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Two Western technocrats were Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter. Neither had a good legacy, though for different reasons. Interestingly enough, they are also b
by er4hn 5y ago
Two Western technocrats were Margaret Thatcher and Jimmy Carter. Neither had a good legacy, though for different reasons.
Interestingly enough, they are also both from different ends of the political spectrum.
- krasin 5y agoTo the same list: Angela Merkel is a nuclear physicist.
- qwytw 5y agoNot really, generally someone is considered a technocrat when she/he is appointed to some government position regardless of their political affiliation and purely because of their expertise in the area related to that position not because they might have a degree in STEM E.g. the current PM of Italy Mario Draghi can be considered a technocrat, but definitely not Thatcher or Carter.
- mongol 5y agoAgreed. An elected politician, no matter what background, can't really be a technocrat.
- culi 5y agoI mean, hypothetically, there could be ways to merge technocracy and democracy. People could vote on a selection of top experts for example. Or perhaps people could vote for what technical background they think is most important for a position and experts of those backgrounds are automatically assigned to the role Just some ideas
- mongol 5y agoYes good points. If a specialist background is required for election, you get some degree of technocracy into it.
- qwytw 5y agoSo basically a government funded committee would decide who gets appointed to any public office. Alternatively we can just select a random person with a relevant bacgkround/degree..
- gameman144 5y agoUsually the term "technocrat" refers to an appointed official rather than a directly elected official, even if they're very technically knowledgeable. For instance, Jimmy Carter would widely be considered a "politician" since he was directly elected, but someone like Janet Yellen could be considered a technocrat since she was appointed as Secretary of the Treasury due to her technical experience.
- mkoubaa 5y agoJimmy Carter's legacy is not fair and is more about a political mob's pitchforks than his actual accomplishments
- LAC-Tech 5y agoHaving a bad legacy is just how academia and the media punish you when the plebs refuse to do it at the ballot box. It has no correlation - positive or otherwise - on what that person actually did.