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This article focuses on the advancement of fantasy policy solutions to irregular migration, drawing on the case study of the UK/French border. In 2018 people began to cross the English Channel in significant numbers to seek asylum. This led to much commentary and a raft of new legislation seeking to criminalise people crossing the Channel and end rights to seek asylum in the UK. In this article, we explore the interaction between two sets of fantasies that are advanced by politicians and mainstream political parties in the UK. That is: the liberal technocratic fantasy – that this phenomenon can be efficiently 'fixed' through interventions in policing and multilateral cooperation with neighbouring EU states; and the illiberal fantasy that extreme and performative punishments can solve it. These fantasies intersect and break at different points in time, and involve many of the same policy solutions which are represented in different terms. Importantly, both of these fantasies reproduce racialised and colonial logics and ultimately serve border imperialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The buzzword "smart borders" captures the latest instantiation of media technologies constituting state bordering. This article traces historical techniques of knowledge-production and decision-making at the border, in the case of Ellis Island immigration station, New York City (1892–1954). State bordering has long been enabled by media technologies, engulfed with imaginaries of neutral, unambiguous, efficient sorting between desired and undesired migrants—promises central to today's "smart border" projects. Specifically, the use of "proxies" for decision-making is traced historically, for example, biometric or biographic data, collected as seemingly authentic and neutral stand-ins for the migrant. Techniques of selecting, storing, and correlating proxies through media technologies demonstrate how public health anxieties, eugenics, and scientific technocracy of the Progressive Era formed the context of proxies being entrusted to enable decision-making. This pre-digital history of automation reveals how the logics and politics of proxification endure in contemporary border regimes and automated media at large. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will investigate how specific narratives on the inclusion of minority language students (MLSs) are constructed in Norwegian and Italian educational policy documents. We will employ the Narrative Policy Framework's (NPF) analytical categories with an interpretative narrative approach to reconstruct the two national policy narratives and compare their salient features. In response to international trends of inclusive education, Norway and Italy have developed two different educational policy models for the inclusion of MLSs. Norway operationalised inclusion through 'adapted education' for all students, while Italian policy defined an 'Italian path towards the intercultural school'. The results will show that the Norwegian approach to inclusive education is sustained by what we define as a technocratic (efficiency-oriented) narrative, while the Italian intercultural education employs a normative (ideologically-based) narrative. Despite the differences, the two policy narratives share an unresolved tension between a universalistic and particularistic stance. In the policy documents, the inclusive/intercultural education for all students is ambiguously complemented by integration measures designed explicitly for MLSs. The study will illustrate the travelling nature of inclusive and intercultural education in the policy domain and show that the policy shift towards inclusion needs to be understood as an ongoing and non-linear process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on technocracy has shown that expertise is a crucial factor in driving support for technocrats. However, the literature has not investigated yet what happens when technocrats are opposed to partisan experts. In this article, we want to fill this gap by analysing the support for two potential ministers of health with relevant expertise for their portfolio but with a different relationship to partisan politics. For this purpose, we run a novel survey in 14 European countries with more than 20,000 respondents. Our main results show that non-partisan experts are preferred over partisan experts across Europe, both when citizens have a high sympathy and a low sympathy for the party appointing the minister. However, in the latter case, the effect is more evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Climate knowledge production and climate change adaptation are dominated by technocratic narratives. Where climate change intersects with institutional structures outside contexts of formal interventions, these narratives also have crucial implications for the recognition of climate change-affected citizens. This article focuses on the experience of farmers in the Indian Himalayas who are seeking support from the state following a climate change-induced drought. We suggest that the narrow technocratic framework produces climate vulnerability by preventing Himalayan farmers from accessing relevant drought support. The recognition of climate change-affected citizens, we maintain, is a question of climate justice and requires consideration for alternative methodologies and different epistemologies about climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many voters support the inclusion of technocrats in government. Yet we know very little about why technocrats are considered more appealing than traditional party representatives. In particular, it is unclear which advantages and disadvantages voters attach to the defining traits of technocratic ministers: party independence and expertise. We engage with this question drawing on a pre‐registered survey experiment in Austria. We examine how manipulating ministers' party affiliation and expertise affects voters' perceptions of their issue competence and bargaining competence. Findings indicate that voters ascribe lower levels of issue competence to partisan ministers than to non‐partisan ministers, notwithstanding their actual expertise, and that ministers' partisanship shrinks the positive effect of expertise on perceived issue competence. However, this ‘partisanship penalty’ disappears for supporters of the minister's party. Moreover, voters perceive partisanship as an advantageous trait with regard to a minister's bargaining competence. While voters like technocrats for their expertise and independence from party politics, our findings reveal nuanced perceptions, with voters still recognizing distinct advantages in being represented by party politicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the debate surrounding and following the Brexit referendum in June 2016, credentialed economic expertise did not enjoy a privileged position within the political and policy debate. Using the contrasting cases of the Office for Budget Responsibility and Economists for Brexit/Free Trade, this paper explores the mobilisation of economic expertise within the discursive politics of Brexit under conditions of pervasive radical uncertainty. It argues that politicisation is an important factor in side-lining technocratic influence over policy choice, but that the particular type of politicisation in play (plebiscitary) meant that the input of technocratic experts was downgraded. It is a politics conducted in another register to the reasoned, evidence-based vernacular of accredited experts and the policy discourses that they work with and through. We also argue that the basic unknowability of the post-Brexit economy further impaired expert input. These limitations were acknowledged by accredited experts themselves, reducing their traction within the policy debate. This unknowability was exploited by forms of counter-expertise mobilised by the Leave campaign. The radical uncertainties of Brexit allowed in heterodox assumptions and approaches to compete on a level playing field with an approximation of what could be presented as prudent best practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous research on delegative democracy has predominantly emphasized its structural aspects, leaving the individual-level determinants of support for this governance relatively unexplored. While some studies have investigated the association between trust in the president and delegative democratic attitudes (DDA), the connection between technocratic beliefs, DDA, and the context of national emergencies has been minimally addressed. This study aims to fill this research gap by examining the correlation between technocratic beliefs and DDA, specifically focusing on how emergencies influence this relationship. Analysing data from the Asian Barometer Survey and the World Values Survey, the results indicate a robust connection between individuals' technocratic beliefs and DDA. Moreover, this correlation exhibits greater strength as a country's level of emergency escalates. These results may provide valuable insights into our understanding of both individual and structural factors associated with public support for delegative democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can we conceptualise politicised integration at the global level? Functionalism and neo-functionalism are de-politicised, technocratic theories of integration dispensing with ideology and contestation, while post-functionalist approaches address politicisation but not supra-national integration. Drawing on comparative macro-historical theories, this article suggests a conceptualisation of politicised integration that extends exit–voice and political structuring models used at national and European levels to global integration. The replacement of territorial divisions with cleavages cutting across world regions – core–periphery and North–South divisions, civilisations and 'multiple modernities' – creates the conditions for cross-territorial dimensions of contestation, along which cross-regional membership groups link, coordinate and form bonds of solidarity. The de-territorialisation of global cleavages and the regional convergence it brings about, provide the social bases for mass politics rather than elitist policy integration. The conceptualisation of integration is political rather than technocratic, and one in which collective decision making is a matter of pluralist contestation rather than problem-solving expertise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Marion King Hubbert (1903-1989) is a geophysicist mostly known for his work on the availability of oil resources (known as “peak oil” theory). But Hubbert was also a political theorist and activist of the Technocracy Movement, a political movement mainly active in the United States in the 1930s. This movement is characterized by a physical approach to economic phenomena and by its advocacy in favor of a planning of the entire economy under the control of engineers. Hubbert produced the most systematized account of technocratic thought in a book entitled Technocracy Study Course, which was used in the scientific and political training of Technocracy activists in an organization co-founded by him. This article examines how this book questions the boundary between economics and natural sciences by making a distinction between, on one hand, economic facts which constitute a transformation of energy and resources and are thus ruled by the laws of physics; and on the other hand, monetary phenomena, which are ruled by human conventions. We give a commentary of Hubbert’s attempt to build a critique of market economy based on a non-metaphorical use of physics, and explain what brings him to defend an energy-based planning of the economy. We claim that these elements make Hubbert’s work relevant to the history of bio-physical approaches in economics.

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]

The project of bolstering the administrative state's perceived legitimacy is central to administrative law. To enhance agencies' legitimacy with the public, generations of judges and scholars have variously called for changes designed to insulate technocrats from political influence, involve interested members of the public, and subject agencies to greater political control. Despite the pitch of debate in elite legal circles, however, little is known about the views of ordinary citizens--the very people whose beliefs constitute popular legitimacy. This Article provides evidence of Americans' actual views concerning what features contribute to agencies' perceived legitimacy. It presents the results of a set of experiments in which each participant views a policy vignette with varied information concerning the structures and procedures involved in generating the policy. Participants are then asked to assess, by their own lights, the policy's legitimacy. The results support the century-old idea that empowering politically insulated, expert decision-makers legitimizes agencies. With the insulation of civil servants from appointees and the independent-agency form under strain, this finding implies that, for proponents of a robust administrative state, an independent and technocratic civil service is worth defending. There also is some evidence that public participation in agency decision-making bolsters agencies' perceived legitimacy. By contrast, the theory--influential on the Supreme Court--that greater presidential involvement enhances legitimacy receives no support. [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]

This article examines the themes of policy advice, expertise, and policy advisory systems. It argues that persistent challenges and more emergent trends involving their intersection can be effectively understood through the lenses of instrumentality, authority, and adaptability. In the wake of renewed questions about the continued viability of longstanding public administration advisory arrangements, these themes help locate new pressures on those arrangement such as those linked to technological developments, shifting conceptions of expertise, and growing recognition of the challenges of managing systems of advice. These themes help facilitate continued engagement with persistent challenges linked to adequate policy capacity, the role of the public service advice, and question of rigour, legitimacy, and the democratic contexts of policy advising. Points for practitioners: Technological innovations and turbulent governance arrangements have renewed debates around technocracy, democratic control and participation, the role of evidence, and normative and ethical considerations inherent in the generation and use of policy advice.Policy capacity remains important for well‐functioning policy advisory systems. It has itself become multifaceted reflecting not only important differences in types of expertise and policy advice, but also concerns around its management and deployment in varying governance contexts.The competencies required for policy workers inside and outside of government should reflect changes in the role of expertise and evolving systems of policy advice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In a recent article in NPE, Rajesh Venugopal (2022. Can the anti-politics machine be dismantled? New political economy, 1–15) concluded that the anti-politics machine was still in operation. He argued that development planners held a cognitive divide between the realm of political dynamics – an unknowable terra incognita – and the realm of operational technical knowledge. This article revisits and expands that argument. It takes a particular kind of adaptive project as an analytical entry point, arguing that their focus on political practice reimagines the ontology of politics as a kind of expert mētis which is situated, relational and emergent. Such projects hold out hope that the anti-politics machine can be dismantled by displacing the cognitive frames of the development planner from the centre stage and emphasising political practice during implementation. However, shifting attention to implementation reveals other elements of the anti-politics machine’s operation. Drawing on interviews with policy advocates, the article shows that the anti-politics machine does not simply work through the cognition of the planner: it also acts through bureaucratic resistance to political practice during project implementation, produced through operational, accountability and financing processes that shackle practice, particularly in spaces with heterogeneous interests and values. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the role of the university in the demise of democracy. In a country which was once seen as the world's leading democracy, albeit one in which the democracy was harnessed to the requisite constraints of a republic, almost half of the population believe that the last two elections were stolen, and Presidents Trump and Biden were not legitimate. Democracies in Western Europe are equally factious. What prevails now in the West is a general inability for voters to be able to put aside personal differences and accept defeat at the ballot box. The willingness to accept defeat and be able to trust your political opponents not to destroy the institutions of the nation is the prerequisite for the preservation of a democratic system. The dominant factions which face each other with unmitigated suspicion can broadly be classified as the tertiary educated urban professional classes who are allied with globalist and corporate "leaders," and the more regionally based and non-professional classes. More specifically, I focus on the class interests of the pedagogical classes, particularly those employed in the tertiary sector and the media (loosely construed as the class which makes a living from crafting, monitoring and disseminating ideas); the technocratic character of that class; the metaphysical ideas that have propelled the empowerment of that class and its importance as educators; the ideological consensuses that have triumphed in the academy in the twentieth century; and how the ideology of emancipation that has been forged in universities, and the managerial revolution that has enabled the corporatization of the university, have contributed to the demise of democracy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This 'democratic myopia' thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, for example in economic policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis – the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This article presents the case, with reference to the legitimacy forms, epistemologies and organisational structures in which technocratic authority is grounded. The suggestion is that not only may technocrats fall short of the claims to long-sightedness made of them, but that this is directly bound up in some of the core features of the technocratic method. The article goes on to discuss the implications for how contemporary societies govern the future in key domains of public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article traces Howard Scott's technocracy movement in the United States from the 1930s onwards, attempting to rearticulate it as a moment in interwar non-conformism. Conceived in America's culture of material affluence, the technocracy movement was intellectually based on two fin-de-siècle undercurrents: the scientific management movement and Veblen's institutional economics. The technocracy movement appropriated and developed their ideas of efficiency and waste, attempting to negotiate a space between industrial capitalism and socialism by offering new ideas of managing society based on maximizing productive efficiency and minimizing waste. While its political disorganization and Scott's spotty past turned brief success into ultimate failure, the speed and intensity of the popular following for technocracy testifies to the broad appeal of 1930s non-conformism. Further, responding to looming unemployment in the pursuit of efficiency through mechanization, the technocracy presented, if accidentally, an ecological vision manifest in the idea of energy certificates. Yet, the fundamentally productivist premise of the movement ultimately marred its substantive development and made the movement fragmented and functionally appropriated. [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]

In this article, we provide a critique of the concept of crony capitalism as the dominant explanation of change in economies in transition-based as it is on an idealized technocratic representation of 'free markets'. We do this through an analysis of the fall of the Croatian company Agrokor , one of the most important companies in post-socialist Southeast Europe. The Agrokor case allows for an understanding of state-economy restructurings in times of crisis, and the competing temporalities and rhythms of corporate practices, political interventions and public perceptions. Agrokor can be considered as a symbol of many of the unfolding contradictions of transnational capitalism in the semi-periphery. The nature of Agrokor 's demise is understood as a result of the hyper-financialization of the firm and the rise of transnational predatory finance. The translation of liquidity and debt crises into a fundamental restructuring of the conglomerate, ushering in a shift in power and control, is the product of active work by a range of agents and an attempted resolution, partial and unfinished, of a struggle for dominance between fractions of capital. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ideas, reception and social role of Germany's most prominent cultural critic of lockdown politics, Gunnar Kaiser. In contrast to the majority of European intellectuals, Kaiser took an early public stand against the naive adoption of science as a social authority and the unprecedented overturning of core democratic principles. He argued that without vigorous, open debate, the worldwide state of emergency threatened to usher in a fundamentally new (bio)political era, in which liberal democracy would be replaced by an increasingly totalitarian technocracy. Yet despite his voluminous philosophical output, which included a highly creative and increasingly professionalised YouTube channel as well as two best-selling books, Kaiser found himself largely excluded from mainstream German discourse. Crew analyses the full range of Kaiser's interventions while also situating him within the broader landscape of European dissent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modernism is the belief in a world that can be understood in objective terms and controlled as such. Even though it is commonly understood to be a naïve worldview, public administration theorists believe it to still aptly describe the modus operandi of modern states—albeit in more subtle forms. This raises the question whether that makes civil servants naïve modernists, or whether theories of the modernist state are oversimplifying government practice. This study explores this question by means of interviews with civil servants involved in decision making processes on infrastructure investments. It finds that modernist norms do not describe an actual practice, but reflect the language used to legitimize a practice in which policy makers are driven by a desire to act rather than objective knowledge about the world. Consequently, the study argues that the question we should be asking ourselves is not why states still operate according to modernist principles, but why civil servants legitimize their practice with a set of norms that does not seem to describe it. [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]

Many studies have tried to identify citizens' views about which actors should govern and how. These studies have mostly looked at support for citizens or independent experts being given a greater role. Recently, Hibbing, Theiss-Morse, Hibbing and Fortunato have proposed a new battery of 21 survey items capturing the dimensions along which citizens' preferences for who should govern are organized. Testing their survey instrument among US respondents, they identified seven dimensions. In this study, we replicate their approach across nine European democracies, namely, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Finland, Greece, Ireland and the Netherlands. The replication allows, first, to compare citizens' preferences for political actors between the US and Europe, and within Europe. Second, it provides suggestions for how Hibbing and colleagues' battery might be adapted and re-used in other countries, enabling further cross-national comparative research on citizens' preferences for who should govern. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The victory of realism over idealism at the start of the twentieth century, and of scientific realism over logical empiricism and pragmatism in the mid twentieth century, is a striking phenomenon that calls for historical explanation. In this paper I propose an externalist account, looking at the social and political reasons why realism became attractive, rather than considering the internal factors–the merits of the arguments in favour of realism. I look at the agenda of Roy Wood Sellars' critical realism which was not narrowly theoretical, but very much related to his concerns for the development of American society post WW1, as expressed in The Next Step in Democracy (1916b) and The Next Step in Religion (1918). I discuss the significance of technocracy in America – not only the increasing influence of scientists and engineers in government, but also the diffusion of the view that social issues are best addressed by scientific, technical means. Counter-cultural critics of technocracy, such as Roszak (1969) claimed that a "scientific world-view" provided an "ideology" for this system of governance. We will see that RW Sellars was explicitly involved in the task of building a scientific world-view, but with political goals that were probably not realised by the post-war establishment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technocracy is becoming increasingly relevant in Western democracies and particularly in Italy, a country characterised by four technocratic governments in three decades. Despite the growing number of dedicated studies, there is a persistent gap in the existing literature concerning the discursive dimension of technocracy – namely, how technocrats frame the historical context, legitimise their policy agendas and, more broadly, the establishment of their governments. This study aims to fill this gap by analysing the speeches given by four Italian technocratic Prime Ministers to the parliament when asking for the vote of confidence. Methodologically, we perform first the content analysis to map the themes addressed in the speeches, their quantitative relevance and variation over time. Then, we turn to critical discourse analysis to understand the specific argumentative strategies that legitimise policy action in five key and interrelated dimensions: context, legitimation, the state, European Union and political economy. The analysis seeks to answer three research questions: What are the main discursive strategies of legitimation used by technocrats? Do they change significantly between governments and over time? Do partisan policy options and worldviews emerge clearly, or do they remain under the surface? The paper aims to contribute to the theoretical conceptualisation and empirical analysis of technocracy by highlighting the subjective, performative and overall political dimensions of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite participatory institutions' increasing ubiquity, we know little about their effects on governance and well-being. What we do know comes largely from Brazil, where positive outcomes have been attributed to civil society's role in implementation. Often, however, participatory institutions are imposed by national governments, with little civil society engagement. In these cases, scholars have argued, participatory institutions are unlikely to improve governance and well-being, as civil society is not present to unlock the institutions' potential. We test this proposition in Peru, the first country featuring government mandated participatory institutions for all subnational governments. We find, surprisingly, that Peru's participatory budgeting process increased pro-poor spending and improved citizen's quality of life. We attribute these outcomes to reduced information asymmetries, made possible by the central role played by an influential and autonomous government agency. We employ a unique panel dataset, as well as an original survey and extensive interviews with government and civil society actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The main idea of the author in the article is to identify the differences between "man" and "woman" in the context of the concept of "human" through the history of mythology and religion, taking into account the modern technocratic, scientific-theoretical, service-oriented worldview. In the author's view, human being is depicted as a man only. In gender language studies, the idea of "humanity" is seen as a general concept, and what is specific is different when we look at "masculinity" and "femininity". Being either relative, or in content, or general and private, a human being - that is idea, used in symbolic approach as masculine and feminine, - is a manifestation form of the gender linguistic. From this point of view, whenever thought we express about a human being, it is linked to its existence and relativity. Author notes that the position of sexes in the society depended on state ideology as well as on the religion at different stages of social development. Analyzing the interpersonal relations of men and women within the framework of Muslim Sharia, the author comes to the following conclusion: it is proven that it is necessary to take into account that factors such as ERA and space, religious and literary works should be perceived not as dogmas but as a modern approach and a new way of cognition in explaining any religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the tyranny of science and the masses' reaction to it, considering the situation in which the overturned mask norm, which is different from the medically desirable mask norm, has been practiced in Japanese society. The model of the human being that science assumes is frequently inclined to be limited to a very narrow model of the modern citizen or a rational, ideal human being with sufficient information to make decisions. Such a metaphysical understanding of human beings and society does not assume that the masses will not accept it. As a result, science has no choice but to use mathematically derived fear to control the masses. Science will always have a tyrannical and magical character in the sense that fear is necessary for the realization of the scientific expectations of experts. To incite fear, technology should be not only scientific but also symbolic (ritualistic) in the society in which it is used. However, once the fear becomes a reality, the masses, instead of being increasingly frightened by it, begin to doubt the scientific explanations of the experts. As a result, the tyranny of science starts to collapse. It is in the masses, who are perceived as the furthest removed from science, that the opportunity exists for science to be relativized. [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]

This essay aims to explore Don DeLillo's Cosmopolis (2003) in order to examine how the corporeal schema of a feeling human is radically reconfigured in the contemporary capitalist culture that thrives on augmenting the lived body's somatic and cognitive experientiality. By accommodating a narrative frame where the location of the body as an organically sealed discrete biological category is problematized, the novel partakes in a landscape of endless entanglements. How such an ontological convergence unsettles the epistemic realms of reasoning is what this reading attempts to investigate. DeLillo's novel dramatizes a reconceptualization of human subjectivity by unpacking a conflation of biogenetic matter and algorithmic flow of data within a postmodern metropolis. To situate this problematic, the reading affirms "intra-active" transactions between the biomedically theorized body and extra-human ontologies. In illustrating how the notional frames of epistemological certitude seem increasingly untenable in the cultures of neoliberal technocracy, the novel points toward a posthuman condition and wagers what appears to be a transhumanist ethos at the end. The essay interrogates this trajectory by looking at templates of corporeal entanglement in the text. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Prior studies have linked societal threats to a surge in conservative attitudes. We conducted three studies (N = 1,021) to investigate whether hypothetical threat situations impact peoples' attitudes toward democracy or alternative systems. Study 1 shows that individuals under threat devaluate representative and participatory government types and show relatively stronger endorsement of less democratic alternatives. Study 2 clarifies that extranational threats elicit a greater shift toward nondemocratic 'solutions' than intranational threats and that citizens generally find a just process less important in times of crisis. Study 3 shows that the effect of threat on support for technocracy can be explained by heightened anticipated anxiety. We find no evidence that anticipated emotions consistently account for the observed shifts in government preferences under threat. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rachel Friedman's Probable Justice and Jeffrey Friedman's Power without Knowledge explore the promises and pitfalls of the application of predictive tools to the solution of social and political problems. Rachel Friedman argues that a fundamental duality in philosophical interpretations of probability allowed social insurance schemes to successfully accommodate two rival visions of liberal justice over the centuries. But in focusing on ideas around probability, she misses the limitations of the experts who put these ideas into practice and threatened to undermine them in the process. Jeffrey Friedman, by contrast, is centrally concerned with the limitations of experts. While he shows how these undermine one rather narrow conception of technocratic legitimacy, he avoids examining their implications for democratic legitimacy understood more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Changes in any field of science will lead to greater dynamics of the functions of that field. Accounting is one of the areas based on social processes. Accounting, as one of the areas based on social processes, is no exception to these changes. To enhance interactivity with stakeholder needs, one can expect to achieve a coherent and interactive understanding of the elements of the accounting profession with social dimensions through such changes. Dialogic accounting, as changes resulting from perceptual and social contexts, can have pervasive values, such as the positive consequences of green accounting socially and competitively. This study examines the role of technocracy instrumental rationale in the dialogic accounting model with green accounting consequences. In this research, which is considered methodologically in terms of the nature of the problem and the purpose, the data collection method was survey correlation, and the research tool was a questionnaire. In this study, 195 financial managers and heads of accounting of capital market companies participated. Partial Least Squares Analysis (PLS) was also used to fit the model. The results showed that dialogic accounting impacts the green accounting implications of capital market companies. The results showed that dialogic accounting has a positive and significant effect on the green accounting consequences of capital market companies. It was also found that using technocratic instrumental rationality intensifies the positive impact of dialogic accounting on the consequences of green accounting. The results show the development of the dialogic accounting model as a basis of the system in the social context, and by transferring the level of capital market expectations as the input of the system and combining it with accounting knowledge as a system process occurs, it can lead to green accounting consequences as a system output. On the other hand, the result shows that the technocracy instrumental rationale by changing the attitude in corporate decision-making can cause dialogic accounting is one of the capacities of technical and technological knowledge, which is the most prominent layer of rationality in modern thought on the base strengthen dialogic accounting for green implications for financial reporting, based on ethical norms based on ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese occupation in 1942 compelled Dutch scientists to depart from Indonesia or face imprisonment as prisoners of war. The Allied victory led to the liberation of captive scientists and encouraged Dutch scientists to return to Indonesia. This article aims to analyse and describe: (1) the process of Dutch scientists’ reentry to Indonesia in 1945 to 1949 and 1950 to 1959 and (2) the factors that caused the departure of Dutch scientists from Indonesia from 1949 to 1959. The archives at the National Archives of the Republic of Indonesia (ANRI) and the National Research and Innovation Agency (BRIN) are used as sources for this article. Dutch scientists are discussed more extensively since they were the most impacted by the dynamics of Indonesian nationalism. In 1945 to 1949, Dutch scientists had more opportunities than their Indonesian counterparts. However, the Dutch, including their scientists, were obliged to leave Indonesia in 1949 following the Konferensi Meja Bundar agreement. The exodus of Dutch scientists prompted the government to recruit scientists from various countries to fill vacant positions from 1950 to 1959. Nevertheless, bureaucratic inefficiency, different regulations regarding the supervision of foreigners and the emergence of anti-foreign sentiment in an unstable social, political and economic situation encouraged foreign scientists to return to their homeland. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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One of the most frequent, although widely understandable, reactions of people diagnosed with an incurable tumor is represented by incredulity, anger, and the denial of the impossibility of a definitive cure. Often, a picture of intense anxiety quickly takes over, overlapping the ever-growing collective hysteria of modern society, the result of a complex cultural mechanism in which technocracy often prevails over thought, introspection, and, in a broader sense, humanism. In this health drama, all actors often complain of formal inaccuracies while paying little attention to substantive ones. We argue that a more human emphatic patient-family-doctor relationship training to consider the undeniable progress of medicine and the fragility of all of us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses three features that characterise the authoritarian restoration following what is known as the Arab springs of 2011: a) the recourse to technocratic governments, b) the proliferation of discourses on the depoliticisation of governance and c) the postponement of the renegotiation of the old social contracts. Added to this is the importance of the international nexus, given that strategic allied states at a global level and international financial institutions embrace a formula that ensures stability and facilitates the implementation of neoliberal reforms. However, this authoritarian technopopulism fails to address the economic demands of the population, nor does it provide avenues of political inclusion or a framework for drawing up a new social contract; at best, it serves momentarily as a structure to contain the protests.