Search

• I analyse FLEGT VPA's democratising agenda and civil society participation in Laos. • As well as governmentality exercised by the EU and its development agency. • Lao state showed 'counter-conduct' against independent from state civil society. • VPA's 'rendering technical' facilitated setting up of easily monitored CSOs. • EU's governmentality and the Lao counter-conduct are mutually co-constructive. This paper analyses the European Union's (EU's) democratising agenda within the frame of the EU's Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreement (VPA) in Laos. In particular, it focuses on the requirement for the participation of civil society organisations (CSOs) in the VPA and the Lao state actors' responses to this requirement. I frame the VPA's democratising agenda and its conditionality of civil society participation as acts of governmentality exercised by the EU in Laos. This EU governmentality is exercised through the EU and EU member states' funded development partner in the frame of their project supporting the FLEGT VPA process in Laos. The Lao government responses and strategies to the EU governmentality resulted on the one hand in the Lao state's governmentality towards domestic CSOs, and in counter-conduct (i.e. a subtle and sly resistance to some aspects of the VPA) on the other. First, by tracing the establishment of the Lao FLEGT Civil Society Organisations Network (FLEGT CSO Network), I highlight the trend of depoliticisation and rendering technical, where the EU-funded development partner, with full support and backing from the Lao state, trained the CSOs in various VPA and timber legality issues. In the training, the CSOs were given specific roles and tasks, building up their fields of expertise, and were integrated in the formal VPA organisational structures, which allowed for their scrutiny and tight survelience by the state. Second, I analyse the counter-conduct by the Lao government against a civil society that is independent from the state, which the government manifested through further disempowerment of CSOs and tightening of the CSO regulation shortly after the FLEGT CSO Network was established, while at the same time simulating democratisation by welcoming CSOs' participation in the VPA. Summoning CSOs as compliant actors and unpaid service providers working for and alongside the state was in part enabled by the VPA's own rendering technical approach. Hence, the EU's VPA governmentality and the Lao state counter-conduct mutually reinforced one another, even if their initial agendas around democratisation and CSO engagement in forest governance and the VPA diverged. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper confronts the broad question of the nature and quality of the contributions of experts, stakeholders, and the wider public to the development of detailed techno economical inputs used in scenario analyses used for discussions and decisions on the green energy transition and science, technology and innovation (STI) policies in general. The study focuses on stakeholder inclusion in developing the Danish Energy Agency's technology catalogues. The technology catalogues forecasts technoeconomic data up to 2050. The study reviews some well-recognised issues related to the inclusion of experts and stakeholders. The study contributes three new insights. First, a better understanding is developed of how expert and stakeholder inclusion in developing front-end inputs for energy models and scenarios aligns expectations and builds a shared understanding of detailed technoeconomic data. This shared understanding establishes a level playing field for wider public debate on visions for the future energy system. Second, a pragmatic approach is demonstrated for stakeholder inclusion in contexts – such as developing technology catalogues – with limited resources and only a few actors available for consultation. Third, the paper presents the argument that the concept of technocracy can bring useful insights for analysing expert and stakeholder inclusion in longterm energy planning. • The study emphasizes the need to align the expectations of experts and stakeholders in the inputs for energy scenarios. • The research highlights a pragmatic approach to stakeholder inclusion in cases with limited resources and few actors. • The study emphasizes the scenario dependency of projected technoeconomic data. • The concept of technocracy is discussed as a framework for understanding the stakeholders' role and limitations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is generally thought that artificial intelligence (AI) has a significant impact on politics and democracy. Meanwhile, the technology is also often hailed a solution to key societal and environmental challenges. It raises questions regarding, for example, how we can and should deal with climate change. This article links and discusses these issues by putting them in the context of a technocracy-democracy dilemma and by using the concept of critical junctures. Then it identifies two political pathways of AI and critically discusses their underlying assumptions. This offers a useful framework for further discussion of the relations between AI, climate change, and democracy, and enables the examination of important issues for the politics of technology, such as the role of human expertise vis-à-vis artificial intelligence, the problems raised by techno-solutionism, and the question at what level of governance AI and climate change should be addressed. • The political use of AI raises an important technocracy-democracy dilemma. • We show that we are at a critical juncture regarding AI. • Two pathways of political AI stand out: augmenting or replacing humans in politics. • Both pathways are problematic assumptions and need to be critically evaluated. • These evaluations must be performed to achieve the beneficial use of AI in politics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • Technocracy is the label given to support for fully 'rationalised' governance; it is one of the defining features of Western modernism. • I outline the origins of the word technocracy and its relationship with epistemic injustice and 'practicality'. • I explore several possible candidates as antonyms, and their different inadequacies. • Finally, I propose a neologism - avivocracy -. It foregrounds irreducible uncertainty, ambiguity and uncontrollability in the 21st century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chongming Island, a large island off the Shanghai Coast, is China's first and only endorsed eco-island. The Chinese central government and the Shanghai provincial government have placed high bets on making Chongming a world-class example of sustainable urbanization and involved the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) for valuable knowledge transfer. However, to what extent is it feasible to preserve the green, open and natural character of the island given the enormous urbanization pressure Shanghai faces? In this contribution, the authors examine to what extent the lofty goals formulated in the various national, provincial and local plans are effectively implemented. They claim that existing assessments are useful, but rely too heavily on technocratic indicator systems to allow for insights regarding on the ground implementation. They analyse existing assessment studies on eco island development, but then develop a broader planning and policy oriented assessment matrix of their own which they apply in an independent field study. They find that the Shanghai and Chongming authorities are generally taking their eco island development task seriously through restricting urban development to certain locations, opening eco-parks, developing an integrated water system, and invest substantial resources into making it happen. However, a sustainable public transport system is still missing and at a few locations commercially attractive to real estate development villa parks and skyscrapers have emerged. By synthesizing data from existing evaluations with information retrieved following the format of their assessment matrix, an analysis of the eco island's implementation which connects more closely with the situation experienced on the ground has been generated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) are often seen as a panacea for a more efficient provision of public services and infrastructure. However, they may have adverse effects especially in weak institutional environments. This paper focuses on how the design and performance of PPP enabling mechanisms such as ‘unsolicited proposals’ (USP) permit and incentivize rent-seeking behavior in subnational contexts. It aims to elucidate the hazards of USP mechanisms by the incorporation of a perspective on incentives, which is important since it helps to map the environment where corruption and opportunism unfold. It also confronts the design of PPP policies with the specificities of certain political environments. The case-study on a large-scale road infrastructure project shows that the expected reliance on technical expertise and competitive procurement for guaranteeing public interest was outweighed by a number of design flaws. These problems were related to asymmetric, non-transparent and discretionary decision-making that led to a reallocation of unearned rents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This commentary is inspired by my participation in the conference on post normal science: New Currents in Science: The Challenges of Quality, 2016, Ispra. First, I will describe Japanese commitment to PNS, which consists of a part of the long history of the Japanese response to European citizens' science/technology movement, in the framework of the introduction of Post-Normal Science in East Asia. Then I will re-examine the relationship between techno-science and democracy after 3/11 Japan, where triple disaster has radically changed the relationship between science/technology and society, and hence the very nature of Japan as a democratic society. Japan had been returning to an authoritarian state and technocratic nation in the aftermath of 3/11. As for the citizens' sphere, since 3/11, Japanese society has been badly divided; in fact, the current division of Japanese society is as bad as that of the Trumpian US. I have applied several conceptual tools to analyze this post-3/11 situation of Japan, that it was created by a combination of 'disaster capitalism' (a concept described by Naomi Klein (2008)), and 'normalcy bias'. The new political climate in post-3/11 Japan results in part from the politics of emergency, and partly from the manipulation and distortion of democracy. From the viewpoint of democracy and science, cases of thyroid cancer in Fukushima and its surroundings are a serious and even pathetically painful issue. One hundred seventy two children in and around Fukushima have already had their thyroids removed in surgical operations. But any suggestion of causality between the Fukushima incident and thyroid cancer is officially rejected. It is announced by the authority's voice that "radioactivity risk is safe, take it, because risk creates chance", like the proclamation given in the novel 1984 by George Orwell. Behind this is another historical psychology, that Japan has overcome Hiroshima and Nagasaki and made a great success in economic development. Post 3/11 Japan is judged as not a good place to discuss science and technology in a deliberate manner supported by a reasonable democracy with mutual understanding and value-free examination of techno-science in action. But, in this time of serious social divide and political populism, can PNS and a citizens' science approach now lead the way to fill in the gap? Are there any lessons from PNS that can be applied to post3/11 Japan? The question is still open. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on longitudinal research engagement with villages and government projects in the Eastern Cape Province of South Africa, we argue the case for a strong revamp of government policies on rural development. Thereby we suggest that the legitimacy of ascribing to policy a notion of "post-apartheid" is largely redundant as current development policies in rural South Africa have not changed sufficiently. Notably the underlying rationale behind government interventions and associated governance mechanisms remains highly technocratic. This represents a strong continuity in the role of the state and its quest to restructure and modernise the rural economy. We question the efficacy of such a technocratic approach when it seems so disconnected from the socio-economically fluid and spatially heterogeneous spaces created by rural populations who, in the process of defining and pursuing their livelihood goals in relation to particular identities, and ideals around notions of modernity, produce livelihood constructions and identities that are seldom confined to the village or the agricultural sector alone. • Achieving development goals and priorities require a policy making process going beyond technocracy. • The moniker 'post-apartheid' to refer to post-1994 rural development policies is often misgiven. • The 'technological fixing' projected and implemented and imposed i on rural communal settings is misconstrued. • Rural villages are extremely heterogenous in composition and life styles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are policies proposed by technocrats more easily accepted by citizens than those proposed by traditional partisan actors? This is a crucial question, as politicians increasingly rely on technocrats for resolving "wicked problems" such as financial, environmental, and health crises. To answer this question, we conducted a survey experiment among 5000 Italian respondents. At the time of our experiment, Italy was governed by a "grand coalition" of various technocratic and partisan actors, enabling us to realistically vary the proponents of different policy proposals. Overall, citizens are more likely to accept policies proposed by technocrats as opposed to party leaders. In particular, we find that technocratic proponents boost policy acceptance even more for economic and valence issues. Furthermore, we find that this "technocratic effect" is generally stronger among citizens who are more likely to disagree with the policy content. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the spread of the American technocracy movement in China during the 1930s and traces the appeal of a technocratic society among Chinese intellectuals. From 1931 to 1935, Chinese newspapers and magazines translated and published the writing of American technocrats, which inspired Chinese thinkers to explore technocratic ideals. This paper argues that the Nanjing Government (which operated from 1927 to 1949) upheld the Hoover and Franklin D. Roosevelt administrations as examples of expert politics in action. By studying American technocracy, China remolded American style “expert politics” into expert politics with Chinese characteristics. Although this article contends that American technocracy was the external motivating factor for the movement in China, it also establishes the uniqueness of Chinese technocracy as the merging of Chinese tradition and Western thought, and illustrates key differences between the practices of expert politics in each nation. Such divergences include the emphasis of Chinese technocrats on increasing national power and the movement's failure to change the fundamental power regime in China. The histories of both United States and China show, contra Veblen and other theorists, that technocratic governments, though powerful forces, were not able to bring about any lasting change in political structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Engineers have a unique and powerful role to play in solidarity with communities engaged in environment and resource related struggles. By translating between technocratic-bureaucratic and local-traditional knowledge systems, engineers can mobilize their instrumental-technical expertise to affect moral-political change. Two possible approaches for this include: i) developing technical tools to affect institutional accountability; and ii) mobilizing and translating local-traditional knowledge to hybridize with technocratic-bureaucratic knowledge in a creative process leading to better development alternatives. This vision of development/humanitarian engineering builds on existing currents in the discourse and, in particular, contributes a vision of how institutional failures that prevent the delivery of public goods can be overcome by making institutions more responsive to community needs and perspectives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By 2004 the FDA had emerged as a champion of pharmacogenomics as an exemplar for novel approaches to drug development. This was made clear in 2004 when the agency released a wide-ranging report which positioned pharmacogenomics at the heart of a broader regulatory reform agenda. The Critical Path initiative addressed declining productivity of drug development by suggesting that the problem was a mismatch between the rapid pace of discovery in post-genomic biomedicine and the antiquated development process for new drugs. Framing their work in this context, FDA officials reconceptualised their role in the innovation process, in what was the first programmatic statement of a shift from a strictly gate-keeping role to a more collaborative or facilitative role as enablers of innovation. This paper situates the FDA's emergence as a champion of pharmacogenomics in the broader politics of pharmaceutical regulation in the USA. In making a contribution to the pharmaceuticalisation literature this paper will draw on the work of John Abraham who has argued that one of the primary drivers of pharmaceuticalisation has been “deregulatory state policies” and on Williams and colleagues who have argued that the changing relationship between regulatory agencies and the pharmaceutical industry is an important dimension of pharmaceuticalisation. This paper links this to the promotion of pharmaceutical futures such as pharmacogenomics and explores how this shift is also closely related to the trend towards a risk management approach to pharmaceutical regulation. The role of Bush appointees in the development and promotion of the Critical Path agenda is also examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although much criticism has been leveled against technocracy, the multi-layered problem has been analyzed in piecemeal fashion and has yet to be subject to robust classification. Consequently, it can be difficult to determine when allegations of technocracy are true, and the extent to which new instances of technocracy perpetuate longstanding problems. To close this gap in scholarship, we have created a taxonomy of technocracy that identifies three things: 1) the central domains where technocracy emerges, 2) the basic means by which technocratic power is instantiated, and 3) the quintessential types of harms technocratic discipline engenders. To demonstrate the explanatory power of the taxonomy, we apply it to Silicon Valley and clarify how this contemporary example of technocracy relates to past instances. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study of political system in future Mars colony belongs to the futures studies, space policy and political sciences. While this is a long-term scenario, there are good reasons to foresight possible evolution of political systems in space. In this paper, some selected historical examples of the establishing of political systems in colonies are used as a starting point for modelling possible development of political system in Mars colony. This paper presents also possible scenarios of mass Mars colonization. The paper states that while there are possible a couple of options strongly affected by not-predictable environmental and social constraints, the most optimal scenario would be direct democracy or technocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article proposes a historical and structural study of the politicians, public officials, managers and experts involved in privatisation policies in Greece. The historical review traces the types of political actors who promoted privatisation since the mid-1990s, emphasising the role of technopols—economists who have built their careers at the intersection of university, economic policy and private companies. Multiple correspondence analysis is applied to datasets containing socio-professional information on key politico-administrative actors and managers working for agencies implementing privatisations. The results suggest that the field of privatisation policies is structured around an opposition between, on the one part, the partisan world that is objectively close to trade unions and social movements and, on the other part, an alliance between EU officials and corporate economists, while technopols still play an intermediary role between European economic orthodoxy and domestic economic governance. • We study the social structures of privatisation policies in Greece. • Economists technopols have been from the mid-1990s the main privatisation actors. • The crisis and the bailout agreements increased pressures for privatisation. • Privatisations are assigned to an autonomous institutional system outside the state. • Institutions responsible for privatisation are dominated by corporate economists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The onset of the Great Recession raised the profile of technocracy, or government by experts, as a contrasting model to democracy. Yet, there is little research on how attitudes towards technocracy may impact European citizens' political behaviour. Moreover, the consistency of technocracy supporters' political attitudes, especially towards the EU, is questionable. This paper uses new survey panel data collected before and after the European parliament elections in May 2019 in six countries (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain). We investigate how citizens' technocratic attitudes affect their voting behaviour in the European elections. We find evidence that citizens with technocratic attitudes are less likely to support mainstream parties, and tend to either abstain or, if they vote, to give their vote to anti-system parties, especially from the populist right. In addition, by distinguishing technocracy supporters according to their partisanship, we conclude that technocracy is a thin ideology that can be combined with different patterns of political support: while many technocracy supporters have no party identification or support non-mainstream parties and show dissatisfaction with democracy and the EU, another subgroup of technocracy supporters identifies with a mainstream political party and show above average political support and support for the EU. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Artificial intelligence (AI) has proven to be superior to human decision-making in certain areas. This is particularly the case whenever there is a need for advanced strategic reasoning and analysis of vast amounts of data in order to solve complex problems. Few human activities fit this description better than politics. In politics we deal with some of the most complex issues humans face, short-term and long-term consequences have to be balanced, and we make decisions knowing that we do not fully understand their consequences. I examine an extreme case of the application of AI in the domain of government, and use this case to examine a subset of the potential harms associated with algorithmic governance. I focus on five objections based on political theoretical considerations and the potential political harms of an AI technocracy. These are objections based on the ideas of 'political man' and participation as a prerequisite for legitimacy, the non-morality of machines and the value of transparency and accountability. I conclude that these objections do not successfully derail AI technocracy, if we make sure that mechanisms for control and backup are in place, and if we design a system in which humans have control over the direction and fundamental goals of society. Such a technocracy, if the AI capabilities of policy formation here assumed becomes reality, may, in theory, provide us with better means of participation, legitimacy, and more efficient government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cities are increasingly influenced by novel and cosmopolitan values advanced by transnational technology providers and digital platforms. These values which are often visible in the advancement of the sharing economy and smart cities, may differ from the traditional public values protected by national and local laws and policies. This article contrasts the public values created by digital platforms in cities with the democratic and social national values that the platform society is leaving behind. It innovates by showing how co-regulation can balance public values with platform values. In this article, we argue that despite the value-creation benefits produced by the digital platforms under analysis, public authorities should be aware of the risks of technocratic discourses and potential conflicts between platform and local values. In this context, we suggest a normative framework which enhances the need for a new kind of knowledge-service creation in the form of local public-interest technology. Moreover, our framework proposes a negotiated contractual system that seeks to balance platform values with public values in an attempt to address the digital enforcement problem driven by the functional sovereignty role of platforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Development of sustainability indicators is dominated by the mechanistic worldview. • The mechanistic worldview reduces complexity and exaggerates accuracy. • Sustainability becomes framed as a technical rather than political endeavour. • Radical transparency is needed to embrace complexity and admit inaccuracies. • It also engages stakeholders by reframing sustainability as a political project. There is a strong impetus to adopt sustainability targets and measures across primary industries. Measuring sustainability demands the development of indicators. Conventional approaches to the development of sustainability indicators (SIs) are technocratic, which thwarts the open and critical development of SIs. Specifically, the technocratic approach: precludes debate concerning the implicit values that guide indicator development and selection; fails to recognise areas where SIs cannot be developed for measuring crucial socioecological functions; and reduces complexity and embellishes certainty. To address these shortcomings, we argue that radical transparency is required. This would involve the following actions: making explicit the values and moral imperatives used to determine what is to be sustained and for whom; opening for critical examination the processes and tools used to weigh and prioritize indicators against each other and create aggregate scores; providing information about the types of expertise involved in the development and the limitations of this expertise; and making candid the 'gaps' where it is necessary, but difficult, or even impossible, to develop quantitative SIs; removing bias against, and accepting the use of qualitative approaches where appropriate. Examples of these forms of transparency are provided from the development of an indigenous sustainability indicator suite, though radical transparency is viewed as a universal solution to the problems of the technocratic approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]