POLITICA
Technocracy is advocated in Plato’s republic, written in around 380 BC. The key characteristic of a philosopher king is his “love for wisdom”.
We can see this trend of techno-populism in Macron’s success as the electorate saw a capable man above anything else in his election campaign. More relevantly he had distanced himself from other career politicians and his government consists of apolitical specialists and celebrities.
The current Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte is himself a prime example of
techno-populism. He was an academic, completely unknown to the Italian populous, who was handpicked to satisfy the coalition between Lega Nord and the 5 Star Movement. In this case, a technocratic has come about as a result of political conflict and division.
However, it can also come about through economic crisis as happened in the case of Mario Monti’s technocratic government in 2011. He was tasked with reducing the large budget deficit that Silvio Berlusconi, the previous Prime Minister, had left him.
He had 6 months to refinance 200 billion euros worth of bonds and ensure that Italy’s borrowing costs did not surpass the widely-regarded 7% “danger threshold”. Monti’s cabinet consisted of: an Italian ambassador, the head of NATO’s military committee, a famous criminal lawyer and academic and a former prefect and special administrator.
Monti himself was a successful academic and Corrado Passera has played a major role in several of Italy’s most important companies. The duo jointly took on the role of economics and finance Minister.
And Monti’s cabinet did successfully stabilise Italy. Yet when Monti ran for reelection in 2013 his centrist coalition came fourth and Monti handed over the role of Prime Minister to Enrico Letta. The people, in the end, rejected technocracy.
Letta however did not even last a year in government and Matteo Renzi - the alleged Blairite - fell well short of his promise.
Now Italian politics has scared away investors even more. With an extremist government it leaves one feeling a little remorse for the likes of Mario Monti. Although undemocratic, he was certainly qualified for the role and did a decent job of stabilising Italy (at least compared to his successors and predecessors). So should Italy be so skeptical about the possibility of a technocracy? In this moment of political extremism and instability, I imagine it is in the back of many civil servants minds. It will always struggle to win over the people, but does technocracy merit the negative response it receives.
By: WILL HOLMES