The political ideas underpinning political distrust: analysing four types of anti-politics

Anti-politics has emerged as an important concept for analysing the effects of distrust on liberal democratic politics. However, it is unclear why democrats should trust individuals who distrust politics to help them in renewing democracy. This article addresses this puzzle by defining four types of anti-politics: technocratic, elitist, populist and participatory. It then compares the political thought of four democratic thinkers associated with each type, to discern the extent to which they are ‘productive’ or ‘unproductive’ for representative democracy. The article argues that participatory and technocratic types of anti-politics, illustrated by the thought of Carole Pateman and, to a lesser extent, Friedrich Hayek, are productive for representative democracy because they prompt reflexivity in how representative institutions work. By contrast, populist and elitist types of anti-politics, illustrated by the thought of Ernesto Laclau and Joseph Schumpeter, are less productive. The article concludes that scholars need to carefully discern the logic underlying populist and technocratic ‘solutions’ to our contemporary democratic crisis because those solutions can themselves be advocated by ‘false friends’ who are unreflexive about what should be considered ideal sources of ‘expert knowledge’ or ‘popular will’.