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Technopopulism
Technopopulism
The New Logic of Democratic Politics
CHRISTOPHER J. BICKERTON
AND
CARLO INVERNIZZI ACCETTI
1
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
United Kingdom
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries
© Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti 2021
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2021
Impression: 1
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted
by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics
rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the
above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the
address above
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer
Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Data available
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020951571
ISBN 978–0–19–880776–6
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198807766.001.0001
Printed and bound by
CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon, CR0 4YY
Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and
for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials
contained in any third party website referenced in this work.
Pour Ema et Mati
A mia madre,
Se’ tanto grande e tanto vali
Che qual vuol grazia e a te non ricorre,
Sua disianza vuol volar senz’ali.
Acknowledgements
This book has been a long time in the making. It began as a series of conversations
between us in 2012. We were both living in Paris at the time and our shared
interest in the relationship between technocracy and populism was explored in the
cafés and bars that lie between the Institut d’Etudes Politiques and the Saint-
Sulpice Church. The conversation evolved into an intellectual project and even-
tually a book. The bulk of the work has been done once we had left Paris, one of us
to New York and the other to Cambridge.
It is customary in shared writing projects of this kind to divide up the work and
to think in terms of ‘my’ chapters and ‘your’ chapters. This is not the way we have
written this book. The contents were worked out in long days of intensive
discussions, once in Cambridge and a few times in New York. The job of drafting
one or another chapter was divided up, but subsequent revisions have made
it impossible to really identify any part of the book as ‘mine’ or ‘yours’. This
experience of thinking and writing together has been exhilarating. Our first and
principal acknowledgement is to each other and to our shared willingness to push
the limits of our thinking. We have aspired above all to reach what we felt was the
right argument, wherever that might lead us.
We would like to thank Dominic Byatt at Oxford University Press, who has
been an exemplary editor. He moved quickly at the beginning to give us the
encouragement we needed. He then gave us the time to develop our ideas, pushing
gently and eventually letting us move along at our own pace. The book would not
have been possible had it not been for his support and (near infinite) patience over
the years.
The ideas in this book have been articulated by us in a number of different
settings. At times we presented them together, at other times separately. We would
like to thank the following colleagues and institutions: a conference at the London
School of Economics, organized by Lea Ypi and Jonthan White, where we
presented the earliest version of our argument; the Centre for European Studies
at Sciences Po, Paris, and their invitation to present our ideas at the Centre’s
general seminar, where we received stern but encouraging comments from Colin
Hay; the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the
University of Cambridge, where the book’s main argument was presented as
part of the departmental seminar series; the Hertie School of Government in
Berlin and Claus Offe and Ira Katznelson for their invitation there; the Moynihan
Institute of Global Affairs at Syracuse University and Glyn Morgan for his
invitation; the Executive Vice-Rectorship of the University of Guadalajara and
viii 
Melissa Amezcua Yepiz for her invitation; the Yale University Political Theory
Workshop and Giulia Oskian for her invitation; the Rifkind Center for the
Humanities and the Arts at The City College of New York and Mikhal Dekel
and Andreas Killen for their invitation; the Thomae Smithi Academae meeting at
Queens’ College, Cambridge; and the European politics seminar at the Centre for
European Studies, Harvard University, and Art Goldhammer in particular for his
invitation.
We are very fortunate to have a group of generous colleagues and friends who
accepted to participate in a manuscript workshop organized at The City College of
New York in February 2020. This workshop was a remarkable experience of
intellectual exchange which served to iron out a great number of imperfections
in the manuscript. It remains far from perfect, but the workshop was crucial in
helping us refine and more clearly articulate our claims. We would like to thank
Sheri Berman, Pablo Bustinduy Amador, Sandipto Dasgupta, Nicolas Guilhot,
Rajan Menon, Jonathan White, and Ian Zuckerman for their participation in that
workshop. We would also like to thank a group of scholars who came together in
May 2019, once again at City College, to discuss our first conceptual chapter,
alongside their own work on related themes. These are Carlos de la Torre, Lisa
Disch, Giulia Oskian, Maria Paula Saffon, and Nadia Urbinati.
Finally, as with any book, we have each incurred a long list of personal debts.
I (Christopher Bickerton) would like to thank Philip Cunliffe, Alex Gourevitch,
Lee Jones, and Peter Ramsay for their intellectual input into the ideas developed in
this book. I would also like to thank my brilliant group of doctoral students, some
of whom have been there since the writing on this book began. Jose Piquer, Daniel
Smith, and Anton Jäger have been a great source of support, and it has been a
delight to observe the development of their own projects which intersect in
various ways with some of the themes of this book. I would like to thank
Richard Nickl for introducing me to The Lime Works by Thomas Bernard,
which proved the best antidote to writer’s block, and to Daniel Beer, for the
conversations towards the end of the writing process.
The book itself was finished during the Coronavirus lockdown in the spring of
2020. Finishing books are painful at the best times. This one was finished through
bouts of writing in the early morning, before anyone was awake. Amidst all the
worry and anxiety, my abiding memory of these days are the long walks with Mati
through the empty city of Cambridge, animated by stories of treasure hunts and
fairies that would last for hours, and the sound of Ema and Mati conducting
science experiments in the back garden, as their laughter was joined by the sounds
of the birds in the park beyond. My greatest debt is to my wife, Ema, and daughter
Mati, for the never-ending joy they bring to my life.
I (Carlo Invernizzi Accetti) would first of all like to thank my department
colleagues at The City College of New York for being the best thing that happened
to me since the beginning of my professional career; and in particular Richard
 ix
Bernstein for being a true friend, as well as a great colleague and neighbour, for
sharing his love of books with me, and being always willing to engage in any
Pindaric flight of fancy, in his simultaneously playful and serious way; Bruce
Cronin for his infectious good humour and for being the backbone of our
department, with his elastic bands and questionable jokes; Rajan Menon for
being a mentor as well as a colleague, his enduring support and wisdom, as well
as probing comments on an earlier version of the manuscript, which helped clarify
it in decisive ways; and Dan DiSalvo for being a great Chair, as well as a good
friend, a constant source of inspiration and advice, and a model in the art of living.
Other colleagues and friends I owe an enduring debt of gratitude to, for sharing
their ideas with me and for constant support and advice, include: Sheri Berman,
François Carrel Billiard, Lisa Disch, Nicolas Guilhot, Florence Haegel, Lavie
Margolin, Jan-Werner Müller, Nadia Urbinati, and Jonathan White.
Amongst my personal friends, I would like to thank Pablo Bustinduy Amador,
Joshua Craze, Sandipto Dasgupta, Luca Falciola, Zelia Gallo, Alex Gourevitch,
Amana Fontanella-Khan, James Fontanella-Khan, Clara Mattei, Giulia Oskian,
Federico Poggianti, Francesco Ronchi, Tom Theuns, and Fabio Wolkenstein for
the infinite conversations which are the true ground and intellectual lifeblood of
all the ideas I have contributed to this book. I would also like to thank both my
parents, Emanuele Invernizzi and Consuelo Accetti, for their undying love and
guidance, which is more than a compass and a drive: it feels like a set of wings, as
Dante explains much better in the verse I lifted from him to dedicate the book to
my mother. Finally, I thank Brittany Huckabee, the woman I love, for sharing
virtually every moment in the writing of this book with me, for contributing
decisively to many of its ideas, but also for the warmth and joy you have brought
to my life, and the promise of more.
Christopher J. Bickerton
Cambridge, UK
Carlo Invernizzi Accetti
New York
Contents
Introduction 1
1. The Concept of Technopopulism 17
2. Varieties of Technopopulism 39
3. The Origins of Technopopulism 88
4. The Consequences of Technopopulism 144
5. Normative Reflections on Technopopulism 169
Conclusion: Beyond Technopopulism? 198
Bibliography 219
Index 243
Introduction
We shall never understand politics until we know what the struggle

is about.
Schattschneider (1960: vii)
You have a new dimension in politics today . . . It is not as easy as when

you hasd a left-right scale on which you could plot political choices. It is
not necessarily a chaotic system, but a new political landscape is taking
shape . . . We are going to see it for many years.
Hans Wallmark, centre-right Swedish MP,
quoted in Hall (2019)
Making Sense of the Present
What’s wrong with contemporary democracy? That something is going on should

be evident to all. Many long-established parties are in terminal decline. Others
have disappeared altogether. Party systems are being transformed beyond recog-
nition as new political actors and party types emerge. The lines of conflict and
struggle that structured political competition appear increasingly blurred. Doubts
proliferate about whether existing democratic regimes are able to sustain their
basic values. Citizens are becoming increasingly dissatisfied, not just with specific
political actors and organizations, but also with the democratic order itself.
The idea that democracy is somehow in ‘crisis’ has become commonplace.
However, the categories used to describe and interpret this crisis have so far
remained primarily negative, in that they focus on what is fading away or being
actively undermined. We have been told that we live in a ‘post-democratic’ age
(Crouch 2003), that ‘the age of party democracy has passed’ (Mair 2013), and that
representative democracy is being ‘disfigured’ (Urbinati 2014). According to
some, democracy may even be ‘dying’ (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018) or close to its
‘end’ (Runciman 2018).
If a crisis signals the transition from one state of affairs to another, then it
necessarily means leaving something behind. This proliferation of negative images
is therefore understandable and highlights a number of important tendencies
at work in contemporary democratic regimes. What remains is the challenge of
delineating the contours of the new type of politics that is replacing what is being
Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics. Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti,
Oxford University Press (2021). © Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198807766.003.0001
2 
left behind. This book’s ambition is to develop a set of positive conceptual

categories for understanding the present crisis of democracy. We do not mean
positive in the sense of ‘good’ rather than ‘bad’ but in the sense of describing and
explaining what does exist and how it works.
What we are observing is neither the ‘end’ nor the ‘death’ of democracy but
rather a transformation in the logic of political competition within existing
democratic regimes. By and large, democratic orders have proved more resilient
than some of the direst predictions made over the past few years would have had
it. This is true at least in the minimal sense that elections and basic rights remain
mostly in place, and it seems possible to replace incumbents by constitutionally
guaranteed means. Nevertheless, the way in which political actors operate within
these constitutional frameworks, and the sorts of outcomes generated by our
political systems, have been profoundly transformed.
For most of the history of modern democracy, political competition was
structured primarily by the left/right ideological divide. This meant that candi-
dates for office competed with one another by proposing alternative visions of the
way in which society ought to be governed, which encapsulated different value
systems and rival interests within it. Although this mode of political competition
has not entirely disappeared, it has been overlain—and to some extent replaced—
by a new logic, whereby candidates for office compete primarily in terms of rival
claims to embody the ‘people’ as a whole and to possess the necessary competence
for translating its will into policy. Populism and technocracy have therefore
become the main structuring poles of contemporary democratic politics.
The relationship between populism and technocracy is not the same as that
between left and right. Since the latter are rooted in conflicting value systems and
interest groups within society, they are substantively at odds with one another. In
contrast, because they abstract from substantive interests and policy commit-
ments, populism and technocracy are better understood as modes of political
action, which can be combined with one another in multiple and creative ways.
Many contemporary political actors and organizations turn out to display the
characteristic features of both. This suggests that the most salient differences
between the main protagonists on the contemporary political scene do not lie in
their substantive ideological profiles but rather in the specific way in which they
combine both populist and technocratic traits with one another.
Two aspects of this overarching thesis are worth highlighting, since they imply
significant transformations in the way contemporary democratic politics—and
especially the role of populism and technocracy within it—are understood. First,
we are suggesting that populism and technocracy should not be seen merely as
characteristic features of a specific category of actors, which can be separated from
and held in opposition to ‘mainstream’ politicians. Instead, they have become
constitutive elements of a new political grammar—or logic—that affects the
behaviour of all political actors in contemporary democratic regimes. As we will
 3
see with reference to many specific examples, even political actors who claim to
want to stand against populism or technocracy (or both), ultimately end up
assuming some of their characteristic features. This is because of the complex
system of political incentives and constraints they are now faced with.
The second important point is that, within this new political logic, populism
and technocracy do not function merely as opposites of one another. Even though
appeals to the popular will and to competence are often rhetorically deployed
against each other, there is also a deep affinity between them, which consists in the
fact that they are both unmoored from the representation of specific values and
interests within society and therefore advance an unmediated conception of the
common good, in the form either of a monolithic conception of the ‘popular will’
or the specific conception of political ‘truth’ technocrats claim to have access to.
This sets both populism and technocracy at odds with the traditional conception
of party democracy as a system of ‘regulated rivalry’ between competing social
interests and values that are all in principle equally legitimate (Rosenblum 2008).
The concept we propose to capture this set of developments is that of techno-
populism, defined as a new logic of political action based on the combination of
populist and technocratic traits. By this we mean that contemporary political
actors face a new system of incentives and constraints which pushes them to adopt
both populist and technocratic modes of discourse and organization, at the same
time as they become increasingly unmoored from the representation of particular
interests and values within society. While this doesn’t necessarily spell the ‘end’ of
democracy as such—since formal democratic procedures remain largely in
place—it profoundly alters their modus operandi, as well as the political outcomes
they lead to.
This book traces the contours of the technopopulist logic, but also sets itself the
task of examining its historical origins, likely consequences, and normative impli-
cations. It provides the first comprehensive theory of technopopulism as the new
structuring logic of contemporary democratic politics.
Combining Populism and Technocracy
We substantiate the overarching theses above with reference to a few illustrative

examples. A political logic as we propose to define it—that is, a system of political
incentives and constraints—is visible principally through its effects. For this
reason, we focus on the discursive patterns and organizational forms adopted by
a number of political actors in our primary area of focus, which is Western
Europe. We also discuss the way in which some of the most long-standing political
parties—such as the British Labour Party—have adapted and changed discursively
and organizationally, in line with the technopopulist political logic. However, the
main focus is on a number of new political parties that are currently in power in
4 
France, Italy, and Spain. The advantage of focusing on relatively new political
parties is that they display the structural conditions that shape contemporary
political action in a purer—and therefore starker—way.
The Italian Five Star Movement (M5S) is a case in point. Founded in 2009 by
the popular Italian blogger and comedian Beppe Grillo, together with the lesser
known media strategist and internet guru, Gianroberto Casaleggio, it quickly
asserted itself as one of the mainstays of contemporary Italian politics. By 2013
it had already obtained the largest share of votes compared to any other national
party, and since 2018 it has consistently participated in government coalitions as a
senior partner—first with the far-right Lega Nord and then with the centre-left
Partito Democratico. From the start, it has been evident to commentators that the
M5S constitutes a novel political phenomenon, which is difficult to characterize in
terms of the traditional left/right divide. It explicitly challenges the relevance of
those conceptual categories, claiming to stand ‘above and beyond’ the left/right
distinction. Both its substantive policy commitments and sociological bases of
support constitute an ‘eclectic mix’ which ‘cuts across traditional ideological
divisions’ (Tronconi 2015).
The label that has been most often employed to describe it is that of ‘populism’,
since the M5S does indeed display many characteristic features of the way this
notion is ordinarily defined—from the antagonistic rhetoric opposing ‘the people’
to an evil and corrupt ‘elite’ up to the concentration of power within a leadership
figure claiming a direct relationship of embodiment with ordinary voters that
bypasses ordinary bodies (Mudde 2004; Müller 2016; Urbinati 2019). Yet, another
set of distinctive features that is at the root of the M5S’s recent political success has
so far received less attention, namely its distinctively technocratic conception of
politics. This is manifested by its claim to offer more competent and effective
government than traditional political parties, in virtue of the ‘collective intelli-
gence’ it is able to harness through its online decision-making tools. Differently
from traditional political parties, the M5S is not held together by a specific set of
contestable values, nor does it claim to represent the interests of any clearly
identifiable social group. Instead, it presents itself as an instrument for improving
the quality of public policy by relying on the organizational power of the World
Wide Web as a way of pooling the diffuse competence of ordinary citizens
(Bordignon and Ceccarini 2013; Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti 2018).
For this reason, we suggest that the M5S is best understood as manifesting a
particular combination of both populist and technocratic features, which we
describe as amounting to a form of ‘technopopulism from below’. In this particu-
lar manifestation of technopopulism, ordinary citizens are not apprehended as
bearers of subjective interests or values, but rather as carriers of a specific
competence or expertise, which can be put in the service of the rest of society
through the means of the web. It is primarily as individual ‘experts’, capable of
collectively formulating better policy, that the people are opposed to a political
 5
elite, represented as either incompetent or in the service of special interests. In

turn, this formula’s success demonstrates the powerful appeal of a political offer
based on the combination of populist and technocratic elements in the present
political landscape.
Another salient example is Emmanuel Macron’s La République En Marche
(LREM). Although this political movement has both sought to present itself and
often been interpreted as a political nemesis—and indeed a bulwark—against
populist movements such as the Italian M5S, on closer inspection it turns out to
display many of the same characteristic features. LREM was originally created in
March 2016 after its future leader (who had previously served as a Minister in
François Hollande’s Socialist government) launched a ‘Great March’ across
France. This was essentially a ‘fact-finding mission’, through which a tightly
knit group of policy specialists and public opinion experts sought to establish
what the French electorate wanted most. In Macron’s own telling, the two main
findings of this endeavour were that French citizens were deeply dissatisfied with
the ‘political establishment’ and that they were more interested in a set of
‘consensual policy goals’—such as ‘improving living standards’ and ‘preserving
public order and security’—than in pursuing any ideologically connoted political
projects (Macron 2016).
LREM was created as a self-conscious attempt to respond to these two specific
sets of demands. As such, its populist and technocratic traits were constitutive
features of LREM. The populist component is evident in Macron’s claim to run
against the French ‘political establishment’, even though, like many other populist
leaders, he is in reality a member of that same establishment. We also see it
in the high degree of personalization and concentration of power around the
figure of Macron himself. As numerous commentators immediately pointed
out, it was no coincidence that the acronym for LREM’s first incarnation as En
Marche! also corresponded to the initials of its founder and undisputed leader,
Emmanuel Macron. At the same time, Macron has cultivated a characteristic-
ally technocratic image of himself as a competent and effective caretaker of the
common interest, who is capable of ‘achieving results’, uninhibited by any ideo-
logical preconceptions.
LREM’s synthesis between populist and technocratic traits occurs in a rather
different way compared to the Italian M5S. In the latter case, populism and
technocracy are fused together by the goal of harnessing ‘collective intelligence’
through the World Wide Web. In the case of LREM, the synthesis occurs in the
person of Macron himself, who is presented as an embodiment of the French
people’s aspiration for political change while also construed as a competent and
effective ‘doer’, possessing the necessary dynamism and expertise to deliver good
policies. For this reason, we suggest that LREM is best understood as manifesting
a form of ‘technopopulism from above’, which revolves around the leadership
figure of Macron himself, rather than the M5S’s notion of the ‘citizen-expert’.
6 
Nevertheless, the simultaneous electoral success of these two political forces in

Italy and France clearly demonstrates a broader structural tendency for contem-
porary political actors to adopt some combination of both populist and techno-
cratic features, at the expense of more substantive ideological orientations along
the traditional left/right axis.
A third illustrative example is offered by Spain’s Podemos. This is a more
complex case than the other two we have considered because Podemos has a
marked ideological profile on the left/right spectrum. Both its leadership and the
vast majority of its electorate issue from an explicitly left-leaning political
history. Its pattern of alliances—both within the European Parliament and the
Spanish national assembly—confirm its left-leaning orientation. And yet, it is
impossible to understand Podemos’s rise to political prominence since 2014, and
its transformative impact upon the Spanish party system, without taking into
account the strength of its appeal on grounds other than its substantive ideo-
logical commitments.
The party was founded on what its leaders described as a ‘populist hypothesis’.
According to this hypothesis, ‘the traditional ideological categories of “left” and
“right” have become historically exhausted’ and a new dimension of political
confrontation ought to be created between ‘the people’ or ‘democracy’, on one
hand, and ‘elites’ or ‘la casta’ on the other (Errejon 2014). This discursive strategy
was redoubled by a characteristically populist mode of organization, which
revolves around ‘a leadership figure with a high recognition factor’, in Pablo
Iglesias’s own self-description (Iglesias 2015). At the same time, Podemos has
also always cultivated a distinctively technocratic image of itself as a ‘partido de
profesores’ offering competent and pragmatic solutions to Spain’s political prob-
lems (De Azua 2014). This dimension has been manifested most clearly in the
party’s recurrent insistence that its policy proposals are ultimately rooted in
‘common sense’. Podemos went as far as modelling one of its electoral manifesto
programmes on an Ikea catalogue, the message being that the party was in touch
with the habits of ‘ordinary voters’ whilst also offering policies that were as self-
evident as the instructions provided to put a piece of Ikea furniture together. In its
other manifestoes, Podemos emphasized its appeal to competence by asking neutral
‘independent experts’ to validate them (Bickerton and Invernizzi-Accetti 2018).
For this reason, we suggest that Podemos is best understood as a ‘hybrid’ case of
technopopulism, manifesting both a left-leaning political identity and a particular
combination of populist and technocratic elements. In a private communication,
one of the founders of this political movement—the former European political
coordinator and member of the Spanish Parliament, Pablo Bustinduy Amador—
suggested that both these features—i.e. its populist and technocratic traits—were
self-consciously adopted by the party’s leadership because they were thought to be
necessary to stand a chance of gaining political power and therefore implementing
its substantively left-leaning political agenda.
 7
Precisely because of its hybridity, Podemos offers a powerful illustration of the

concrete effects of what we have called the technopopulist logic on the public
discourse and mode of political organization of contemporary contenders for
power. Even a party with the intention of advancing an ideologically connoted
political agenda faces a powerful set of incentives to adopt some combination of
populist and technocratic forms of discourse and modes of political organization.
That is precisely what we mean when we claim that populism and technocracy
have become the constitutive elements of a new political logic, which is in part
replacing and in part superimposing itself on the traditional left/right divide.
The Novelty of Technopopulism
An objection that might be raised at this point is that the phenomenon we are
claiming to uncover is not that novel or surprising. After all, haven’t all contenders
for elected office in the history of modern democracy always claimed to represent
the interests of the ‘people’ as a whole and to possess the necessary competence
for translating its will into policy? Our response is that the apparent ubiquity of
the technopopulist political logic in the present political landscape should not
obscure its historical specificity. If we compare the instances of technopopulism
we have mentioned above with the more traditional ideological parties that
populated the West European political landscape throughout most of the twentieth
century, significant differences emerge.
To begin with, it is worth noting that not all political parties have always
appealed to the ‘people’ as a ground for political legitimacy and electoral support.
Both families of mainstream political parties that dominated the West European
political landscape in the aftermath of the Second World War—i.e. Social
Democrats on the centre-left and Christian Democrats on the centre-right—
construed themselves as the political exponents of a specific part of society: the
working class in the case of Social Democrats and Christians in the case of
Christian Democrats. Both of these party families did sometimes argue that the
particular interests and values of the specific class or group they claimed to
represent also corresponded to the general interest of society as a whole, but this
yielded a very different conception of the general interest compared to the notion
of the ‘popular will’ implicit in populist claims to represent the people as a whole.
As Maurice Duverger noted in his classic discussion of modern mass parties, they
offered a ‘particular interpretation of the common good’, rooted in a specific set of
values and interests, which involves a recognition of the legitimacy of other
competing interpretations (Duverger 1954). In contrast, a hallmark of populist
discourse is the claim to ‘exclusive representation’ of the popular will, which leaves
little or no space for the recognition of the legitimacy of political opponents
(Müller 2016).
8 
Something similar can be said of the currently pervasive appeals to competence

or expertise as grounds for political legitimacy. During the early and middle parts
of the twentieth century, such appeals were far less prominent in political dis-
course than they are today. This was because of the substantive ideological conflict
that existed between traditional mass parties. In a situation in which there is
deep disagreement over the ends of political action, it makes little sense to
present oneself as competent at achieving results or delivering on ‘good’ public
policy. What is at stake, and what is being debated, is precisely what constitutes
‘good’ public policy in the first place. Thus, for a large part of the history of the
twentieth century, claims to competence and expertise only really had traction
in intra-party or coalition struggles, where the main substantive political questions
could be assumed to have been already settled. In appealing to voters at large,
candidates for office tended to present themselves as champions of particular
interests and value systems, and far less as ideologically neutral purveyors of
‘good’ public policy.
The current political salience of claims to competence and expertise is possible
only because of the gradual closure—or at least shrinking—of the ideological
horizon, as fundamental disagreements over the way in which society ought to
be ran have been increasingly marginalized. Like the populist appeals to the
‘people’ as a whole, technocratic claims to competence or expertise as grounds
for political legitimacy could only really become as dominant as they are today to
the extent that ideologically driven conflicts of interest and value receded into the
background.
What we call the technopopulist political logic is therefore a historically specific
phenomenon. In principle, there might always have been an incentive for demo-
cratic political actors to present themselves as representatives of the ‘people’ as a
whole, and to claim to have the necessary competence for translating its will into
policy, but the historical record indicates that this was not the case. When electoral
competition was structured primarily around ideological confrontation, populism
and technocracy were far less salient as modes of political action. What requires
explanation is that today these modes of action have become so omnipresent that
it has become difficult to imagine a time when they were not so. That is precisely
what this book sets out to do.
The Separation of Society and Politics
The explanation we provide for the rise of technopopulism as the main structuring
logic of contemporary democratic politics focuses on the complex evolution of the
relationship between societal divisions and partisan politics over the course of
the past century or so. During the first few decades of the twentieth century—that
is, at the height of what we propose to call the ‘era of the ideological political
 9
logic’—society and politics were tied to one another by a variety of powerful

instances of mediation between them, such as mass parties, but also trade unions,
civic associations, religious organizations, and the information and opinion
media. This was reflected in what Seymour Martin Lispet and Stein Rokkan
have famously called the ‘cleavage structure’ of mid-century European politics:
political parties were effectively the expression of underlying social groups,
defined by differences of interest and value (Lipset and Rokkan 1967).
Over the course of the ensuing decades, this tight relationship of correspond-
ence between societal divisions and partisan politics progressively broke down.
One reason for this was the erosion of the social formations and groups that were
the basis for the established sociopolitical cleavages. This erosion occurred because
of transformations in the economic structure (which undermined the traditional
class distinction between ‘proletariat’ and ‘bourgeoisie’), an overarching process of
secularization (which diminished the salience of the distinction between religious
and non-religious citizens), and a generalized process of cognitive mobilization
(which tended to produce more homogenous national cultures, across previously
distinct localities and socio-economic groups).
The translation of this erosion of social group formations into politics was slow,
uneven, and indirect. Party systems originating in the ideological divisions of the
first few decades of the twentieth century remained ‘frozen’ in place long after the
societies over which they governed had changed profoundly (Lipset and Rokkan
1967: 50). The result of this overarching process of separation between society and
politics was a hollowing out of the existing mechanisms of intermediation between
them. As Richard Katz and Peter Mair famously observed, political parties
responded to their progressive loss of foothold in society by retreating into the
state, colluding rather than competing with one another to share the benefits of
public office (Katz and Mair 1995). Trade unions, religious organizations, and
other civic associations retreated into the private sphere, defending particular
interests and values, but shedding their broader orientation towards the common
good (Putnam 2000). Even though these instances of political mediation
remained, they were increasingly disconnected from each other, exacerbating
the existing chasm between society and politics.
These broad sociopolitical transformations had an important effect on the
incentives and constraints faced by political actors. In the absence of the social
groups and communities defined by their distinctive worldviews, electoral con-
tenders for public office were encouraged to tone down ideological distinctions
and conflicts of value, focusing instead on their capacity to govern ‘responsibly’.
Political parties that do not compete with one another for specific sectors of the
electorate, but rather collude with each other to share the benefits of public office,
are more likely to appear legitimate in the eyes of the electorate if they can claim to
deliver ‘good’ policies. By the same token, however, this process of ‘cartelization’
opened a window of opportunity for political outsiders to gain electoral advantage
10 
by challenging the collusion of mainstream political parties itself through a claim

to representation of the ‘people’ as a whole, set against the self-serving political
elites in office (Katz and Mair 2018).
The germs of the technopopulist logic were therefore present once the distinct-
ive social formations corresponding to ideologically polarized forms of politics
had given way to societies characterized by high levels of individualization,
atomization, and the decline of those organized interests that could mediate the
relationship between individual voters and the exercise of political power. Two
further historical developments nonetheless proved necessary to break the empty
carapace of ideologically driven partisan politics, which had remained ‘frozen’ in
place since the 1920s. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union and the
ensuing end of the Cold War, which substantiated the idea that ‘There Is No
Alternative’ to a market-based economy and a liberal-democratic political system
(Séville 2017a, 2017b). This also deprived many of the Conservative and Christian
Democratic parties of the raison d’être that had effectively converted them into
anti-Communist coalitions during the Cold War (Invernizzi-Accetti 2019). The
second critical juncture was the Great Recession of 2008–11. This elicited a
distinctively technocratic response from the political and economic establishment,
which fed into a broader ‘populist backlash’ by those perceived themselves as
having been taken advantage of in the process (Tooze 2018). The effect of the
Great Recession was to catalyse the technopopulist political logic, providing new
opportunities for mobilization for actors and movements that had no direct
connection to the social world of ideological politics that had been long gone.
The emergence of technopopulism is thus the result of a complex and far-
reaching historical process, which ties together a number of different societal and
political dynamics. In a nutshell, our argument is that technopopulism stems from
an overarching process of separation between society and politics, which has
undermined the mechanisms of intermediation between them. This has led to a
far greater salience of unmediated conceptions of the common good—such as the
populist idea of a unified and monolithic ‘popular will’ and the technocratic idea
that there is an objective political ‘truth’. These are very different claims about the
public or collective interest that prevailed when ideologically driven political
parties structured electoral competition along the lines of conflicting values and
interests within society.
The Unbearable Lightness of Politics
The consequences of this deep political reorganization are equally wide-ranging.

In this book, we focus on four in particular: two that affect the nature of electoral
competition itself and two that concern the relationship between the political
system and society at large. To begin with, we suggest that politicians claiming to
 11
stand for an unmediated conception of the common good are less likely to
recognize the democratic legitimacy of their opponents, compared to politicians
claiming to represent a particular interpretation of it. If one claims to have direct
access to the ultimate ground of political legitimacy, then anybody who happens
to disagree or advance a different interpretation of how society ought to be
governed can only appear to be either mistaken about what the common good
actually consists in, or in the service of special—and therefore illegitimate—
interests. As purveyors of these unmediated conceptions of the common good,
political actors whose appeal rests upon a synthesis of populism and technocracy
are therefore more likely to dismiss their political opponents as politically ignor-
ant or malicious.
The implication is that the rise of technopopulism can be expected to be
accompanied by an increasing conflictuality within political life. Rival contenders
for office increasingly misrecognize each other’s democratic legitimacy and there-
fore attack each other personally, challenging one another’s motivations, grounds
of support, and moral probity. Political rivalry becomes more and more like all-out
enmity. This is a phenomenon that has already been widely observed in contem-
porary democratic regimes in terms of rising levels of ‘affective polarization’ (see, for
instance: Iyengar and Westwood 2015; Hobolt et al. 2018), increasing ‘toxicity’ of
political language and strategy (Ignatieff 2017; Beckett 2018), and a generalized
‘breakdown of traditional forms of cooperation and mutual respect’ between par-
tisan opponents (Drutman 2017).
A second parallel consequence of the rise of technopopulism stems from the
fact that neither populist nor technocratic appeals are in principle tied to any
specific policy agenda. Unmoored from the representation of particular interests
or values within society, they are compatible with all kinds of substantive sets of
policies. This is manifested not only by the fact that recent and contemporary
populists and technocrats have been located on just about any point of the
traditional left/right spectrum, but also (more importantly) by the fact that
technopopulist political actors and organizations have shown themselves to be
markedly more rapid in changing their substantive policy commitments compared
to traditional ideologically driven politicians. Emmanuel Macron, for instance,
began his political career as a Minister in François Hollande’s Socialist govern-
ment, ran his electoral campaign as a ‘radical centrist’, but has since been pursuing
a political agenda that most closely approximates that of the centre-right. The
Italian M5S has swung wildly in its substantive policy commitments, as testified by
its successive coalition alliances with the far-right Lega Nord and the centre-left
Partito Democratico.
As populism and technocracy become the main structuring poles of contem-
porary democratic politics, substantive policy commitments are losing the cen-
trality they previously had in electoral competition. Instead, what matters more is
the specific way in which candidates for office present themselves to the public,
12 
staking out simultaneous claims to competence and popular appeal. A conse-

quence of technopopulism is therefore that seemingly trivial matters, such as the
candidates’ personal qualities, their skill in using the modern means of mass
communication, as well as their track record of ‘success’ in whatever activity
they engaged in before entering into politics, tend to assume centre stage, at the
expense of substantive ideological and policy disputes. This development has been
amply documented in writing on the ‘personalization’ and ‘spectacularization’ of
politics (e.g. Mazzoleni and Schulz 1999; McAllister 2007). The limit point of this
logic is what, following Ilvo Diamanti, we call the ‘politics of doing’; that is, a
politics that ceases to be about what is to be done, and instead becomes more and
more about who does it, how it is done, and ultimately that something is being
done, whatever that ‘something’ may be (Diamanti 2010).
Taking these first two consequences together, one obtains a picture of a politics
that is at once deeply confrontational but also insubstantial, confirming a wide-
spread impression that all the ‘sound and fury’ of contemporary electoral com-
petition ultimately doesn’t amount to much in the way of substantive political
alternatives being presented to the electorate. The idea of an ‘unbearable lightness’
of contemporary democratic politics—first advanced by Tony Judt (2010),
paraphrasing the title of a famous novel by Milan Kundera—captures this
overall effect of the rise of technopopulism on the nature of contemporary electoral
competition.
This description also gives an indication of what we take to be the third main
consequence of the rise of technopopulism, which concerns the perception of the
political system by society at large. It might seem a paradox that precisely as
politicians claim to represent the interests of the ‘people’ as a whole and to have
the necessary competence for translating its will into policy, electors appear to be
increasingly distrustful of them, and more and more dissatisfied with their work.
Yet, it is another widely documented fact that levels of trust in politicians and of
satisfaction with the quality of democratic representation have been declining
markedly over the past couple of decades—i.e. over the same time span during
which populism and technocracy have emerged as the main structuring poles of
contemporary democratic politics (e.g. Foa and Mounk 2016; Foa et al. 2020).
One way of interpreting these findings is to suppose that seething democratic
discontent is a cause of the rise of populism and technocracy as the main
structuring poles of contemporary democratic politics. However, there is also
reason to believe that the rise of technopopulism may contribute in further
exacerbating the widespread sense of political dissatisfaction. This generates a
feedback loop whereby, instead of abetting or contrasting the crisis of confidence
in politicians, technopopulism ultimately proves to deepen it further. The reason
has to do with an important—though underappreciated—insight from democratic
theory, which is another key component of our analysis of the present crisis of
democracy. Namely, that instances of political mediation between society and the
 13
state—such as political parties, but also trade unions, religious organizations, and
other civic associations, as well the information and opinion media—play an
essential role in giving individual citizens the sense that they are being adequately
represented. The disproportion between individual interests and values, on one
hand, and those of the collectivity as a whole, on the other, is such that the former
can only get a sense that they are adequately represented within the latter if they
band together in intermediary bodies to act politically upon it. To the extent
that both populism and technocracy stem from and further exacerbate a gener-
alized crisis of these intermediary bodies, they therefore feed back into the
widespread sense of democratic discontent, of which they are at least in part also
an expression.
From this, we identify a final consequence of technopopulism. To the extent
that technopopulism undermines the sense of effective democratic representation
of the citizenry at large, it affects the ultimate grounds of political legitimacy of the
state. To the extent that the latter is unable to rely on this kind of legitimacy to
secure compliance from its citizens, it is likely to become more ‘Hobbesian’; that
is, to rely on physically repressive means for doing so. This too is a development
that has been widely observed by recent political commentators, in connection
with phenomena such as ‘mass incarceration’, increasing levels of surveillance and
policing, and the rise of the so-called ‘security state’ (Garland 2001; Wacquant
2009; NRC 2014).
While a variety of different explanations for these phenomena have already
been put forward, the connection with the nature and quality of democratic
representation is a relatively new avenue of research (e.g. Ramsay 2016; Gallo
2018). The rise of technopopulism may offer further grounds to substantiate this
connection, inasmuch as the growing democratic discontent it both stems from
and further exacerbates may be plausibly supposed to contribute to the state’s
growing need to rely on physical repression to secure compliance from its citizens.
The relatively uninhibited—and in some cases openly flaunted—use of the coer-
cive apparatus of the state by technopopulist political actors who succeed in
coming to power (such as Macron’s handling the ‘gilets jaunes’ protest movement)
provides further evidence for this claim. The rise of technopopulism as the new
structuring logic of contemporary democratic politics can therefore be said to
contribute in bolstering a new form of authoritarianism, which compensates for
its perceived deficit of democratic legitimacy with increasingly repressive means of
social control.
Ways Out
After having examined the nature, origins, and likely consequences of the rise of
technopopulism, the last chapter of this book takes a step back and develops some
14 
normative reflections upon it. Though we do not take it to spell the ‘end’ or ‘death’
of democracy as a set of institutionalized procedures, we do argue that the rise of
technopopulism constitutes something bad for the quality of existing democratic
regimes. The reason is rooted in our analysis of its consequences: to the extent that
technopopulism increases the conflictuality of democratic competition, while at
the same time depriving it of substance, it shrinks the range of available avenues
for political change. And, to the extent that it exacerbates the separation of society
from politics, while compensating for it with an increased use of the repressive
apparatus of the state, it diminishes the extent of the democratic legitimacy of the
political system as a whole.
For this reason, the book ends by considering some possible remedies—or ways
out—from technopopulism. The discussion begins by noting that in the existing
academic literature on populism and technocracy, these two political forms are
frequently portrayed as possible remedies for one another. Populism is often
justified as a reaction to—and therefore corrective for—the confiscation of popu-
lar sovereignty by unelected technocratic bodies and elites (e.g. Mouffe 2018).
Technocracy is frequently defended as a bulwark against the threat of populist
takeover of certain key areas of policy (e.g. Monti and Goulard 2012). This has
led some commentators to suggest that populism and technocracy may need to
be balanced with one another, in order for contemporary democratic regimes to
obtain a healthy ‘equilibrium’ between responsive and responsible government;
that is effective democratic representation and good policy outcomes (e.g.
Rosenfeld 2019).
Our contention is that this is a misguided way of thinking because it depends
on the assumption that the relationship between populism and technocracy is
merely ‘zero sum’, in the sense that more of one implies less of the other and vice
versa. A key thesis running throughout our book is that this is not so: beyond their
outer elements of opposition, there is also an important dimension of affinity—
and indeed complementarity—between populism and technocracy, which implies
that they can go hand in hand and be combined with one another. This, in turn,
implies that populism and technocracy cannot function as antidotes for one
another, but can rather only be contrasted together, as part of the same overarch-
ing political logic.
In order to do that, we suggest, it is necessary to address the main underlying
cause for the rise of the technopopulist political logic to begin with; that is, the
crisis of traditional mechanisms of mediation between society and politics, which
had historically exercised the function of articulating the particular interests and
values present within society in rival conceptions of the common good, competing
with one another for electoral support, while recognizing each other’s democratic
legitimacy. This is another way of saying that a possible way of contrasting both
populism and technocracy lies in a revitalization of the mechanisms of party
democracy which previously ensured the connection between society and politics.
 15
Instead of calls for a more ‘direct’ representation of the popular will and for more
‘competence’ in government, we recommend more interest intermediation, ideo-
logical diversification, and partisan competition as an antidote for both.
Revitalizing the dimension of interest- and value-driven partisanship will be
difficult, not least because the rise of populism and technocracy as the main
structuring poles of contemporary democratic politics stems in large part from a
crisis of the instances of political mediation in the first place. However, we
maintain that it is necessary to draw a distinction between the dimension of
interest- and value-driven partisanship itself and the specific organization forms
through which it has been historically instantiated so far. While it may well be the
case that the traditional organizational forms of ideologically driven mass parties,
trade unions, religious organizations, and other civic associations have now
become obsolete because of the deep-seated social and political transformations
we began discussing above, the dimension of partisanship itself—construed as a
way of articulating particular interests and values with one another in order to
have them weigh politically at the level of the whole—does not appear any less
relevant than it ever was. As long as there are conflicts of interest and value,
individuals will have to band together with one another in order to have theirs
affect the political direction of society as a whole.
A revival of the dimension of interest- and value-driven partisanship may
therefore be possible through a transformation of its main organizational forms.
Whereas the mass parties, trade unions, religious organizations, and civic
associations of yore were by and large deeply hierarchical and bureaucratic
organizations, more internally democratic modes of political organization may
be able to better meet the demand for political participation expressed by
today’s more individualized and cognitively mobilized electorate. More democ-
racy in the way in which forms of political mediation are organized may thus be
a way to make political engagement more attractive for greater sectors of the
population and therefore enable a wider range of conflicting social interests and
values to recolonize the domain of electoral competition. Of course, many new
technopopulist movements themselves claim to stand for the democratization of
political life. Our argument about greater democracy is made as part of a call for
a more mediated relationship between citizens and political power, not as a
critique of the very idea of mediation, as we find in the M5S and other forms of
technopopulism.
None of these suggestions should be understood as a ‘golden bullet’ capable of
solving all the problems we take to be connected with the rise of technopopulism.
As we hope to show through our analysis, technopopulism is the result of an
extremely wide-ranging and deeply rooted set of sociological and political pro-
cesses. It would be implausible to expect any simple and straightforward fix for it.
Attempting to do so without also considering how to close the gap between society
and politics is unlikely to succeed. We recognize that what ultimately matters is
16 
that politics is grounded in ‘goal differentiation’ (Kircheimer 1966), meaning that

competing political actors stand for different views about to what ends do they
wish to exercise political power. The democratization of the existing channels
of political participation can contribute to this and should be considered as a
component of any broader solution to the set of problems we have identified in
this book.
1
The Concept of Technopopulism
Introduction
This chapter offers a formal definition of the concept of technopopulism, which

is intended both as a theoretical basis for the more empirical chapters to follow
and as an independent contribution to the broader field of interpretive political
science. By this we mean that branch of the study of politics that is primarily
concerned with developing adequate concepts for making sense of the political
reality. This approach is sometimes opposed to explanatory political science,
whose goal is said to be the study of causal relations between different political
phenomena (Finlayson 2004). Our contention is that the two approaches are not
mutually exclusive but complementary, since proper explanation supposes an
adequate conceptualization of the relevant phenomena, just as adequate inter-
pretation cannot abstract from genetic processes. The definitional exercise we
undertake in this chapter should therefore be seen as preliminary to the broader
discussion of the varieties, origins, and consequences of technopopulism con-
tained in the ensuing chapters of the book.
We begin by surveying the various ways in which the concept of technopopu-
lism has already been employed in the existing academic literature. Since we
identify several layers of confusion in this domain, we propose to systematize
the concept of technopopulism by defining it as an organizing logic of electoral
competition based on the combination of populist and technocratic discursive
tropes and modes of political organization. To clarify what we mean by this,
we first explain what we take an organizing logic of electoral competition to be.
We then offer formal definitions of the two main modes of political action that
characterize the technopopulist political logic; i.e. populism and technocracy.
Finally, we contrast the technopopulist political logic with what we take to be its
main historical antecedent and contemporary rival; that is what we call the
ideological political logic.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau once famously stated that: ‘My ideas all fit together; but
I cannot present them all at once’ (Rousseau 1762: 65). In a similar vein, we
develop our understanding of technopopulism in this chapter in way that is
analytical, abstract, and focused above all on the task of concept formation. We
then move into more empirical and historical discussions in the chapters that
follow.
Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics. Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti,
Oxford University Press (2021). © Christopher J. Bickerton and Carlo Invernizzi Accetti.
DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198807766.003.0002
18 
The Meanings of Technopopulism
Technopopulism is a relatively new concept. The term was first coined by Arthur
Lipow and Patrick Seyd in a 1995 article entitled ‘Political Parties and the
Challenge to Democracy: From Steam Engines to Technopopulism’. Since then,
but especially over the course of the past decade or so, the term has been
appropriated—and sometimes reinvented—by a variety of authors, to describe a
broad range of different phenomena and dynamics. Although it has by now
become impossible to survey all the specific uses of this term, we identify two
broad sets of confusions in the way in which it is generally employed.
The first set of confusions concerns the meaning and role assigned to the prefix
‘techno-’ in the concept of technopopulism. In Lipow and Seyd’s original article,
this referred rather explicitly to the notion of technology. This is why they use the
notion of technopopulism almost interchangeably with that of ‘tele-democracy’,
while opposing both to the mode of political organization they took to be
dominant at the time of the ‘steam engine’, i.e. political parties (Lipow and Seyd
1995). More recently, the prefix ‘techno-’ has tended to be used to refer to the
notion of technocracy, rather than technology. Lorenzo Castellani has proposed a
definition of technopopulism as a ‘political regime’ characterized by ‘an inter-
action between global capitalism, technocratic institutions, and new polarizing/
populist political movements’ (Castellani 2018). Others have continued to oscil-
late rather confusingly between these two uses. Emiliana De Blasio and Michele
Sorice define technopopulism as ‘the belief that government of the people, by the
people and for the people is achievable by means of information communications
technology’ (De Blasio and Sorice 2018). However, they also later add that: ‘Both
technopopulism and technocratic approaches in neoliberal populism find com-
mon ground in considering technology as a framework and not simply a tool.’
In light of this confusion, it is important to make clear from the start that what
we are interested in exploring in this book is not the relationship between
technology and populism, but rather that between technocracy and populism.
Following the more recent and prevalent uses of the term, we therefore assume the
prefix ‘techno-’ to refer to the notion of technocracy. Of course, with this we do not
mean to deny that recent technological developments have played an important
role in the emergence of what we will be calling technopopulism. However, we are
interested in the role of technology to the extent that it helps explain how
populism and technocracy are related to one another in the contemporary polit-
ical landscape.
Another important area of confusion related to the prefix ‘techno-’ in the
concept of technopopulism concerns its way of relating to the other constitutive
element in the construct; that is, the notion of populism. As Anders Esmark has
pointed out, one of the results of the recent explosion in research on populism has
    19
been a proliferation of qualifying adjectives that aim to better specify the precise
meaning of this notion—from ‘agrarian’ to ‘right wing’ and ‘left wing’, to ‘media’,
‘economic’, et cetera (see Esmark 2020). To the extent that it is interpreted in this
way, the prefix ‘techno-’ has the effect of demoting the technocratic dimension to
second class status, a variant of populism rather than a phenomenon in its own
right. Carlos de la Torre has for instance used the notion of technopopulism to
describe the specific ‘type of populism’ he claims to have been manifested by the
former Ecuadorean president, Rafael Correa. ‘Under Correa’ he writes ‘populism
has turned into elitism . . . Technocratic reason—with its claim to be true and
scientific—replaces the give-and-take of democratic debate over proposals’ (De
la Torre 2013: 39).
This way of defining technopopulism contrasts with the ones that construe
technocracy as a separate and equally significant component notion, alongside
(rather than merely qualifying) that of populism. One example is Castellani’s
definition of technopopulism we cited above; another is Bordignon’s description
of the Italian Five Star Movement as a ‘technopopulist party’ that ‘combines
populism and technocracy’ (Castellani 2018; Bordignon 2016). In this book, we
are interested in exploring the relationship between populism and technocracy,
meaning that we will not be treating technopopulism as a specific type (i.e.
subcategory) of populism but rather as the name for a broader political logic
that puts them in relation with one another. In so doing, we follow Jan-Werner
Müller (2016) and Daniele Caramani (2017), assuming that populism and tech-
nocracy constitute two ‘parallel’, but also in many ways ‘specular’ modes of political
action or representation, and as such can be combined as well as contrasted with one
another (see also Bickerton and Invernizzi Accetti 2015, 2017).
The second set of confusions in recent academic uses of the concept of
technopopulism concerns the specific kind of phenomenon it is supposed to
describe; that is, the genus of which it is a type. As we have already in part seen,
some authors have used the concept of technopopulism to define a particular type
of political actor, whereas others use it to describe a type of political regime. De la
Torre and Bordignon focus on Rafael Correa and the Italian Five Star Movement,
respectively. Similarly, Alexandros Kioupkiolis and Francisco Perez have used the
concept of ‘reflexive technopopulism’ to describe Spain’s Podemos (Kioupkiolis
and Perez 2019), whereas for Lenka Buštíková and Petra Guasti the Czech ANO
party amounts to a form of ‘technocratic populism’ (Buštíková and Guasti 2019).
In contrast, Lorenzo Castellani explicitly suggests that technopopulism is best
understood as a type of ‘political regime’; or, as he also puts it, a ‘mode of
organization of political power’ (Castellani 2018). Similarly, Mary Graham treats
technopopulism as a ‘new mode of governance’, whose characteristic feature is
the use of ‘transparency regulation’ to steer individual and collective behaviour
(Graham 2002).
20 
Somewhere in between the idea that technopopulism constitutes a type of

political actor and a type of political regime lies Lipow and Seyd’s original use
of the term to describe a type of discourse or ‘ideology’. In their article, the notion
of technopopulism is not associated with any particular actor or set of actors, but
also falls short of amounting to an entirely new set of institutions or system of
relations between political actors. Instead, it is treated as a ‘way of thinking’ that
can be manifested—to a greater to a lesser degree—by a variety of different actors.
Similarly, in their discussion of technopopulism, De Blasio and Sorice maintain
that: ‘[i]f we consider technopopulism as an emerging discourse, or a “discursive
ideology”, we should also consider the possibility of finding elements and dimen-
sions of technopopulism even in parties not clearly definable as techno-populist’
(De Blasio and Sorice 2018).
Our proposed definition of the term has in common with Lipow and Seyd’s,
and De Blasio and Sorice’s, the idea that technopopulism cannot be reduced
merely to a category of political actors—since it also concerns the relationships
amongst political actors. Nor do we define it as an entirely new political regime
since it is a phenomenon that takes place within existing democratic regimes.
Differently from these authors, however, we do not think that the notions of
discourse or ideology are adequate to capture the specific phenomenon we are
interested in exploring, for at least two reasons.
The first is that the notions of discourse and ideology suffer from an intellec-
tualist bias manifested by Lipow and Seyd’s claim that technopopulism ultimately
boils down to a ‘way of thinking’. While we of course agree that ideas matter
in determining political action, we also maintain that there is an important
material—and especially organizational—dimension to technopopulism, which
is missed by the notions of discourse and ideology. As well as determining how
political actors ‘think’, technopopulism also affects the concrete ways in which
they organize and act. For this reason, it cannot be reduced merely to a discourse
or ideology.
Secondly, treating technopopulism as an ideology is also awkward because (as
we will discuss in more detail in what follows) one of the defining features of
this political logic is precisely the rejection of the traditional ideological cat-
egories of ‘left’ and ‘right’. There is therefore a distinctively anti- or at least post-
ideological dimension to technopopulism, which is obscured by the idea that it
constitutes an ideology in itself. For this reason, we maintain that technopopu-
lism is better understood as an organizing logic of political competition, char-
acterized by a set of incentives and constraints that result in contemporary
political actors increasingly adopting both populist and technocratic forms of
discourse and modes of political organization, at the expense of more substan-
tive ideological orientations.
    21
What Is a Political Logic?
Our definition of technopopulism is predicated on the assumption that the

behaviour of electoral contenders for office in democratic regimes is not deter-
mined exclusively by their preferences or goals. It is also structured by a set of
incentives and constraints deriving from the broader social and political context,
which have the effect of giving a certain shape and regularity to the behaviour of
all political actors within it.
In the most general sense, we can say that the logic of all political competition
in electoral democracies consists in the fact that rival contenders for public office
compete for votes, and therefore ultimately political power, with one another. Of
course, electoral victory and political power may not be the final goal of all these
political actors. Politicians may be motivated by the desire to achieve certain
substantive policy goals, as well as by power and prestige for their own sake.
However, the point is that all electoral contenders for public office must have a
proximate goal of obtaining as many votes as possible, at least in the long run.
Otherwise they wouldn’t engage in the electoral process to begin with.
Beyond this general logic, we maintain that there also exists a more specific
political logic in electoral democracies, which concerns the way in which rival
contenders for public office compete with one another for votes. This consists in
the set of incentives and constraints that politicians face in a given social and
political context. For instance, in a situation of high societal polarization, where
political resources are scarce, all electoral contenders for office have an incentive
to focus on mobilizing the support of specific groups within society, on the basis of
their shared interests and values. Conversely, in a highly fragmented society, with
plentiful and effective means of political mobilization, politicians may have a
greater incentive to spread their electoral basis of support as thinly and widely
as possible, to maximize their chances of winning.
The effect of these more specific sets of incentives and constraints is to impose a
certain regularity on the patterns of action employed by competing candidates for
office. Inasmuch as they concern the specific way of competing for electoral
support, these regularities abstract from the substantive policy and personal
goals of individual politicians. A political logic—in the sense in which we claim
that technopopulism is the new structuring logic of contemporary democratic
politics—is therefore a contextually and historically specific set of incentives and
constraints, which affects the way in which rival contenders for public office
compete with one another in the electoral sphere, independently of their substan-
tive policy goals.
The closest approximation to this idea we were able to find in the existing
academic literature is Eric Schattschneider’s claim that electoral competition is
22 
always ‘about’ something, in the sense that it is governed by an overarching

conflict and the attendant set of categories and distinctions (Schattschneider
1960). This idea was elucidated by Peter Mair when he wrote that:
Party competition—and democratic politics more generally—is usually domin-

ated by a particular overriding choice, to which other considerations are subor-
dinated. This is not just a matter of what one party does or another party does.
Rather, it is something around which the party system as a whole, or at least the
core of that system revolves. Much as rival cigarette manufacturers have a mutual
interest in the promotion of smoking, however competitive they may be vis-à-vis
one another as far as the marketing of their particular brand may be concerned,
the established parties in a party system have a mutual interest in the survival
of their particular conflict as an axis of political competition . . . Party systems are
therefore ‘about’ something in the sense that they center around a particular
structure of competition (Mair 1997: 13–14).
What Mair is here calling the ‘particular structure’ of electoral competition is very
close to what we proposed to call its organizing logic, inasmuch as both determine
what electoral competition is ultimately about—i.e. the specific form it takes in a
given historical and political context.
There remains, however, an important difference. Both Schattschneider and
Mair assume that electoral competition must ultimately be a about a substantive
social and therefore political ‘conflict’. They therefore assume that the logic of
electoral competition is necessarily oppositional in the sense that competing candi-
dates for office stake out different substantive positions with respect to that over-
arching conflict, and then struggle to win votes on that basis. We maintain that the
contemporary salience of both populist and technocratic modes of representation
reveals the possibility of a different kind of political logic, which remains competi-
tive but without being oppositional.
The difference between political ‘competition’ and ‘opposition’ was originally
drawn by Otto Kircheimer (Kircheimer 1966). The former, for him, exists as long
as ‘political jobs are filled by selection from candidates whose number is in excess
of the places to be filled’ (1966: 237). In contrast, the latter supposes a measure of
substantive ‘goal differentiation’ between available candidates, meaning substan-
tive disagreement over the ultimate goals of political action. Thus understood,
Kircheimer argues that: ‘[a]ny form of political opposition necessarily involves
some kind of competition. But the reverse does not hold true: political competi-
tion does not necessarily involve opposition’ (1966: 237). The implication is that
politicians can still compete with one another for scarce offices, even if there is
no goal differentiation. Under such circumstances, political competition appears
‘more in the nature of a collision between people obliged to squeeze through the
same narrow thoroughfare to punch the clock before 8:45am’ (1966: 251).
    23
The idea of political competition without substantive opposition alluded to by

Kirchheimer is a central feature of the way in which we understand the way in
which the technopopulist logic works in contemporary democracies. It is not
accurate to suppose that political competition is necessarily structured around a
substantive social and political conflict. While determining what electoral com-
petition is ‘about’, a political logic can set the terms of electoral competition—i.e.
offer a set of incentives and constraints that shapes how politicians compete with
one another—without necessarily involving any substantive conflict over ultimate
ends. This is significant because the distinctive feature of the technopopulist
political logic we focus on in this book is precisely that it encourages all competing
contenders for electoral office to adopt both populist and technocratic forms of
discourse and modes of political organization, independently of their substantive
policy goals.
To say that technopopulism has become the main organizing logic of contem-
porary democratic politics is therefore to argue that politics is increasingly about
competing claims to represent the ‘people’ as a whole and to possess the necessary
‘competence’ for translating its will into policy. More substantive ideological
conflicts recede into the background or are articulated in ways that are also
bound up with the types of appeals and claims that are generated by the techno-
populist logic.
The Technopopulist Logic
To further clarify the definition we have proposed, we propose to explore the

different ways in which claims to represent the ‘people’ as a whole and appeals to
competence or expertise can be combined with one another. In the existing
academic literature, but also in recent political discourse itself, populism and
technocracy are frequently opposed to each other. For instance, in the 2013
Italian political elections, when the insurgent Five Star Movement first fielded
candidates against the incumbent government led by Mario Monti, it was com-
mon for observers and participants in the elections to frame them as a ‘contest
between populism and technocracy’. Similarly, the second round of the 2017
French presidential election, which saw a run-off between Marine Le Pen and
Emmanuel Macron, was construed as pitting ‘anti-establishment populism’
against a ‘technocratic defense of the established order’. In this case too, the
participants themselves played along with these presumptive roles: Macron con-
demned Le Pen’s populism whilst Le Pen railed at Macron’s incarnation of the
technocratic establishment.
Opposing populism to technocracy in this way is only one way of relating them
to each other. Between the two extremes of claiming to be a populist standing
against technocracy and vice versa, there is a whole range of possible ways of
24 
combining them with one another, which may turn out to be more politically
profitable than simply opposing them to each other. In fact, we argue that in spite
of their claims to the contrary, both the political forces we cited above ended up
winning their respective electoral contests not simply by employing populist
modes of action and representation against technocratic ones or vice versa, but
also and more importantly by providing some synthesis of the two.
All political actors in contemporary democracies can reap political advantages
by combining populist and technocratic forms of discourse and modes of political
organization, though their ability to do so is conditioned by a variety of factors,
including a party’s ideological legacies, the specific issues that can arise in the
course of campaigns and the relational quality of the positions taken by political
actors in a campaign, meaning that one actor can be constrained by what another
says or does. Thus, when we say that technopopulism has become the organizing
logic of contemporary democratic politics, we mean that all political actors face a
set of incentives and constraints that encourages them to assume the distinctive
features of both populism and technocracy, independently of their substantive
policy goals. In this sense, electoral competition is becoming increasingly ‘about’
populism and technocracy, since electoral contenders for public office compete
primarily in terms of rival claims to embody the ‘people’ as a whole and to possess
the necessary competence for translating its will into policy.
An implication of this logic is that what distinguishes competing candidates
for office and determines their chances of electoral success is first and foremost
the specific way in which they combine both populist claims to popularity and
technocratic claims to expertise, rather than the particular sets of interests and
values that are served by their substantive policy commitments. That is, they are
distinguished by the specific type of technopopulism they manifest. This is
certainly not the only logic that determines political outcomes in contemporary
democracies. Technopopulist syntheses are made in response to political events,
and whilst political logics shape the response to events, political outcomes are
themselves heavily dependent upon crises or unexpected developments and not
reducible to the logics themselves. At the same time, the technopopulist political
logic has not entirely replaced the previously dominant logic of partisan compe-
tition, based on substantive ideological confrontation, meaning that we have to
take in account the complex interaction between these two different, but also
simultaneously operative, political logics.
We discuss the differences between the technopopulist and ideological political
logics in the last section of this chapter. Before that, it is necessary to offer further
clarity as to the specific ways in which we propose to define the notions of
populism and technocracy themselves, since our definitions correspond in some
ways with existing scholarship but also challenge this scholarship in a number of
respects.
    25
The Definition of Populism
The notion of populism has recently been the topic of much attention—and
disagreement. No doubt because many sense that it captures something important
about contemporary democratic politics, there has been a veritable explosion of
research on this topic. At the same time, the very fact that the notion has been so
widely employed has led to a proliferation of different meanings and connotations
being attached to the term (for an overview, see Rovira Kaltwasser et al. 2017). We
adopt an ecumenical approach to its definition. By this we mean that we do not
seek to intervene in the ongoing disputes over the most appropriate way of
defining populism but rather try to synthetize a variety of different approaches
in a way that is best suited to our own task of concept formation. We are not
seeking to make yet another ‘distinctive’ contribution to the existing academic
literature on this topic but only to clarify the way in which we use the term for the
purpose of building our broader concept of technopopulism.
Most existing studies of populism agree in defining it as a particular mode of
political action; that is, not as a substantive set of policy or value commitments,
but rather as a particular way of acting politically that inflects or transforms
one’s substantive policy goals, without determining them entirely. Jan-Werner
Müller writes explicitly that ‘populism isn’t about policy content’, but rather
about ‘making a certain kind of moral claim’, the content of which can come
from ‘any particular ideology’ (Müller 2016: 160). Similarly, Kurt Weyland
maintains that:
The driving force behind populism is political, not ideological. Prototypical

populist movements are practically impossible to define in ideological terms.
Argentine Peronism for decades spanned the full arch from fascist right to radical
left. And who could define the Bolivarianism of Hugo Chavez, who took advice
from reactionary Norberto Ceserolese as well as Marxist Heinz Dietrich?
(Weyland 2017: 54).
Beyond this broad area of agreement, the existing academic literature on

populism appears to be deeply divided over what, precisely, constitute the dis-
tinctive features of this particular mode of political action. ‘Ideational’ approaches
to populism stress the use of a certain kind of language, or discourse, centring
around the opposition between people and elite. ‘Organizational’ approaches
focus on a distinctive mode of political organization, involving a direct appeal
by a personalized leader to a disorganized electorate, which bypasses intermediary
bodies. A few illustrative examples will serve to substantiate this point.
Cas Mudde defines populism in terms of the idea that ‘society is ultimately
separated in two homogeneous and antagonistic groups: the pure people vs the
26 
corrupt elite’ (Mudde 2004: 543). This definition harks back to Ernesto Laclau’s
seminal characterization of populism as a ‘political discourse’ opposing a ‘unitary
popular identity’ to a ‘constitutive other’ (Laclau 1977, 2005a, 2005b). However,
Mudde adds the important qualification that populism involves a moralization of
the opposition between the people and elites:
Several ideologies—he writes—are based on a fundamental opposition between

the people and the elite. However, whereas in socialism this opposition is based
on the concept of class and in nationalism on the concept of the nation, in
populism the opposition is based on the concept of morality . . . The essence of
the people is therefore assumed to be their purity, in the sense that they are
‘authentic’, whereas the elite is ‘corrupt’ (Mudde 2017: 29).
This ‘ideational’ definition of populism was further elaborated upon by Jan-

Werner Müller in his 2016 book on What Is Populism?, which argues that: ‘It is a
necessary but not a sufficient condition to be critical of elites in order to be a
populist’ (Müller 2016: 2). ‘In addition to being anti-elitist’ Müller writes ‘popu-
lists are also always anti-pluralist’ (2016: 3), in the sense that they ‘hanker after
what political theorist Nancy Rosenblum has called “holism”: the notion that the
polity should no longer be split and the idea that it’s possible for the people to be
one and—all of them—to have one true representative’ (2016: 20). As such, Müller
adds: ‘Populism revolves around a pars pro toto logic and a claim to exclusive
representation’ whereby ‘they, and they alone’ are said to adequately represent
‘the people’.
The ‘organizational’ approach to the study of populism emphasizes different
features. Kurt Weyland has defined populism as ‘a political strategy through
which a personalistic leader seeks or exercises government based on direct and
unmediated support from a large number of unorganized followers’ (Weyland
2001: 14). For Weyland, populism falls within an overarching typology of ‘political
strategies’ constituted by two key variables: the ‘type of political actor that seeks
and exercises political power’ and the ‘principal power capability which that actor
mobilizes as a support basis’ (Weyland 2017: 55). A ‘personal leader’ appealing
directly to a ‘disorganized mass’ becomes the key organizational feature of
populism.
Along very similar lines, Robert Barr has proposed a broadly organizational
definition of populism, emphasizing the centrality of ‘plebiscitarian linkages’
between the populist leadership and its base of support within the population.
‘Whereas party structures (and participatory linkages more generally) grant
citizens substantial control’ he contends ‘plebiscites offer them a “take it or leave
it” choice’ (Barr 2009: 34). For Barr, ‘rather than offering citizens the chance to
make their own decisions, this form of linkage asks citizens to judge whether their
rulers are doing a good job for them: policymakers present a choice to the voters,
    27
who may accept or reject it’. In this way, populism ‘vests a single individual with
the task of representing “the people”, replacing traditional forms of political
participation, and in particular political parties and other intermediary bodies,
in that role’ (2009: 36).
Nadia Urbinati’s recent work on the concept of populism can also be categor-
ized as falling within this broadly ‘organizational’ approach. In her view, populism
is best understood as a distortion or ‘disfigurement’ of democratic procedures,
which both ‘simplifies’ and ‘reifies’ them in the service of a ‘power concentration
plan’ (Urbinati 2017: 572–8). With respect to the key democratic procedure of
majority rule, for instance, she writes that: ‘Populism reifies a given majority as it
promotes policies that translate the interests of winners immediately into law,
with no patience for mediation and compromise or institutional checks and
balances’ (2017: 580). For this reason, Urbinati argues that: ‘Populism is parasitic
on representative democracy because it challenges it in the name of an exclusive
and undivided representation of the people, thereby challenging the identification
of democracy with pluralistic political representation and the constitutional limi-
tation of the power of the majority’ (2017: 575).
Despite the numerous important insights offered by both ideational and organ-
izational approaches to the study of populism, a striking feature that runs across
both is the assumption that they must somehow be alternative to one another. We
suggest this is not necessarily the case. Both the approaches we have considered
construe populism as a mode of political action, implying that they both assume
that there is a strategic dimension to populism, oriented towards the pursuit of
power. It is surely possible, though perhaps not necessary, to employ both
ideational and organizational means to achieve that end. Populism does not
have to be only about what political actors ‘say’ or think, as opposed to what
they ‘do’ or how they do it, but can rather be seen as a combination of the two.
We see this in the way that the defining features identified by the ‘ideational’
approach are related to the elements focused upon by the ‘organizational’ one and
indeed are likely to occur in conjunction with one another. If you assume that
there exists an internally homogenous and morally pure people, whose substantive
will is being held back by a corrupt elite, there remains the question of who can
speak for this collective body. The figure of a personal leader directly embodying the
people’s demands seems particularly apt for the purpose, since it reflects the
putative unity of the people’s will, while at the same time bypassing all the inter-
mediary bodies and procedures, which populists portray as wiles of the corrupt
elite. Conversely, a personal leader seeking direct legitimation from a disorgan-
ized mass seems likely to develop a discourse that opposes the people as a whole
to a corrupt elite within it, while claiming that s/he and only s/he adequately
represents it, because that enables him or her to bypass all forms of intermedi-
ation with the disorganized mass or individuals he or she claims to represent,
promoting a more direct form of identification between them.
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CHAPTER XXIII.
A FAIR PETITIONER.
I was far from satisfied with the thought of bringing mademoiselle to

Mentchikof’s house, but when I unfolded the plan to her and to
Madame de Brousson, they overruled my scruples. Najine was
eager to embrace any opportunity to aid her lover, and my wife saw
the advantages of the situation in the same light that they had
appeared to Catherine. So it was that between the women I found
myself of small consequence, and was forced to yield to their
wishes. It was arranged that I should first introduce the testimony of
Apraxin, and that then Najine Zotof would appear to make her own
appeal. Meanwhile Apraxin was a prisoner at my quarters, and a
sullen scapegrace I found him. His indignation against Najine knew
no bounds, and I think that the little love he had for her, in those
hours, turned to resentment. As I had anticipated, his attendant
carried the tidings of his capture to M. Zotof, and in the course of the
day I received a sharp message from him that my treatment of his
relative would be reported to the czar; to which I replied that I should
myself inform his Majesty of my action and of the cause of it,—a
message which I thought carried confusion into the enemy’s lines,
for I heard no more that day, and M. Apraxin remained biding my
pleasure in my upper room, although in truth I had no relish for my
task of jailer, and would have been glad to find another way out of
my embarrassments. The impossibility of reaching M. de Lambert
made me doubly uneasy. I had a genuine affection for the young
man, and felt responsible for his safety. I did not go to the Kremlin
that day, but even in the city the tidings had spread that the czar was
to go again to the house of Mentchikof. Straws show the way of the
wind, and it was easy to see the unhappiness of the sycophants who
had deserted the favorite in his temporary obscurity. It is these
miserable creatures who find the changing tide of court favor such a
cause for tribulation, and overturn each other in their eagerness to
arrive first at the gates of the fortunate. I was amused when I
approached Mentchikof’s house in the evening to find the court, that
a few days before had been deserted, full to overflowing with these
poor butterflies that had flown at the little cloud of imperial
displeasure and now returned. They were not, however, admitted.
For some reason the favorite chose to have but a few present at the
arrival of the czar, and when I entered the ante-rooms I found but a
small attendance. Peter and his suite had already arrived, and a few
of the imperial guards were at the doors. When I reached the salon, I
found the czar surrounded by a larger party than I had at first
supposed to be present, but there was no one there of the faction
favorable to Zotof except the Field-Marshal Sheremetief. Madame
Golovin, both the Arsenief sisters, their aunt Madame Tolstoi, and
Mademoiselle Shavronsky were all at the farther end of the
apartment, holding a little court of their own, while the czar was in
the midst of his immediate friends, Mentchikof, Repnin, Sheremetief,
and a dozen more. I saw at a glance that Peter was in an excellent
humor. When I entered, he was standing with his hand on
Mentchikof’s shoulder, and was laughing heartily at some jest that he
had made at the favorite’s expense. As I advanced, the czar saw
me, and there was a change—slight and almost imperceptible, but
still a change—in his expression. Doubtless, I was unwelcome
enough at the moment, and it may be that his keen wit instantly
suspected a concealed motive in the occasion, for he could not have
been ignorant of Mentchikof’s dealings with me and with M. de
Lambert. However, he received me with courtesy, and at once asked
a direct question in his usual blunt fashion.
“Well, M. l’Ambassadeur,” he said, “have you found M. de Lambert?”
“I have not, your Majesty,” I replied, “but I have certain information
concerning him.”
A peculiar expression gleamed in his eyes for an instant, but he
smiled.
“You speak gravely, sir,” he said lightly. “What is the information?”
I was standing directly before the czar, in the midst of many
spectators, and I answered him deliberately.
“I am glad,” I said suavely, “of this opportunity to inform your Majesty
of the outrage that has been perpetrated upon one of my suite. M. de
Lambert was seized by a palace guard, betrayed into his hands by
M. Zotof’s relative, M. Apraxin.”
There was a pause, and I saw the lightning in the czar’s glance, and
Mentchikof stirred uneasily. The mine was fired, and we awaited the
explosion.
“You must have been misinformed, M. l’Ambassadeur,” Peter said
after a moment. “It is impossible that one of my guards could have
dealt with that fellow. Produce your proofs.”
“Your Majesty,” I replied quietly, “M. Apraxin admitted his share of the
transaction in my presence this morning, and he is at this time within
call.”
The czar bit his lip. He was in a peculiar position, and I think
regretted his folly in having meddled with M. de Lambert.
“Be kind enough, M. le Vicomte,” he said, “to produce M. Apraxin,
whom I supposed long since departed from Moscow.”
This was the order that I had hoped for, and I despatched Pierrot to
bring him, with a couple of Mentchikof’s followers to prevent his
escape. In the interval before his arrival, the czar refused to be
entertained, waiting with impatience for the coming scene. That he
was violently angry at Apraxin’s interference, I did not doubt, but just
what he intended to do it was difficult to imagine. His mood had
changed, and his face was deeply flushed. He walked down the
room to a chair near where the women stood, and, seating himself,
leaned his head upon his hand and stared gloomily down the length
of the salon, but with eyes that did not seem to notice the gay
courtiers who filled it. The change in his mood affected the humor of
the assemblage, and there was a general cessation of conversation,
and every eye was turned towards his face. It was, perhaps, half an
hour before one of the ushers announced that Apraxin was under
guard in one of the adjoining rooms, and the czar immediately
ordered that he should be brought before him. There was a little
ripple of excitement when Zotof’s protégé entered and was marched
down the room between two of Mentchikof’s men. His expression
was as sullen as usual, and he made but a slight obeisance as he
paused opposite the czar. Peter eyed him with angry contempt.
“I find that instead of being where you ought to be, in Archangel,
Apraxin,” the czar said sharply, “you are here, and meddling with one
of M. de Brousson’s party.”
He paused as if expecting a reply; but Apraxin made none,
maintaining his attitude of sullen silence. The czar looked at him
fiercely.
“Have you a tongue?” he demanded.
The blood rose to Apraxin’s hair.
“You are the Czar of Russia,” he said passionately, “but I am not your
slave, but a freeman! By what right am I arrested by the Vicomte de
Brousson, and dragged from place to place without any formal
charge?”
“You were brought here by my order,” the czar replied sternly, “and
you will do well to answer the questions that I put to you with civility,
or we will presently find the means to give you a lesson.”
The czar meant the secret-chancery of Preobrazhensky, and Apraxin
knew it, for I saw the color recede from his cheek and the look of a
hunted animal show in his eyes.
“Briefly, Apraxin,” Peter continued, “by whose order did you betray
M. de Lambert into the hands of the imperial guard?”
For a moment Apraxin was silent, and then he spoke with more
manhood than I had anticipated.
“Your Majesty,” he said, “I am a nephew by adoption of Madame
Zotof, and was affianced in boyhood to her husband’s niece, Najine
Zotof. She has lately departed from the house of her uncle, and fled
to that of the Vicomte de Brousson, the secret envoy of France;
encouraged in her disobedience, and aided by her lover, M. de
Lambert. For that reason, and for no other, I did endeavor to seize
him, and succeeded in delivering him into the hands of an officer of
the guard charged by your Majesty to arrest him.”
The mine had exploded, and the czar flushed crimson, while his
eyes flashed. He had evidently trusted to the discretion of his officer
and had been betrayed. I stood discreetly silent, but I caught the eye
of Mademoiselle Catherine and saw that she was keenly anxious.
“Upon my faith,” exclaimed the czar, with passion, “it is like your
impertinence to charge me with being your accomplice. Officer,
remove the prisoner.”
As Apraxin was led out, Peter turned upon me sharply.
“So, M. l’Ambassadeur,” he said, “mademoiselle is at your house?”
“I do not now deny the charge, your Majesty,” I said quietly.
His lip curled scornfully. “You would have me believe that she was
not there before?” he exclaimed.
I returned his gaze quietly. “It is difficult to know what to believe
about the matter, your Majesty,” I replied dryly.
As I spoke, there was some confusion at the further end of the room,
and the czar glancing in that direction, his reply to me was stayed
upon his lip. I turned with an intuition of the cause, and saw the
crowd part, leaving a wide aisle down the center of the long salon,
and through this walked Madame de Brousson and Mademoiselle
Zotof. My wife, who was yet a beautiful woman, moved along with
easy dignity, her fine figure and rich dark robes making her a sharp
contrast to Najine, so slender in her pure white garment, untrimmed
save for the sable that edged it as it fell about her feet, and the sable
about her shoulders making her white neck look yet more white. Her
face was pale, but her eyes darkly blue and fearless in expression.
Her whole appearance and manner were extremely maidenly, and
yet she advanced without embarrassment. As she approached,
Peter rose, and the nobles about him drew back a little, so that he
stood quite alone and faced mademoiselle, a strange expression on
his face. That he was astonished was manifest enough, but he was
also strongly moved and looked at her without a word. Zénaïde
paused beside me, and whispered that they had just received evil
tidings, that M. de Lambert’s life had been attempted, and that he
was in great peril. Troubled as I was at the information, I almost
forgot it in my eagerness to watch mademoiselle and the czar. She
addressed him in the quaint Russian fashion.
“I come to you, little father, as a suppliant,” she said in a low voice,
but in the silence it was audible to all; “I have a suit which is too
pressing to brook delay, and I crave indulgence.”
“I am fortunate to see you, Najine,” the czar replied slowly. “Of late,
not even your uncle could find you.”
Her pale cheeks flushed, but she looked up bravely. “Your Majesty
must pardon my faults,” she said earnestly; “so sure am I of your
goodness—of your kingly generosity, that I have come to ask a favor
at your Majesty’s hands.”
Whether he suspected her motive or not, I could not tell, but he
looked at her keenly.
“What is this favor?” he asked gravely; “have I been a hard master to
you that you fear to ask it?”
“No, sire,” she said gently, her eyes fixed earnestly upon his face;
“but when a boon is near the heart, it is difficult to ask. I beg a man’s
liberty—his life, for they tell me it is in danger.”
“A man’s life and liberty?” the czar repeated sternly; “you choose a
strange time, Najine Alexeievna; and is there no one else who can
plead for it to me?”
The color swept up to her hair, and she suddenly kneeled at his feet.
“No one can plead as I can, little father,” she said almost inaudibly,
“because to no one else is his life so dear.”
“Ah!” the czar ejaculated sharply, his brows bending in a dark frown
and his lips twitching; “and who is this prisoner, madam?”
“Guillaume de Lambert, an officer of the household troops of the
King of France,” she replied in a clear voice.
“There is the Ambassador of France,” said the czar coldly, pointing at
me; “why not let him prefer this suit?”
She was still kneeling, and looked up at him with an earnest appeal
in her blue eyes.
“Turn not a deaf ear, your Majesty,” she exclaimed with feeling. “M.
de Lambert is an innocent man, and it is your duty to do justice to the
innocent, for are you not an anointed king? Judgment and mercy
belong to you, little father, and it is to your honor to show justice to
the foreigner. He has been betrayed into prison; they tell me that his
life has been attempted. Show mercy, sire, and set him free.”
The czar looked at her keenly, strong emotions contending in his
passionate face.
“You plead with eloquence, Najine,” he said, still coldly. “Of what
interest is this young man’s fate to you? Answer me freely, if you
hope for mercy for him!”
Najine looked up into Peter’s dark face, and her lips quivered.
“Your Majesty,” she replied in a low voice, but every ear was strained
to catch her words, “I ask his liberty—because I love him.”
The czar drew a deep breath, and the tic convulsed his features.
“You speak boldly, girl,” he said sternly. “Are you not ashamed?”
Najine rose and stood before him, her face as white as her robe, but
her eyes shone like two stars.
“I am not ashamed, sire,” she answered proudly, “to love a brave and
loyal gentleman.”
Peter uttered an exclamation under his breath, regarding her with an
expression in which anger and admiration were mingled. Never
before had any woman faced him with the declaration of her loyalty
to another man, and it must have made a strong impression upon
him. It was a strange picture. The nobles about him had drawn back
until the two stood in the center of a large space, the massive figure
of the czar overshadowing the slight form of mademoiselle, but there
was a simple dignity in the pose of her young figure that was striking.
Peter was silent for some moments, and then spoke with bitterness.
“By my faith, Najine Alexeievna,” he said, “I did not know that you
were asking a bridegroom at my hands!”
The blood rose to her hair, but she answered him in an unfaltering
voice.
“Oh, little father,” she said, “I ask his liberty—his life!”
“And if I refuse, what then?” the czar asked sternly, his dark eyes
searching her face and his lips closing in a hard line.
She turned pale and cast a bewildered glance at me, and I saw that
her courage was sorely tried, and fancied that she was distressed by
the tidings that she had heard before coming there. She took a step
forward, and held out her hands with a gesture that was pathetic in
its appeal.
“I dare not think of your Majesty’s refusal,” she said; “I will not
believe it.”
At this point she was reinforced; with a swift movement Catherine
Shavronsky passed through the circle of spectators and knelt at the
czar’s feet. He started, glancing from one woman to the other in
amazement.
“What is this?” he exclaimed sharply; “I did not come here to hold a
tribunal of justice.”
“But of mercy, little father,” Catherine said quietly. “I kneel here to
second mademoiselle’s appeal. M. de Lambert is a stranger, he can
claim our forbearance. It is your kindness that has abolished forced
marriages, and made happier unions a possibility. Your Majesty has
always been good to the young. Here, then, are two lovers,
separated by misfortune—is it not a royal prerogative to give them
happiness? I also ask a boon: the life—liberty—happiness of a
French soldier of the czar of all the Russias—of Peter the
magnanimous!”
She had touched upon a delicate point, but the czar controlled his
emotion. He stood looking at the two women as if he were mentally
contrasting them, and the whole court looked also and marvelled, for
they were singularly beautiful and singularly unlike. Catherine’s
beauty was of the feline type, and coarser but more striking than
Najine’s; hers was refined and charming and spirited, and her face
was clouded with anxiety, while Catherine’s was kindled with
excitement. Mademoiselle stood, while the Livonian continued to
kneel until the czar took her hand and raised her to her feet, and
then, turning to the other petitioner, spoke with affected
carelessness.
“Your request is granted, Najine,” he said; “I cannot resist so much
eloquence. Mentchikof, let the captain of the guard release M. de
Lambert at once and deliver him to M. de Brousson.”
Najine took a step forward, and, kneeling, kissed the czar’s hand;
and the blood left his cheek, and his face was as white as her own.
CHAPTER XXIV.
A DUEL WITH SWORDS.
Mentchikof lost no time in executing the czar’s order, and signaled

to me to follow him as he left the salon. I made my way out as rapidly
and quietly as I could, and reached the ante-room in time to find him
transmitting the order to one of the guard.
“M. de Brousson will accompany you,” he said to the officer as I
entered; and then, calling me aside, he added: “Make what haste
you can, the czar’s mood may change. He yielded because of the
peculiarity of his position, and Najine Zotof’s appeal before so many
touched his pride, but he may repent his order at any moment. Get
the young man out of the country, and also the young woman.”
“I see the wisdom of your advice, monsieur,” I replied; “but the last is
not so easy.”
“I know it, M. de Brousson,” he said in a low voice; “but I tell you that
the imperial mood is tempestuous, and—in a word—he loves
Najine.”
“I see that,” I admitted gravely, “but the matter is difficult;
nevertheless, with your aid, I will do what I can.”
He walked with me to the stairs, and then, pausing, laid his hand
upon my arm and looked into my face with those keen eyes full of
quiet meaning.
“Marriage, M. l’Ambassadeur,” he said in a low tone, “speedy and
secret marriage, is possible, and it alone will cut the knot.”
We were practically alone; a few attendants were below, at the foot
of the stairs, and three or four guards lingered in the corridor
observing us with curious eyes, but no one could overhear our
conversation. I looked at the favorite searchingly.
“And the risk to mademoiselle?” I said slowly.
He snapped his fingers. “It would not amount to that!” he replied. “His
Majesty will forgive her—after a while; but for the present,” he
laughed, “a pair of fleet horses, monsieur; I will look well to the
pursuers and the pursuit.”
He took a signet ring from his finger, and placed it in my hand.
“I trust it to your honor, M. le Maréchal,” he said significantly; “use it,
whenever the name of Alexander Mentchikof may speed your
errand, and remember that the imperial mood will change.”
And with this caution he parted from me, and I went out into the night
attended by Pierrot and the captain of the guard. We turned our
steps immediately toward the Kremlin, walking rapidly and in silence.
I did not need Mentchikof’s assurance to convince me that there was
no time to lose. I had read the czar’s mood almost as easily as the
favorite, and knew that he was unwilling to betray to the whole court
that he, the czar, was jealous of a young French soldier with no
fortune but his sword and the favor of the King of France. That Peter
was intensely angry at Najine’s open avowal of her loyalty to her
lover was manifest enough, and I did not doubt his speedy
repentance of his consent to release his prisoner. Meanwhile I had
the order which would give M. de Lambert freedom, and a few hours
in which to get him out of the city; but how to accomplish this was not
so clear unless I found him in a more yielding mood than usual, or I
could prevail upon mademoiselle to facilitate matters. I trusted to
Madame de Brousson’s wit and courage to bring Najine safely away
from Mentchikof’s house, but how long she could evade Madame
Zotof was another question. I hoped much from the fact that Najine
would find her position so difficult that it would be more simple to
follow Mentchikof’s suggestion than to face her uncle’s displeasure.
The favorite’s signet was on my finger, and I reflected that he had
shown more confidence in me than I felt in him, for I was doubtful of
following his advice.
When we reached the Kremlin, the imperial officer took the lead and
conducted us to the Miracle Monastery; here we were admitted to
the refectory, and Pierrot and I were left while the soldier had a long
private conference with a gentleman of the imperial household, and
finally departed with him, requesting us to remain there half an hour.
Impatient as I was, I had no choice but to await his return, and
occupied the time with some reflections upon the folly of taking a
young gallant on a diplomatic errand, and resolving that I would
never again find myself in so unhappy a position,—for I resented the
covert affront to France without seeing any way to avenge it. M. de
Lambert had been guilty of rash indifference to the imperial amour,
and I could scarcely expect the czar to respect his person as a
member of a French embassy. My meditations were interrupted by
Pierrot, who had been trying all the doors to reassure himself as to
their intentions towards us.
“Do you think they will return, monsieur?” he asked significantly.
“I think so, Pierrot,” I replied dryly; “one can never be sure, but I do
not think there were any instructions except those that were given in
my presence.”
He shook his head gravely. “They have been gone some time,” he
remarked, and looked at me with manifest doubt of the wisdom of a
longer wait upon their pleasure.
But at this moment we heard steps without, and the officer throwing
open the door entered, followed by Guillaume de Lambert, whose
face looked pale and haggard with anxiety, but lighted up at the sight
of us, and he met me with an exclamation of joy. I was too anxious,
however, to get him out to waste time on words, and, thanking the
officer for his services, I hurried M. de Lambert off, and it was not
until we were in the street that I permitted him to speak.
“This has been an outrage,” he exclaimed fiercely; “I have been
mewed up and half starved in a regular dungeon, and I believe that
they had designs on my life.”
“So we have been told,” I replied dryly; “but it seems to me, M. de
Lambert, that you have been to blame. You walked into the snare all
too easily, and mademoiselle has won your freedom at the cost of a
personal appeal to the czar.”
He stopped short. “Mademoiselle?” he said in a tone of wonder; “she
is at Troïtsa.”
“Pardon me, monsieur,” I returned quietly, “she is in Moscow. Tidings
travel rapidly, and she was informed of your misfortune, and came—
on the wings of love, and her personal appeal to Peter obtained the
order for your release.”
“Alas!” he exclaimed, “I am unfortunate, since it is I, after all, who
brought her back to the czar. I would rather be deprived of my liberty
than purchase it at such a price.”
“You are a thankless man,” I said; “few could have had so lovely a
woman to plead for them. Now that you have your liberty, you must
make good use of it;” and I told him briefly of the perils of the
situation and the possibilities of evading the czar.
Mentchikof’s proposal of a speedy marriage met with instant
approval, as I had anticipated, and he was all impatience to urge it
upon Najine. In a few words he told me of his capture, which fitted in
with Apraxin’s story of it, and he gave a clear view of the discomforts
of a Russian prison; yet he had been treated with tolerable
moderation although in solitary confinement. His worst fear had been
of an attempt to poison him, since he had not anticipated any actual
violence on account of his nationality. On the whole, the rumors
which had reached Madame de Brousson and Najine had evidently
been exaggerated; but he had had but little food, and had been kept
in rigid imprisonment, which would have speedily accomplished the
work without the aid of more open measures.
As we approached my lodgings, we both scanned them eagerly for
indications of Madame de Brousson’s return; but when we reached
the door, found that she was still absent, and there was nothing to do
but wait. We entered one of the lower rooms, and Pierrot went at
once for food and wine for our returned prisoner, while I laid aside
my cloak and sword and sat down by the fire. M. de Lambert was still
standing by the table, when the outer door was suddenly opened,
without a summons, and we heard a quick step in the hall, and in a
moment Apraxin rushed into the room and confronted M. de
Lambert. I looked at the intruder in amazement; he was without hat
or cloak, and his disordered dress told of a recent struggle, and he
carried a naked sword in his hand. How had he escaped the guards?
He looked at M. Guillaume with furious eyes.
“So!” he exclaimed, “I find you at last! You have evaded me and
baffled me at every turn, but you shall fight me now.”
M. de Lambert gave him a cold glance, measuring him with a
contemptuous face.
“I do not fight with assassins and traitors,” he replied with cutting
scorn.
Apraxin took a step forward, and struck at his face with his open
hand.
“You are a coward!” he exclaimed.
M. de Lambert caught him by the throat and flung him back against
the wall with a force that made his sword fly from his hand; then
Guillaume folded his arms upon his breast and looked at him with a
smile.
“If you need further chastisement,” he said coldly, “you can have it.”
Apraxin had recovered himself, and, picking up his sword, made a
desperate lunge at his antagonist, and I sprang to my feet.
“We have had enough of this,” I exclaimed; but M. de Lambert had
taken my sword from the table.
“Nay, M. le Maréchal,” he said, “permit me to settle with this fool;”
and he parried another blow that Apraxin aimed at him.
I stood and looked on. M. de Lambert was an expert swordsman,
and I saw that Apraxin was no contemptible adversary; but he was
wild with jealousy and passion, and attacked his antagonist with
blind fury, while M. Guillaume was cool, and, although he had felt his
imprisonment, his nerve was steady. Apraxin made fierce thrusts and
quick blows, while M. de Lambert was graceful, dexterous, wary.
They were nearly matched in height. The Frenchman had the greater
breadth of shoulder and depth of chest; the Russian was more lithe
and cat-like in his motions. Guillaume was fair, with light brown locks,
wildly dishevelled, for his powdered peruke had fallen off; Apraxin’s
face was white, and his hair blue black, and there was eager hatred
in the tense expression of his features. He began the fight with
furious eagerness; then, finding his antagonist composed and
fearfully skilful at fencing, he began to husband his strength and
watch for an opportunity to strike under M. de Lambert’s guard. He
was a good swordsman and used the point to advantage, but he was
unsteady with passion, and I saw the wrist falter more than once
when he tried to drive a blow home; and while Guillaume was still
collected, the beads of perspiration gathered thick on his assailant’s
brow, and I saw his eyes dilate and his nostrils stretch and quiver as
he labored for breath. M. de Lambert was on the defensive, parrying
the other’s eager blows and watching him with an unfaltering eye
until the Russian began to waver and struck wildly. So hot grew the
fight that their swords flashed in a circle of light and I could scarcely
follow their play. Suddenly Apraxin made a mad lunge at his
antagonist’s heart, and M. de Lambert, parrying it with a quick
movement, gave him a blow that stretched him on the floor. But he
sprang up like a tiger, and flew at his adversary’s throat; for a
moment they grappled and wrestled, then M. de Lambert, lifting him
from his feet, threw him the third time and knelt upon his breast.
“The fellow is mad,” Guillaume said, his own breath coming short, for
the struggle though brief had been fierce.
The last fall was severe, and Apraxin had lost consciousness, and
after a glance at him M. de Lambert rose and threw water on his
face.
“I hope I have not killed the fool,” he said gravely; “he fought like a
demon.”
I joined him, and together we made some efforts to revive him, but
with poor success; he had struck the back of his head and lay quite
still.
“This is unfortunate,” I remarked thoughtfully; “we do not want him
here. He must have escaped from Mentchikof, and to Mentchikof he
must be returned.”
I stood reflecting upon a proper course of action, and was relieved to
see signs of returning animation in the fellow. At this instant Pierrot
announced that the carriage had come with Madame de Brousson
and mademoiselle, and a plan flashed upon me.
“Go out to meet them, M. de Lambert,” I said at once, “and say
nothing of this. I will send Apraxin back to Mentchikof in the carriage
with Pierrot and Touchet; there is no other way of evading
unpleasant consequences. Happily, your chastisement was so
thorough that he is not likely to want another.”
There was no need for more words, for M. de Lambert went out to
meet Najine, and Pierrot helped me to raise Apraxin. As soon as we
heard madame and mademoiselle pass on up the stairs, we called
Touchet, and we three managed to place the half-conscious youth in
the carriage, and I despatched them to Mentchikof with strict
injunctions to convey the prisoner into the house in a secret manner
and explain the matter to Mentchikof alone and so relieve me of the
embarrassment of this troublesome boy. I could trust their devotion,
and watched the carriage roll away in the darkness with a sigh of
relief.
I was out of one difficulty, but there was another in the upper room,
and a far more delicate one, since there was a woman in it, and that
woman young, beautiful, spirited, and ill to guide; was ever man in
more perplexing situation? I looked up at the skies, which were
clouded, and I sighed; truly, the annoyances of life are many. I
entered the house and, barring the door, walked slowly and
thoughtfully up the stairs. It rested with me to get M. de Lambert
away; to rescue mademoiselle’s happiness; to outwit Zotof; and, last
not least, to defeat, disappoint, and baffle the czar! What were my
weapons? Najine’s love for Guillaume de Lambert, his devoted
courage, my own wit, and Mentchikof’s signet ring.
CHAPTER XXV.
NAJINE AND HER LOVER.
On reaching the head of the stairs, I opened the door upon a pretty
picture. Madame de Brousson had discreetly left the lovers alone,
and they were standing together before the fire, M. de Lambert’s arm
around Najine, and the firelight shining on their faces. They started
at my unexpected entrance, and her cheeks were rosy with blushes
as she saw the smile in my eyes; but she came up to me, and
clasped my hand in both hers.
“I have to thank you, monsieur,” she said, “for all you have done for
me and for M. de Lambert.”
I laughed softly. “Nay, mademoiselle,” I replied gently, “M. de
Lambert owes more to you than to any one, and I trust that he has
properly thanked you.”
She laughed a little at this, and glanced mischievously at her lover. “I
believe he is grateful, monsieur,” she said archly.
“Jesting aside, mademoiselle,” I went on gravely, “we have no time
to lose; M. de Lambert must leave Moscow to-night.”
She started and glanced sadly at her lover, and he looked back at
her with eager interrogation.
“Alas!” she exclaimed, “so soon! Do you believe it necessary, M. le
Maréchal?”
“Mademoiselle,” I replied, “do you yourself believe that the czar is
likely to stand by his action to-night?”
She was silent for a moment, and then shook her head. “I cannot
tell,” she said sadly; “he is a passionate and changeful man, and
acts, I fear, too often on the impulse of the moment.”
“Mademoiselle,” I replied, “I have the assurance of Alexander
Mentchikof that the czar may change at any moment. M. de Lambert
must leave Moscow at once, and for all time, if he would be safe;
and you must bid him farewell unless—”
I paused and glanced at Guillaume.
“I have told her,” he said, “and she raises a thousand objections to
the haste and the danger.”
“I thought you a brave woman, mademoiselle,” I remarked.
“It is not for myself,” she cried with feeling; “it is for him.”
I looked from one to the other. “Ah, mademoiselle,” I said quietly, “I
see how it is. I will leave you to M. de Lambert’s persuasion; but time
presses, and I shall presently return;” and I went out to find my wife,
for I saw that Najine was on the point of yielding, and that her lover
would be a far more effective argument than my best eloquence.
I found Zénaïde waiting with impatience for the return of Pierrot. She
had arranged everything in her own mind, and was full of impatience
to carry out her designs.
“They must be married at once,” she said with decision; “every hour
counts, and Najine has selected this time to hesitate and increase
our embarrassments, while I have been looking for Madame Zotof at
any moment.”
I smiled. “A more terrible infliction than the czar,” I admitted; “but
mademoiselle will yield. We must go straight to the Kremlin, find a
priest, and have the knot tied.”
“There will be a difficulty about the priest,” Zénaïde said.
I showed her Mentchikof’s signet, and explained briefly his cautions
and fears.
“The signet will probably help us,” she said thoughtfully. “Meanwhile
we must prevail upon Najine to consent at once.”
As she spoke, there was a hasty tap upon the door, and I opened it
to admit Pierrot.
“Monsieur and madame,” he said hurriedly, “the Zotofs are coming. I
left Touchet with the carriage at some distance that they might not
see us approach, and I have put out the lights at the front of the
house.”
“Wise Pierrot,” I said, “put out all the lights that show at the
windows;” and then I turned to my wife for suggestions.
“It is, as I thought,” she said; “the czar intends that Madame Zotof
shall undo all that he has done. We must get mademoiselle and M.
de Lambert out by the rear door.”
“Will that be possible, Pierrot?” I asked.
“If no time is lost, monsieur. They will first try the front door, and it is
possible that they may believe that we have already departed.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Not while Madame Zotof is of the party,” I
said.
Zénaïde had already gone to hasten mademoiselle’s decision, and I
followed. At the first note of danger Najine’s spirit awoke, and she
was as quick to act as we could desire. I saw by M. de Lambert’s
face that he had overcome her scruples to a hasty marriage, and I
felt that we could now proceed without further delays. In a few
moments both women were cloaked and hooded for the street, and
preceded by Pierrot we crept down the stairs to the door at the rear.
We were half-way down when we were startled by a loud knock at
the front.
“They have come!” exclaimed mademoiselle beneath her breath,
pausing to listen.
“The more reason for haste,” I said, taking her hand and leading her
forward. Then I called to Pierrot, “Is there any one at this entrance?”
He was listening at the door, and in a moment opened it and looked
out. “Safe as yet, monsieur,” he said.
We hurried down and out, for there was now quite an uproar at the
front door. We stood a moment listening, Najine’s hand in mine.
“We must run for it!” I exclaimed. And we all ran down the lane like a
party of children, and reached the carriage without hindrance. As
soon as we were seated within it, the horses started at a round pace,
and I laughed as I thought of Madame Zotof beating upon my door
for admittance.
“Have a care, monsieur,” Zénaïde said warningly; “do not laugh too
soon.”
“You think my mirth premature?” I replied thoughtfully; “it may be so,
but I saw so plainly Madame Zotof before that door. I beg your
pardon, mademoiselle, but your aunt’s energy is amusing.”
“They will follow us to the Kremlin,” she rejoined quietly. “My aunt
never gives up.”
“A worthy quality, mademoiselle,” I remarked, “and madame may
follow as soon as the marriage is consummated. She cannot prevail
against the church.”
“In any case, madame will not prevail,” remarked M. de Lambert,
quietly; “Najine has consented to be my wife, and I trust that I am
able to fight her battles as well as my own.”
“There is no doubt about your ability to fight your own, monsieur,” I
remarked, laughing to myself as I thought of his duel with Apraxin;
but neither Zénaïde nor Najine understood my reference, and I felt
M. de Lambert stir uneasily, probably afraid of alarming his fiancée. I
laughed the more, knowing how she admired her lover’s prowess
and how little she esteemed the vanquished, for she had a spirit that
despised all cowardice and meanness. In spite of my anxieties, I
found much food for amusing reflection,—the embarrassment of the
czar, finding mademoiselle as a suppliant for her lover; the mad folly
of M. Apraxin, and the fury of that shrew Madame Zotof. Meanwhile
we had been driving rapidly, and in a quarter of an hour the carriage
stopped within the Gate of the Redeemer, and, leaving the women in
charge of M. de Lambert, I went to find a priest whom I could trust
with this delicate affair. After a little inquiry I was directed to the
Cathedral of the Assumption, and, returning for the others, we went
there together, and I found the priest whom I sought. It was,

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