Populism and technocracy have emerged as two new discursive poles in the European political landscape, competing with the more traditional divisions of class, religion and race. Populist discourse identifies with the people and rallies against the establishment and elites. Technocratic discourse highlights complexity, the need for expertise, and the importance of non-majoritarian institutions. Recent events in Europe have highlighted this division. During the Eurozone crisis, technocratic governments were put in place in order to stabilize Europe’s Southern periphery, whilst populist movements rallied against continent-wide austerity measures. This panel seeks to address several questions raised by such developments. On one hand, populism and technocracy seem directly opposed to one another; but on the other hand they can also clearly coexist in the language of a single political figure like Sarkozy, Berlusconi or Blair. Thus, we are going to inquire into the exact nature of the relationship between them: are populism and technocracy simply opposites, or also complementary in some respects? Moreover, the emergence of these two discursive poles also has manifold implications for European politics. We are therefore going to inquire into the way in which populism and technocracy fit with the procedures and habits of party democracy and representative politics more generally, looking at the questions this raises for the future of democracy in Europe. Finally, there is the question of historical origins. Where do these notions come from? And how new is the framing of political life in terms of the opposition between them?