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A certain type of citizen holds technocratic views. They favour pragmatic problem solving through scientific and technical expertise, and reject party politics for being harmful to the common good. Yet, empirical evidence on the ideological profile of these citizens is fragmented and inconclusive. Using an original survey in Western Europe, Australia and the United States, we test predictions about the left−right alignment of citizens with technocratic attitudes on the economic and cultural dimensions of politics. We argue that technocracy is not antithetical to ideology and that citizens holding technocratic attitudes are not immune to ideological positions. Findings show that technocratic citizens are more economically left‐wing than mainstream voters, contrary to common associations of technocracy with neoliberal economic principles. However, they are more centrist than populists. This highlights that, in addition to a representational challenge, technocracy mounts an ideological challenge to party‐based representative democracy. In times of cumulative crises, which put democracies under stress with demands for competence and effectiveness, these findings offer insights about the appeal of alternative forms of representation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes how a structure of Weberian rational domination has been built and consolidated in Spain since 1959, the year when the so‐called Economic Stabilization Plan was approved. This sort of economic constitution represents one of the most important foundations of a technocratic regime that survived the death of a dictator (General Francisco Franco), not only transcending the traditional differentiations between autocratic and democratic regimes but also offering a different perspective to the debate about the degree of continuity and rupture attained by the Spanish political transition in the 1970s. We analyze the institutions, leadership, most influential networks, political discourse, and historical myths through a theory of power and elites to examine the Spanish case. With this remarkable example of structural transformation and institutional resilience over decades, we also propose a more complex and multidimensional approach that could be fruitful to understanding some of the problems of political representation that current democracies are undergoing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the concept of technocracy and its relationship with populism and liberal democracy. Technocracy is described as a governance system led by experts who make decisions based on technical knowledge. It is seen as a depoliticized approach that prioritizes reason and expertise over democratic processes. Populism, on the other hand, emphasizes the will of the people and often disregards minority rights and checks and balances. The article argues that both technocracy and populism are incompatible with liberal democracy and highlights the rise of neoliberal technocracy as a driver of populism. It concludes by emphasizing the need for a repoliticization of socioeconomic issues and a renewal of representative politics within the democratic framework. [Extracted from the article]

Systemic congruence between the whole legislature and the whole electorate (‘many‐to‐many’, or sociotropic congruence) should be the benchmark to evaluate a democratic system. Yet, most studies link shifts in democratic preferences to individual‐level representation (‘many‐to‐one’, or egocentric incongruence), since individual‐level representation failures should be more salient and visible for individual citizens. We argue that the sociotropic incongruence hypothesis has not been appropriately tested to date, because the measure does not vary at individual level in observational data. Using an experiment conducted in France, we manipulate various sociotropic (in)congruence scenarios at the individual level. In addition to the incongruence hypotheses, our original experiment tests whether offering expertise‐based justifications to incongruence attenuates the backlash against representatives. We find that, even when giving sociotropic incongruence a fair test, egocentric incongruence still consistently shapes democratic preferences, while the effect of sociotropic incongruence remains negligible. Furthermore, we find that narratives rooted in expertise claims do not attenuate the effect of representation failure on backlash against representative democracy: they exacerbate it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Are public sector workers more supportive of technocracy than people not employed in the public sector? Public sector workers play an important role in the functioning and safeguarding of democracy. However, because of their training as neutral and competent policy workers and implementers, it is often claimed that they hold relatively strong technocratic attitudes. In this study, we compare the support for technocracy of 35,395 public sector and non‐public sector workers across 25 European countries. The results show that on average, public sector workers are not more supportive of technocracy than non‐public sector workers, and that the effect of public sector employment on support for technocracy differs across countries. Furthermore, we find that trust in representative institutions and satisfaction with government can reduce support for technocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a process‐tracing approach to understand changes in Singapore's health sector from the start of self‐rule in 1959 to the end of the COVID‐19 pandemic in 2022. Singapore is a developmental state recognized for its effective management of healthcare costs and its lack of political freedom. In both respects, the 'Singapore model' is of interest to other cities and nations. The standard narrative is one of technocratic proficiency in a context in which civic freedoms are heavily constrained, but this article identifies the surprisingly important role of social voices at key moments. It finds episodes in which effective changes to social policies are not the product of a state embedded in an organized society, but rather are influenced by the independent organizational capacity of certain social groups providing inputs to state elites on social grievances and policy needs. Effective policy changes require a responsive state elite that — even if it is technocratically dominated, as is the case in Singapore — can listen to social claims and provide answers that are not repressive. The article conceptualizes these dynamics as 'grievance politics' and shows their role in explaining health reforms. It contributes to understanding global health systems and policy making in developmental states by a fruitful cross‐fertilization with social movement studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The response to the global COVID‐19 pandemic has prompted a surge in short‐term universal cash transfer programmes around the world. Notably, East Asian high‐income economies have been at the forefront of these initiatives. While the innovative nature of these universal cash injections has been emphasized, there is limited documentation regarding their characteristics, prospects, and underlying motivations. This article sheds light on the domestic political and institutional processes that led to the implementation and design of universal cash transfers in Hong Kong (China), Japan, Republic of Korea, Singapore and Taiwan (China). Overall, the analysis reveals that, within the framework of universality, a nuanced, diverse and dynamic set of operational choices emerge. A range of factors shaped the adoption and evolution of these programmes, including, for example, political pressures stemming from political party competition and efforts to maintain political legitimacy. In general, design parameters are not only defined in technocratic terms, but are negotiated politically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objectives: We aimed to predict the favor for a technocratic government in the context of the SARS‐CoV‐2 pandemic. Method: We tested a multilevel mediated moderated model on the ResPOnsE COVID‐19 data set (rolling cross‐section design, quota sample of the Italian adult population, N = 8210, data collected from March 17 to June 16, 2021). Results: Subjective vulnerability to COVID‐19 showed a positive relationship with trust in science and scientists, which, in turn, had a positive relationship with favor for a technocratic government, particularly among participants who had low trust in the Italian Parliament. The prevalence of COVID‐19 (measured at Level‐2, with data nested by day of data collection) also showed a positive association with favor for a technocratic government. Conclusion: The COVID‐19 pandemic may have jeopardized representative democracy: The objective and subjective threats it triggered favor trust in science and scientists that, when combined with a low level of trust toward political institutions, fosters the desire for a technocratic government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Risk expertise is characterised by procedures that emphasise scientific and technical aspects of risk management and downplay citizens' concerns and lay knowledge. In this paper, we aim at accounting for some of the reasons why technocracy is persistent in industrial risk expertise. Using the conceptual tools provided by the political sociology of expertise and based on empirical research conducted with mixed qualitative techniques, we study different types of expertise about industrial risk in the petrochemical area of Porto Marghera (Venice, Italy). The first one is performed by the Agenzia Regionale per la Protezione Ambientale del Veneto (ARPAV, Regional Agency of Veneto for Environmental Protection), which is responsible for chemical risk management, and the plants of the area. The second one is performed by the Assemblea permanente contro il pericolo chimico (APCPC, Permanent Assembly Against Industrial Risk), a citizens' association of the neighbouring community of Marghera. In this case study, we show that technocratic procedures are persistent in industrial risk due to strategic relationships between the public administration in charge of risk regulation enforcement and private chemical companies, the absence of Italian laws on inclusive participatory arenas about industrial risk, and the characteristics of the citizens' mobilisation, which focuses on plants' delocalisation rather than challenging the ARPAV's and plants' technocracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Western publics show a sizable support for experts' involvement in political decision making, that is, technocratic attitudes. This article analyzes two key aspects of these attitudes: technocratic attitudes' stability and the heterogeneity in the demand for experts depending on the context. We first analyze how technocratic attitudes have been affected by an external event, the COVID‐19 pandemic, that has placed experts' role at the forefront of the public debate; this allows us to analyze the stability or change in these attitudes. Second, given that the pandemic quickly evolved from being a public health issue to becoming a political issue combining economic and public health dimensions, we examine whether framing the COVID‐19 pandemic exclusively as a public health problem or as including a prominent economic dimension as well affects the type of public officials who are preferred to lead the political management of the crisis (independent experts with diverse professional skills or party politicians belonging to different parties and with a specialization in different policy fields). We pursue these two research goals through a panel survey conducted in Spain at two different time points, one before and another during the pandemic, in which we measure technocratic attitudes using an exhaustive battery; and through a survey experiment combining a conjoint design and a framing experiment. Results show that, first, technocratic attitudes have significantly increased as a consequence of the coronavirus outbreak; second, people's preference for experts prevails against any other experimental treatment such as party affiliation; and, finally, preferences for the type of experts vary depending on the problem to be solved. In this way, this paper significantly increases our knowledge of the factors that affect variation in public attitudes towards experts' involvement in political decision‐making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the epistemic politics of hegemonic humanitarianism by building on agnotology theories. I unpack the idea of "professional authority" with the purpose of showing how the Global North's humanitarian agencies thrive on both a technocratic and an unpredictability approach. This epistemic politics is used to absolve humanitarianism of its failures and to blame "Southern" politics and technical deficiencies in the Global South. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do citizens welcome the involvement of independent experts in politics? Theoretical and empirical work so far provides conflicting answers to this question. On the one hand, citizens may demand expert involvement in political decision‐making processes in order to ensure efficient and effective governance solutions. On the other hand, citizens can be distrustful of experts and reject the unaccountable and non‐transparent nature of expert‐based governance. This note investigates citizen preferences for the involvement of experts in different stages of political processes and across 'hard' and 'easy' political issues. Results show that, in the absence of explicit output information, respondents prefer independent experts over national elected representatives in the policy design and implementation stages, across political issues. For the crucial stage of decision making, respondents show no difference in their evaluation of processes that delegate decisions to experts or to elected representatives, with the exception of environmental policy, where expert decision making is preferred. These findings are relevant for ongoing discussions on how to incorporate independent experts in political decision making in a way that citizens find legitimate and on how to address increased citizen dissatisfaction with the representative democratic functions performed by political parties, governments and politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Calls for organizational change have pervaded wildlife conservation in recent decades, driven by a shift in values that is reshaping the social landscape of wildlife management. As this process unfolds, wildlife agencies in North America seek new ways to remain relevant, focusing primarily on how they might expand support for their ongoing work. Less attention, however, has been given to expanding opportunities for a value‐diverse public to directly shape what that work might entail. As citizen ballot initiatives, lawsuits, and other forms of political intervention continue to complicate wildlife management, we ask whether agencies—who have historically shied away from value‐based conflict in pursuit of apolitical scientific management—can remain relevant without fundamental changes to their governance structures. Using data from a 2018 survey of wildlife values among the American public (n = 24,393) and state wildlife agency employees (n = 10,191), we explore the extent to which public values are mirrored within wildlife agencies and examine the implications of a "values gap" on the long‐term sustainability of technocratic wildlife management. Findings suggest that as the public's perspectives on wildlife conservation change, governance reform may become a growing area of focus in the years ahead. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economists are by many accounts the most influential group of experts in contemporary political decision‐making. While the literature on the power of economists mostly focuses on the policy ideas of economic experts, some recent studies suggest that economists also hold particular technocratic ideas about the policy process. The article systematically tests this argument. Focusing on economists within government bureaucracy, the study is based on a quantitative analysis of a large‐scale survey of Norwegian ministerial civil servants. It finds that economists are more likely to hold technocratic role perceptions than officials with other educational backgrounds only if they work in the finance ministry or in higher administrative grades. The findings contribute to scholarship on the political sway of economists and to debates about technocracy and the technocratic views of civil servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of participatory democracy have long noted dynamic interactions and transformations within and between political spaces that can foster (de)democratisation. At the heart of this dynamism lie (a) the processes through which top‐down "closed" spaces can create opportunities for rupture and democratic challenges and (b) vice‐versa, the mechanisms through which bottom‐up, open spaces can be co‐opted through institutionalisation. This paper seeks to unpick dynamic interactions between different spaces of participation by looking specifically at two forms of participatory governance, or participatory forms of political decision making used to improve the quality of democracy. First, Mark Warren's concept of 'governance‐driven democratization' describes top‐down and technocratic participatory governance aiming to produce better policies in response to bureaucratic rationales. Second, we introduce a new concept, democracy‐driven governance, to refer to efforts by social movements to invent new, and reclaim and transform existing, spaces of participatory governance and shape them to respond to citizens' demands. The paper defines these concepts and argues that they co‐exist and interact in dynamic fashion; it draws on an analysis of case study literature on participatory governance in Barcelona to illuminate this relationship. Finally, the paper relates the theoretical framework to the case study by making propositions as to the structural and agential drivers of shifts in participatory governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a case study of the Chilean executive, focusing on the civil service in the period after the Pinochet dictatorship and the country's transition to democracy. It provides synchronic and diachronic analysis of the organisation of the executive, public employment and the civil service. Both the qualitative description and statistical evidence reveal the establishment of a flexible regime of public employment with low levels of stability in senior public management positions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The growing popularity of Greta Thunberg has led an increasing number of pundits and scholars to consider her message to be an instance of 'climate' or 'environmental' populism. Following a qualitative content analysis of key speeches by the young activist, this paper challenges this view, and argues that her message is far from being a case of populism. On the contrary, it abides by a substantially different set of ideas that can be defined as technocratic ecocentrism. In particular, it is argued that rather than people‐centrism, anti‐elitism and vox populi, Greta Thunberg's message is grounded on three different core ideas: ecocentrism, technocracy, and on the exaltation of the vox scientifica. However, whereas Thunberg's technocratic ecocentrism is at odds with the foundations of the populist set of ideas, it shares a similar emphasis on monism, moralisation, a Manichean vision of the world, a critique of key features of the metapolitical status quo, and a tendency to personalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Populism studies finds itself in a crisis of originality. While some scholars have signalled over‐usage, others have argued that by contextualising populism, we are able to specify our own 'populist moment' and remedy the term's slipperiness. This article opts for the latter tactic through a comparison of two aspects of contemporary populism with late nineteenth century precedents. In the late nineteenth century, the American People's Party pioneered a mode of mass politics anchored in agrarian and industrial labour which launched the term 'populism' in Western discourse. Contemporary populists show rhetorical and political overlap with this template, but also come up against two new constraints: (1) a stagnant capitalism increasingly centred on 'rentiership'; and (2) a disorganised civil society. These factors render today's populism resistant to analogy but also conceptually more specific, sharpening the contours of our populist moment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Why do prime ministers or presidents appoint non‐elected experts, also known as technocrats, during economic crises? Do they appoint them for their expertise or for their commitment to pro‐market reforms? Answering this question is crucial for understanding and predicting the longer‐term role of technocrats in democracies. With the aid of unique data on the political and personal background of finance ministers in 13 parliamentary and semi‐presidential European democracies this article shows that commitment, not expertise is the primary driver of technocratic appointments during major economic crises. Technocrats are preferred over experienced politicians when the latter lack commitment to policy reform. An important implication of the findings is that technocratic appointments to top economic portfolios in West European countries are unlikely to become the norm outside economic crises, assuming economic crises are short‐lived and not recurring. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the language practices and language ideologies of maritime technocracy and inquires into the imagined and real gaps involved in sustaining channels of sociable talk aboard cargo ships. Lacking knowledge of the routines, practices, and beliefs impacting seafarers' productivity, shipping industry leaders turn to Christian ministries to identify infrastructural or logistical gaps in the operation of communications media networks and deficiencies in the language policies and interactional practices that animate them. These converging profit‐driven and ethical projects collectively support a technocratic language ideology. It locates risks to the supply chain in presumptions of miscommunications caused by the lack of English‐language use and unsociability caused by the lack of convivial talk among seafarers for channeling information about these risks. Actualized by strategies that affirm the value of face‐to‐face talk and online chatting rather than solitary reading, maritime technocracy standardizes the logistical coordination of media infrastructures and labor and language policies. This article draws on ethnographic research aboard cargo ships and at Christian centers to elucidate the logic of maritime technocracies in Newark and Montreal, two seaports with different governance structures highlighting the internal differences of a shipping industry facing crises due to automation, outsourcing, and neoliberal reform. [commercial seafaring, shipping industry, sociability, maritime technology, language ideology] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Sweden, an ostensibly secular‐majority society, urban planners facilitate the construction of new churches and mosques for minority religious groups. In this work, they typically perceive themselves as neutral professionals relying on a technical education. But since the 1980s, Swedish civil servants, including planners, have transformed from experts to managers, and their interactions with clients for mosques and churches often reveal their opinions and preferences, including for modernism and secularism. These awkward encounters challenge the planners' technocratic understanding of their work, forcing them into a new kind of productive labor: as uncomfortable arbiters of difference and its public presence. This is a result of neoliberal governance, which has ambiguously expanded the types of European civil servants asked to manage minority groups, as well as the professional roles they must play. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the role of the European Patent Organisation (EPO) in the European patent system. It shows how the delineation of European patent law has been handed over by governments to an autonomous, quasi‐judicial technocracy at the EPO and reveals how the process of hollowing out economic and political factors in the grant of patents is assisted by the deference of national courts to the EPO and the creation of the Unified Patent Court. It suggests that these developments pose a threat to democratic governance of the patent system in Europe because the delineation of intellectual property rights has inherent economic and political dimensions which are not reducible to technical legal issues of interpretation or technocratic expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Governments led by nonpartisan, ‘technocratic’ prime ministers are a rare phenomenon in parliamentary democracies, but have become more frequent since the late 1980s. This article focuses on the factors that lead to the formation of such cabinets. It posits that parliamentary parties with the chance to win the prime ministerial post will only relinquish it during political and economic crises that drastically increase the electoral costs of ruling and limit policy returns from governing. Statistical analyses of 469 government formations in 29 European democracies between 1977 and 2013 suggest that political scandals and economic recessions are major drivers of the occurrence of technocratic prime ministers. Meanwhile, neither presidential powers nor party system fragmentation and polarisation have any independent effect. The findings suggest that parties strategically choose technocrat‐led governments to shift blame and re‐establish their credibility and that of their policies in the face of crises that de‐legitimise their rule. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The distribution of water between co-riparian regions in the Indus Basin has been an extremely contentious issue since at least the early 20th century. The reliability of water measurements, in particular, has caused much controversy at multiple scales. This hydropolitical tension has catalysed a key social group - the hydraulic bureaucracy or 'hydrocracy' - to enact strategies of depoliticisation. These strategies aim to suppress political contest by calling on external expertise and/or technology to assure the objectivity of water measurement data. This paper draws on archival data and interviews with water engineers to argue that technocratic depoliticisation operates in distinct but related ways at different scales. Further, I argue that to analyse the technocratic desire for a data state - a state that governs primarily or exclusively by number and calculation - a multi-scalar theoretical framework that connects the politics of technocracy, territory and nationalism is needed. The paper develops such a framework by situating hydrocrats and their strategies in the broader context of state formation. This framework is offered as a way for critical scholars of resources, development and expertise to engage with depoliticisation and repoliticisation of resource governance as complex geographic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The policy mobility literature is haunted by the local-global binary and the problem of understanding the extent to which a particular policy is 'local' or 'global'. This paper argues that while an assemblage perspective is already prominent in the literature, its use can be extended to more effectively engage with this problem. Proceeding from the recognition that what makes mobile policy possible is first and foremost the existence of separate policy territories, through a focus on the kinds of assemblages that territorialise separate but interconnected territories, and a more thoroughgoing account of the topologies contained by those assemblages, we can account for how mobile policy is an outcome of this work of assemblage. It is through such assemblages that our ideas of what is global and what is local are produced. The example of the technocracy is used to illustrate the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that sociologically informed studies of revolution tend to underestimate the importance of counter-revolution and 'reaction' in generating radicalisation. Revolutions are inherently political. Most accounts recognise this, but emphasise the executive organs of state - such as monarch, cabinet or ministers - at the expense of the intermediary 'technicians of power'. Revolutions, however, typically seek to refashion an entire technocracy of power, and in so doing struggle against embedded and powerful sites of reaction. Central to the dynamic of revolution is the 'purge' of the technocracy of power. As governing structures are not easily transformed at a stroke, revolutions may be seen as punctuating long processes of struggle. Historically, the governing apparatus has been most effectively revolutionised under conditions of military occupation. The thesis is illustrated here by a narrative of revolution in Europe from the English Civil War to the of the Liberation of the1940's, with a coda on '68. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current debates on austerity often forget that these policies are almost a hundred years old. This article explores how the combination of austerity and technocracy acted as a powerful tool to secure the compliance of European countries with socio-economic stabilization after the First World War. Austerity emerged as an economic, moral, and technocratic message as economic experts sought to educate restless post-war civil society. The article analyses primary austerity documents from the international economic conferences of Brussels (1920) and Genoa (1922). In addition, I use a case study of Italy (1922-1925) to show how austerity succeeded under the first years of Fascism, when the government authorized prominent economics professors to implement the international financial codes devised at Brussels and Genoa. I also consider the scientific writings of De Stefani, Ricci, and Pantaleoni in order to examine the theoretical roots of the technocratic nature of austerity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Canadian gender equality policy has taken a 'technocratic turn' that favours bureaucratic expertise to monitor and measure (in)equality rather than participatory and consultative mechanisms. While the processes and impacts of this shift are well documented at the federal level, less is known at the provincial level. This article takes stock of provincial gender equality mechanisms, demonstrating variations in women's policy agencies (WPAs) across the ten provinces. It then links these variations to the discursive politics of gender equality within each province. We demonstrate that the potential for transformative orientations of gender equality emerges in WPAs with broad consultative mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The dominant paradigm in disaster risk reduction (DRR) policies has been seriously contested because of its reliance on interventions based on technocratic expertise. In the Mexican context, the influence of informal practices such as clientelism and cartelisation of the political system produces environmental degradation and vulnerability to disasters within the communities in the study site. This paper contributes to understanding of failed institutional processes and parallel practices that intensify vulnerability to disasters by contrasting the discourses of agents within a peri-urban community in central Mexico. Employing the Situational Analysis Approach as a methodological framework, the study identifies divergent views and practices within the community, leading to different responses to disasters and to different perceptions regarding institutional performance. In addition, it finds that institutional decision-making, based only on scientific and technical expertise, has resulted in unintended consequences that influence ongoing vulnerability to floods in the site under review. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article looks into the relationship between neoliberalism and democracy. Topics include a brief summary of the beginnings of neoliberalism in relation to the crisis of liberalism, the technocracy and self-binding rules that cause the restriction of democracy, and the concepts of institutional competition and consumer sovereignty. It also discusses the impact of referendums and tax revolts on representative democracy.

Bo Stråth traces the rise of the technocracy - the 'political abandonment of politics' - and its spread from the EU to its member states. If Europe's institutions are to survive the crisis of legitimacy, he argues, the 'market Europe' consensus must end and a 'social Europe' must emerge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that the way EU competences are defined plays an important role in the social legitimacy problems of the EU. The fact that its powers are purposive compels the EU to privilege narrow functional goals and act in a highly focused way. This has the consequence that politics cannot be meaningful within the EU, since essential choices of direction are pre-empted. It also has the consequence that EU law is over-instrumental and lacks expressive qualities, alienating the public. Now that EU law is so broad, the same defects are being imposed increasingly on Member States. Without another form of conferred power, the legitimacy of the EU, and of law and government in Europe, will be increasingly undermined. The constitutional DNA, which has been a functional success for Europe, may also be its political nemesis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Governments led by technocrats remain a nebulous category in political science literature, with little clarity about how they differ from party governments, how many have existed and how we can differentiate between them. This article aims to provide that conceptual and empirical clarity. Having proposed an ideal type definition of 'technocratic government', it sets out three conditions for an operational definition of a 'technocrat' and, on that basis, lists the 24 technocrat-led governments that have existed in 27 European Union (EU) democracies from the end of the Second World War until June 2013. It then classifies these according to their partisan/technocrat composition and remit. This allows for the presentation of a typology of four different types of technocrat-led governments and the definition of 'full technocratic governments' as those which contain a majority of technocrats and - unlike caretaker governments - have the capacity to change the status quo. The article concludes that full technocratic governments remain extremely rare in EU democracies since there have been only six cases - of which three have occurred in the last decade. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents questions and answers session with Parag Khanna, senior research fellow at the Centre on Asia and Globalisation at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in Singapore, on Direct Technocracy that combines the virtues of Swiss style direct democracy with the strength of Singapore's technocratic system. The session also takes into account the feasibility and challenges in implementing Direct Technocracy in other countries specifically United States and Europe.

For twenty years, technocratic planning and management approaches have dominated good-governance reforms in developing countries. This is true even for newer 'participatory' and 'citizen-driven' reforms that still struggle to engage with powerful informal forces affecting public service delivery. This article presents evidence from a case study of decentralised education-system reform in Guinea, revealing a wide range of influential dynamics outside the technical realm. These corroborate the argument for 'good-fit' alternatives to traditional governance approaches and concrete measures to better capture the constructive and disable the destructive effects of informality on development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article critiques author Karen Bakker's book "Privatizing Water: Governance Failure and the World's Urban Water Crisis." Bakker's role as a water governance scholar is addressed, along with an analysis of Bakker's reasoning. Terminology is examined, along with challenges involving ecological, ideological, and socioeconomic issues. Market environmentalism and democracy are assessed, as well as technocracy and economic exigencies.