–55 views on, 1–3
techno-populism and, 35–36, 38, 40, technopoly, 21–22. See also capitalist
41, 45–46 technopoly
War on Terror and, 8 Thatcher, M., 19, 20–21, 23
social technologies, 10–12, 14–15 ‘thin’ ideologies, 41
sousveillance, 45 Tibbo, R., 64–65
86 DISRUPTIVE DEMOCRACY

Time (magazine), 33 techno-populism in, 36

Townsend, A.M., 2 ‘Trumpwashing’ in, 42–43
Townshend, J., 11
trans-humanism, 69 virtual power, 67
transparency, 57 ‘visionary’ entrepreneurs, 21, 29, 49–50
tribalism, 47–48 voter suppression, 52
trickle down economics, 21 vTaiwan, 68
Trump, D., 40–41
‘Trumpwashing,’ 42–43, 58 Wall Street (film), 21
Twitter, 40 War on Terror, 8–9, 14
Weiler, M., 23
Ukraine, 50 Weiner, L., 55
United Kingdom, 19, 20–21, 54–55 Weinstein, E., 7
United States welfare state, 19, 23–24, 55–56, 60, 63
anti-elitism in, 30 WikiLeaks, 57
e-democracy in, 50 wildcat strikes, 55
financial crisis and, 32–33 workplace, 51
gerrymandering and voter
suppression in, 52 Xenofeminism (Hester), 67
neoliberal capitalism in, 19, 20–21
rise of techno-democracy in, 52–53 Zeleny, M., 5
social democratic left in, 54–55 Žižek, S., 13–14