In the Western notion of democracy, elected representatives and officials were never supposed to be roller chains of the public opinion.
One of my favourites political pieces is Edmund Burke's
Speech to the Electors of Bristol. His understanding of the role of the elected corps in a liberal democracy has been prevalent till very recently.
And JFK wrote on
Profiles in Courage that representatives aren't elected to serve as a mere seismograph to record shifts in popular opinion and have the duty to correct or flat outignore the will of their constituents.
The idea that this Italian government or the current legislature may lack democratic legitimacy is a product of a very recent tendency to see democracy as a direct and instantaneous expression of the constituency will. But the dominant concept in liberal democracies, besides the non-democratic mechanisms that serve the vital purpose of limiting democracy, is that representatives shouldn't cater the whims of the populace. That the public opinion should be consulted periodically via the electoral process.
IMO not only it's obviously formally democratic but also very democratic in spirit. The fact that the government is "technocratic" seems completely irrelevant to me - that's a completely different axis.
Poll
