At first glance, the national and ideological chapters in Part II have shown stark differences. We go from the deep and taken-for-granted respect of politicians for economists as “scientists” among the centrists of Denmark and the right of Germany to the greater dismissiveness on the part of the Anglosphere right.

There is also an ideological divide, perhaps strongest in the four European countries. The far-left politicians across these countries are experimental, radical and heterodox. They respect some economists, but this is certainly not respect for the authority of economists as a whole, and not in the way that technocrats would see as facilitating any kind of consensus on a settled view. The far left is still wedded to contestation, as one might expect. Far-left politicians also have the greatest challenges when it comes to voters. They are proposing ideas that seem new and require a lot of dedication in time and effort to grasp. They are particularly conscious of how hard it is for them to persuade low-income voters of their environmentalist policies, which, even if they make them as progressive as possible, may nevertheless still provoke fears of potential privations on the part of those who feel let down by past economic policies. On the centre left, respect for economists is partial, since it is almost exclusively applied to Keynesianism. I posed the possibility that the French might be distinctive in their attitude to economists, respecting their plurality, a trend that might spread to other countries, but that would necessitate a wholesale reformulation of the place of economics within the context of expertise. If pluralism proceeds, economics loses its status as a science. This could lead to all sorts of benefits, but it makes it hard to argue for economic technocracy.

With the possible exception of Danish centrists, these chapters in Part II have been united, for different reasons, in pointing out how unviable economic technocracy is. They also include undercurrents that show how undesirable economic technocracy would be. The populist threat has varied in its visibility across the five countries, more noticeable in France and the United States. But in this final chapter I argue that relationships with voters more generally are a common problem for the five. The commonality of the problem relates to the morality of politicians’ economic visions and their role as elected representatives, and points to a common solution.