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| Government by nerds one step from tyranny, The Australian, 19 November 2011 |
It is like Revenge of the Nerds, European style: the technocrats are now in charge.
Well, at least they are in Greece and Italy, where Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti respectively have been sworn in as prime minister. Pause for a moment to consider exactly just what has happened.
Both Papademos, a former European central banker, and Monti, a former EU commissioner, are unelected PMs.
The equivalent of what has happened would be for a former Reserve Bank of Australia governor or Australian Competition & Consumer Commission chairman to be given a parliamentary seat, then appointed prime minister. Imagine Quentin Bryce inviting Bernie Fraser or Allan Fels to form government.
It is apt, therefore, for these developments to be considered as marking the arrival of technocracy. In its essence, technocracy refers to a system of government in which experts rule without having to answer to citizens.
Most of us would associate the term with socialist modes of government and politburos populated by engineers. But its origin is perhaps more complicated.
For one thing, the modern idea of technocracy actually can be traced to 20th-century US engineers. For another, technocracy may have even deeper roots in the 17th century.
In his utopian tract The New Atlantis, philosopher Francis Bacon outlined a vision of technical elites ruling according to scientific rationality. According to Bacon, elite scientific research institutes would form "the very eye of the kingdom".
Later in the 19th century, positivist thinkers such as Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte also developed ideas about an "administrative state" based on the "science of organisation".
Given this intellectual heritage, who could blame Europeans for liking their technocrats?
It is no accident that institutes such as the celebrated Ecole Nationale d'Administration in France or the College of Europe in Belgium produce so many political leaders.
What is different now is that the technocrats aren't simply in the bureaucracy, offering advice to elected politicians. Clearly, they have surpassed this function in parts of Europe.
Elsewhere, though, technocrats resemble something of a political class wielding significant influence. What US political scientist Frank Fischer once wrote about the "quiet revolution" of technocracy across liberal democracies remains true.
The invisibility of technocrats encapsulates the way they operate in politics and policy. Politicians may make the decisions, but the experts define the problems or the options available.
We are not by any means immune to the influence of technocrats here in Australia.
When government departments in Canberra expand their ranks of strategic policy advisers, they look to young management consultants from McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group.
Under prime minister Kevin Rudd, a former bureaucrat, there was also much voguish hype about "evidence-based policy".
In more historical terms, since the 1980s central government agencies have recruited heavily from economics graduates, while ostensibly shunning those from the liberal arts.
In the present case of Greece and Italy, one may just give technocracy the benefit of the doubt. It may be the only way to get their public finances back on track.
New Italian Prime Minister Monti has been particularly bold: he has announced a cabinet filled entirely by experts and containing no politicians.
Yet there are good reasons to resist any general suggestion of outsourcing elected governments to technical experts. This is because technocrats, for all their avowals of being apolitical, are themselves armed with an ideology: one of anti-democratic, scientific rationalism.
Technocrats tend to regard politics as an obstacle to societal efficiency. But if they were to run our system of government, how would technocrats be kept accountable?
There can be only one conclusion. Living in even an inefficient democracy remains preferable to the order of despotism, benign or otherwise.
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