Thomas Flores considers the appeal of technocrats, tracking their rise over the past half-century:
Politicians are an easy object for derision, even among themselves. Calling a decision “political” is a sure-fire way to impugn it. Technocrats promise a different style of governance, one in which expertise and objectivity matter more than venal political calculation. In a way, the desire for technocratic rule hearkens back to Plato’s conception of the philosopher king who rules with wisdom and knowledge.
Technocratic rule holds yet another promise, that of a value-free politics.
The vexing political issues of our day that enjoin us to deeply consider our political values — climate change, racial relations, and privacy in the global war on terrorism – are in part the cause of political conflict. So the prospect that these troubling questions ultimately have technical solutions remains tempting, since it allows us to evade the political act of reconciling our values to ourselves and to each other. TED talks are perhaps the most prominent public forum for such thinking, promising that technological change and creative thinking hold the key to human progress, rather than struggles over value questions such as justice and equity, as cultural critics such as Evgeny Morozov have argued.
Yet we cannot escape the political, no matter how hard we may try. All forms of politics, even anti-politics, are embedded in political values. A desire for technocratic politics constructs an ethos of rule favoring certain values – expertise as a form of political legitimacy and economic efficiency as the goal of economic policy – over others. Technocrats may offer us improved economic management, but not an escape from the importance of values in politics. Political questions are, in the end, political.
The Dish 