Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior

In Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior, thirteen political theorists, including Friedman himself, debate the implications of Power Without Knowledge for social science, modern governance, the politics of expertise, post-structuralism, anarchism, and democratic theory.

In Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy (2019), Jeffrey Friedman presented a sweeping reinterpretation of modern politics and government as technocratic, even in many of its democratic dimensions. Building on a new definition of technocracy as governance aimed at solving social and economic problems, Friedman showed that the epistemic demands that such governance places on political elites and ordinary people alike may be overwhelming if technocrats fail to attend to the ideational heterogeneity of the human beings whose control is the object of technocratic power. Yet a recognition of ideational heterogeneity considerably complicates the task of predicting behavior, which is essential to technocratic control-as Friedman demonstrated with pathbreaking critiques of the homogenizing strategies of neoclassical economics, positivist social science, behavioral economics, and populist democratic politics.

In Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior, thirteen political theorists, including Friedman himself, debate the implications of Power Without Knowledge for social science, modern governance, the politics of expertise, post-structuralism, anarchism, and democratic theory; and Friedman responds to his critics with an expansive defense of his vision of contemporary politics and his political epistemology of ideationally diverse human beings.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the Critical Review.

Autorentext

Paul Gunn is Lecturer in Political Economy and Public Policy in the Department of Politics and International Relations at Goldsmiths, University of London, UK, and Associate Editor of the Critical Review.

Klappentext

In Technocracy and the Epistemology of Human Behavior, thirteen political theorists, including Friedman himself, debate the implications of Power Without Knowledge for social science, modern governance, the politics of expertise, post-structuralism, anarchism, and democratic theory.

Inhalt

Introduction: Political Epistemology Beyond Democratic Theory 1. Exit, Voice and Technocracy 2. Disagreement, Epistemic Paralysis, and the Legitimacy of Technocracy 3. A Family Affair: Populism, Technocracy, and Political Epistemology 4. Technocracy, Governmentality, and Post-Structuralism 5. Social Science and the Problem of Interpretation: A Pragmatic Dual(ist) Approach 6. The Spiral of Responsibility and the Pressure to Conflict 7. Architects and Engineers: Two Types of Technocrat and Their Relation to Democracy 8. What Follows from the Problem of Ignorance? 9. Power, Knowledge, and Anarchism 10. Why Do Experts Disagree? 11. Political Epistemology, Technocracy, and Political Anthropology: Reply to a Symposium on Power Without Knowledge