Post #4357140
2026-07-31 16:10 UTC
«Technocracy, short of literal rule by experts, then constitutes a style or mode of politics that mobilises and thus uses (or abuses) expertise.
Think of the Troika of the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the IMF that managed the bailouts of Greece, Cyprus, Portugal and Ireland after the 2008 financial crisis: all three institutions justified their harsh and controversial interventions across these countries by reference to economic expert advice. This allowed them to sidestep democratic deliberation as well as, most controversially, accountability. The crux is that experts and their technocratic mobilisers are different sets of actors with different motivations: the former translate their credentialed specialist knowledge into advice and recommendations; the latter try to persuade us that they simply follow that advice.»
Replies (1)
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@fgraver@hcommons.social 2026-07-31 16:11
«The making of international organisations, then, was not insulated from imperial expansion, multinational business interests or great-power competition. On the contrary, many of the organisations we today praise as great but tragically ailing bulwarks against power politics have historically been the latter’s fellow travellers. Their claim to neutrality did not restrain power; it normalised it, and it often did so by fiat. International organisations invented a technocratic international that was not unlike a gated community: sheltered from its own conditions of existence.»