which to me would only apply to B-grade science fiction movies where a counsil of scientists is convening to decide what to do about the fact that the planets core is going to explode.
However I frequently hear of one or another government being infested with technocrats. Most recently complaints about the board of the EU that is demanding austerity measures. So there is clearly some vernacular use of the word that is separate from its classical definition,
Can someone give me a clue as to what constitutes a technocrat under this use of the word?
The wiki entry is pretty much spot on. A technocrat is someone appointed to a political position because of their technical ability in some field. In the case of the recently appointed Greek and Italian Prime Ministers, their technical abilities lie in Economics and Banking. They are not career politicians, were not elected to their new role, but have been selected to deal with the financial crises faced by their respective countries.
For use as a perjorative, it’s actually pretty close to the classic definition. Look at Italy’s new prime minister, Mario Monti. As the profile notes, he’s a trained economist (in fact, he was a professor of economics and a university president.)
So it’s easy to assume that someone like that will simply apply textbook solutions to real-world problems, without any understanding or concern about what effect those pprograms will have on actual people. In short, technocracy.
While the definition you found leans toward science (and the implied Scientists), I think a more accurate real-world scenario would be handing over reigns to academics - Professors - of political science, economics, law, business, etc.
Its a politician or other gov’t bigwig that is motivated more by a desire to solve problems using technical know-how and science/economics then by ideology. I’ve seen it used as an insult (“Technocrats don’t have any real beliefs or are too ivory tower and apply solutions without understanding the values of the people they represent”) or a compliment (“technocrats don’t let crazy dogma get in the way of making things better for people”).
I see it applied to elected politicians all the time, so I don’t think being appointed is necessary or sufficent for use of the term.
Actually, it is more like handing over the reins to civil servants: top level civil service executives. Technocrats are supposed to be people who are good at getting things done (because they are highly trained and experienced in the relevant techniques), as indeed, supposedly at least, are executives in private industry. Academics, by contrast, have the reputation of being very bad at getting things done, because they care more about truth than about practicalities (although in reality there is often a good deal of overlap and movement between the upper reaches of a civil service hierarchy and those segments of academia that specialize in training people to fill them).
The big problem with technocratic government, however, is that even if it* is *more efficient than “politicized” government at getting things done (and that has not always proved to be the case in practice), it has no decent mechanisms whatsoever for deciding what the things are that ought to be done, what the ultimate policy goals should be. Technique, and, indeed, a civil service, is about means, not ends. That is why we have political systems that tell civil service systems what it is that they should be trying to achieve. Because most of the time people have profound and multifarious disagreements about what their country’s and their society’s goals should be, there is really no avoiding having a political system for very long, whether it democracy, or dictatorship (where one guy gets to decide), or whatever. Technocracies can really only ever work in those rare situations where almost everyone (or everyone who “matters”) agrees on what has to be done. Otherwise they are going either to rapidly fall apart, or degenerate into de facto dictatorships or oligarchies.
This is basically the answer. It’s traditionally a term of praise, for a politician who addresses real-world problems by consulting experts and then pursuing the most efficient and effective solution to the problem; rather than a politician who addresses problems with ideology and populism, regardless of whether their course of action is the best one or not. Mitt Romney had been cited as a technocrat on the right by both sides of the aisle for instance (most notably for his health care reform in Massachusetts, before it became politically toxic).
However where it’s come up recently in Europe is where Germany and the ECB want Italy and Greece to force through brutal austerity programs, cutting social spending on things like pensions and healthcare. The previous prime ministers, Berlusconi and Papandreou respectively, were too willing to “pander” to the democratic sentiment of their countries with things like referendums rather than quietly acquiescing to Germany’s demands, and so they were effectively forced out and replaced with unelected “technocrats”, Mario Monti and Lucas Papademos, who will force through the austerity spending in their countries that Germany wants even if they have to cut starkly against public opinion.
If you ask me, in that context, “technocracy” is just a euphemism for anti-democracy, with painful policy measures being forced on the Italian and Greek people against their will, by politicians who are unelected and unaccountable. But for some reason the media here in the West has swung right behind the term and been fully on board with the idea, so here we are with calm articles about “whether the technocrats can really succeed”, rather than why Italy and Greece are having their democracies torn from them.
The way my PoliSci teacher used it, anybody who’s involved in politics and knows how to use a calculator. My brother (BS in Business, a couple years’ worth of Poli Sci) confirms his PoliSci teachers used it the same way, while his Business teachers used it like I was used to hearing it. There appears to be a spectrum in usage: most people would apply “technocrat” to a politician with degrees in science or engineering, whereas lawyers/polisci graduates in politics apply it to anybody but themselves. It is usually derogatory - and then the same people who throw it as an insult ask why aren’t scientists interested in getting into politics.
While I don’t consider myself a technocrat at all, I do believe there’s some merit in the idea of involving experts of the hard sciences in executive, legislative or judicial positions, as our society becomes ever more dependent on high-technology (and in the civil majority, to a startlingly degree, ignorant of at least the most popular layman explanations on theories that apply to our everyday lives such as chemistry, biology, the physics, mathematics, meteorology, geology, evolution, cosmology, etc.).
Why are a lot of members of the GOP debating and trying to sway votes on matters of faith and morals, when the major problems today require pragmatic solutions in the fields above? I’d be in favor of putting more power into a “democratic theocracy”, so that we can bypass the “religious/moral impasse” and other ignorance (turned into spiteful competition) that plagues our current bipartisan government; now paralyzed.
The shiny-eyed ideal behind the dream of technocracy is that if only we could get those freeloading incompetent self-serving politicians out of the way, and leave it to people who know what they are doing, we would all be better off.
The problem with this is that it impliedly assumes that the nature of government is that it is a series of technical problems to solve.
But it is typically not. It’s about assessment of priorities in an environment of finite resources. Should we be spending money on premature babies or old ladies with broken hips? Or police in Detroit or a Mars space program? And anyone who thinks the answers are easy is just Dunning-Krugering.
At a certain (fairly low) level of abstraction and up, there are not ‘technical’ answers to these problems - the answers involve questions of morality and judgment in an environment of imperfect information, competing demands and an absence of a crystal ball.
My vote for the worst examples of technocrats in the pejorative sense were those boffins from the RAND corporation who claimed to have applied game-theoretical principles to the Cold War and who as a result urged that America must conduct an immediate massive first strike on the Soviet Union with no warning to maximise America’s chance of winning. By bringing purely technical considerations to the table, they had lost sight of what it means to ‘win’.
“Technocracy” was the name of a crypto-Fascist political party/fad in the 1930s in the US, claiming to have scientific answers for all of society’s ills if the public would just man up and give them the reins of government. They promoted themselves aggressively as something popular and growing, but never had a membership of over 2,000 at their peak.
A “technocrat” has a meaning quite divorced from these seedy origins of the word. A technocrat is a specialist in pretty much any area other than politics, who somehow holds political office. Usually it’s someone in the social sciences, but it’s occasionally someone from the physical sciences (including medicine). Traditionally, men in high office got there via the legal profession, the military or down-and-dirty ward politics. A technocrat got in through the side door of this tradition.
I think this is a better definition of the term as used in American politics than the quote from the wikipedia article in the OP. Mike Dukakis was called a technocrat, IIRC. It was used primarily as a compliment, although I suppose it was often a neutral term too-- simply descriptive of his background and governing style.
Could we say, by and large, the British House of Lords is a technocratic chamber? It has imperfections, but its members are broadly appointed for their expertise and knowledge.
I would suggest a meritocracy would possibly be a better description. But I suspect that many feel that the House of Lords has little merit to recommend it.
Thanks for all of your responses. This was basically what I was getting from context, but its nice to see the different connotations of its usage fleshed out.
Huh? I thought they just bought those seats, like the box seats at the stadium…
Technocrat, from the way I hear it, usually means (as in the Greek/Italian situation) a person who is selected to (help) rule based on their technical knowledge, not a person with political ambitions who has technical training. The latter may rule “like a technocrat”, but political involvement taint that activity.
This from my take on the word, is the key distinciton. Your typical politician works the crowd, tried to please the people and especially those factions that helped elect them. A technocrat by contrast is usually more chosen by others in politics because there is a real problem to solve, rather tahn pursuing the job. They are supposed to be above politics.
This is the problem, as others mentioned. Ignoring important peripheral issues or constituencies may seem “focussed” or “dedicated” or just callous. It’s all in the perception.
For example, let’s say some mythical government has an overspending problem. (more mythically, maybe let’s pretend there is a government somewhere that does not). To solve the problem, tough decisions have to be made. A says raise taxes. B says cut spending, no tax increases. The logical answer must lie somewhere in between, but neither side will compromise. The easiest solution is ot hand the mess to a third party because they are good at solving this mess, and the solution can’t be blamed on you or credited to the other side.
That’s another key point. When the job is done, the technocrat goes away and no side can claim they solved the problem, no side can be blamed for what bad side effects came fom that.
We see this efffect especially with central bank managers. they are appointed because they are good at the job; then given free reign outside of government control so politicans can’t be blamed if interest rates go too high, or money gets too tight, etc.