Back-to-normality outsiders: Zelensky’s technocratic populism, 2019–2021

ABSTRACT This discourse analysis of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and his party, Servant of the People, over the period 2019–2021, provides a case study that adds to the emergent literature on technocratic populism, confirming some of its hypotheses. Technocratic populism utilises “outsider experts” and seeks “normalisation” via depoliticisation and demobilisation of the population. The political context of Ukraine was favourable to technocratic and inclusionary populism in the 2019–2021 period because the degree of trust in political parties was low and there was an association of the “old elites” with highly polarised politics structured along regional and identitarian lines.