[Definition technocratic] what is technocrats? According to prominent social scientist William Smyth, who invented technocracy. He coined the term technocracy refers to an important model of governance where people commonly known as ‘Elite‘, make expert decisions. And according to Merriam Webster definition technocratic, refers to ‘people who have the most wealth and status in a society, the most successful or powerful group of people’.
They make decisions and hold higher offices of government. These individuals are recruited and employed to save people based on their technical expertise and background public institutions. Read characteristics of bureaucracy to learn more qualities expected in public organizations they hold. Their knowledge, makes them very highly recognized to become “a member of a powerful technical elite”, who advocates the supremacy of technical experts.
Definition technocratic
What technocrat means?
According to W. H. Smyth in 1919 who coined the term technocracy and the definition technocratic: Technocrat is a person known to be technical expert in certain areas, especially one who has been exercising managerial authority.
Who invented technocracy?
William H. Smyth, has been given great recognition from the time he was a California engineer, worked on understanding, studying and analyzing of government institutions, which included role of public administration in government. He invented the word technocracy, this elaborates what is technocrats all about.
In the year of 1919 to describe “the rule initiated of the people made effective through the agency of their public servants. This term technocracy, has been in existed since the 1920s where it was actually used to describe the responsibility works of Thorstein Veblen.
Its very important to take note that technocracy differs from a traditional model of executing public administrative duties and democracy in that individuals selected to be in a leadership front role, who are actually chosen through a process that emphasizes their relevant skills and proven performance. Its position held based on what one brings to the table not as opposed to whether or not they fit criteria for the majority interests that have given them a popular vote.
Technocratic government
Technocracy government is a form of government belonging to democratic countries or those with uniform rule for the people have immense knowledge in science and/governance or with any other technical expertise in an area, are actually elected to save in top public offices. These can be administrators, policy makers and government advisors commonly called decision-makers who are then known as technocrats.
Technocratic government elects people to hold office based on their expertise in any given field of knowledge. Consequently, they take up leadership role to make decisions based on scientific data or objective methodology that is backed by Delphi advantages science and expert analysis instead of a mere opinion by applying models such as the Delphi technique.
Technocracy pros and cons
Continues civilization in a sustainable operation that is humanitarian, secular and scientific. Requires a major shift in public understanding of the role and structure of social Due to knowledgeable good government policies and procedures technocrats implement technical approaches to the economy is definitely an upside. They paly major role in the economic growth and technological development, emphasized under a technocracy
Advantages of technocracy
- Extra technical knowledge always better than less. If for no other reason then at the very least looking things through scientific or technical lens might give you an extra idea in how to do administration.
- Many things that required administrative decision are indeed technical, and sometime (or most of the time) the popular decisions are not always the best decision.
- Elected representatives are the best way of accounting for aspirations of the people. Technocracy would have worked had there been a single right thing to do every time that’s what definition technocratic means.
- The right thing to do depends upon the given circumstances as well as the desired outcome of laws/policies/programs, plus the government’s willingness to take hard decisions.
- Technical expertise allow them to communicate better who share the same field of expertise in the governmental department or other associated organization – possibly resulted in they doing a better administrative job in the field that they are the expert.
- They might also have better logical thinking necessary in effective run of administration and minimize the chance of fallen into extremism.
- Can promote mass killings, similar to dictators who in history came from political/societal background, do not have real qualification in scientific expertise and all end up believe in pseudo-scientific theory and end up killing more people than anyone else in history.
- The idea of removing human decision-making in a technocracy works well with technology at-play which is tied to the use of real data (numbers)
Disadvantages of technocracy
- Political job required political skill to function not technical knowledge.
- The job of the politician is not to make policy, that’s the job of the policy-makers and bureaucrat, politician job is to make people happy and so long as they know which policy can be reasonably beneficial and popular enough to be practical.
- Technocrats don’t have to know a damn about the theoretical framework of its creation. Politician are like the sales people of the bureaucrat, sale don’t have to know how to make a car, just how to sell one.
- Technical knowledge does not guarantee performance in administrative function. Many leaders with scientific background ended up with insignificant use of that knowledge.
- These people have not been making much differences, because most of the soviet leaders became as massive murderous and pseudo-scientific as their counterpart .
- Technocracy, at the very least required concession of your political right (i.e. even if you are still democratic, you will need some form of regulation to keep people without any technical expertise from politic, most of the time it’s either you are extremely lucky or an outright dictator.
Difference between bureaucratic and technocratic
Technocrats are considered to be the experts in a certain subject with expert knowledge in specific filed and while the bureaucrats are people working in the public sector and private highly knowledgeable to almost most of the subjects.
Read: Public Administration & Bureaucracy(Differences)
Technocrats play leadership role and referred to as the masters who give instructions in certain field. While as the people referred to as bureaucrats are highly knowledgeable in quite a few areas or performing responsibilities of the organization.
Bureaucracy refers to administration and procedure of administering a department without need for technical knowledge. Today for example, a bureaucratic organization have been serving through in different departments of government. Generally, in the USA, India, Philippines, Nigeria and in Pakistan, any person holding a Bachelors in public administration or Commerce degree is eligible to work as a technocrat.
Technocrats could be deployed in any govt department. From there they are also allowed to switch to other departments based on the need, knowledge and expert abilities.
Read: Examples of bureaucracy organizations
A technocrat is kind of administration in which people administers services, based on specialization. for example, soldiers and veteran general or admiral serving as top official in ministry of war.
Another example could be Cardiology working for the public administrative position in ministry of health, who has read books on Public Administration and Political Sciences. While bureaucrats refers to an official in a government one perceived as being concerned with procedural implementation at the expense of serving people’s needs.
What is a technocratic organization?
Technocratic organizations are characterized by bureaucratic hierarchies and structures, these have prioritized jobs to ‘expert’ and ‘non-expert’ divisions, a substitution of primary basis of authority, dealing with internal job ladders in favor of external credentialing which shows definition technocratic.
[VIDEO] What is ‘technocracy’ and ‘who is a technocrat?’
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