Technocracy (bureaucratic)

Basic Information

A technocracy is a form of government where scientists, engineers, and other technical experts hold political power in their respective fields. They are selected for their positions based on bureaucratic processes on the basis of their knowledge and performance instead of democratic elections.

See Also

• Magocracy for a fantasy version of the technocracy.
• Noocracy - a less specific but related form of government.
• Meritocracy - an even less specific form.

Sources

Bibliography

1. Wikipedia entry

Game and Story Use

• In a society where political power is based on provable scientific or technical expertise, peer review is likely to be very intense - and might be the focus of some major intrigues as people submitting articles will go to any length that their articles get good reviews and are cited often.
• An unfortunate side effect may be the capture of the process by professional politicians - after all, if professional expertise is your benchmark, who better to govern than someone who has studied the process of government? Real world experience should demonstrate how well that can work out.
• This is also likely to make it consensus driven and resistant to innovation - if your position relies on the approval of a very limited number of people, it is extremely unlikely that you will prosper by challenging their worldview (let alone the basis of the work that got them into that position in the first place), even if you happen to be right…
  • Beware, for example, Lysenkoism - historically this relied on a bad idea, backed by a bad form of government which eventually lost faith in it. If instead the bad idea were to become inherent…
• Popular opinion will also be prone to taking a back seat - after all, the technocrats know the "right" answer so if "the herd" don't like it, that is a problem with their perceptions not with government policy.
• This would be a credible form of government for a polity controlled by its collected guilds (especially one where the craft and professional guilds dominated the merchant ones¹), given that leadership of a guild is likely to be at least linked to professional competence.

Footnotes

1. Not historically the case, but many fantasy settings have a lot more guilds than existed in real life and most of the additional ones tend to be crafts or professions