Genuine question. It seems like a topic that isn’t discussed in-depth often anywhere I can find online.
To be clear, I’m talking about technocracy as in policies are driven by those with the relevant skills (instead of popularity, skills in campaigning, etc.).
So no, I don’t necessarily want a mechanical engineer for president. I do want a team of economists to not tank the economy with tariffs, though.
And I do want a social scientist to have a hand in evaluating policy ideas by experts. A psychologist might have novel insights into how to improve educational policy, but the social scientist would help with the execution side so it doesn’t flop or go off the rails.
The more I look at successful organizations like J-PAL, which trains government personnel how to conduct randomized controlled trials on programs (among other things), the more it seems like we should at least have government officials who have some evidence base and sound reasoning for their policies. J-PAL is the reason why several governments scaled back pilots that didn’t work and instead allocated funds to scale programs that did work.
You can still have a technocratic system that allows moral weights to be ‘baked into’ it.
For example, currently, in some states, judges are elected. The people decide what kinds of judges align with their values.
However, most of these states require judges to have a law degree to run, which is technocratic—you cannot run for a judge position without graduating from law school (and passing the bar in some states) first.
Sure, there are no good solutions and a vast amount of conflicting legal theories on how to address or interpret certain things, but as a whole, the judicial system is at least more grounded in some understanding of the law rather than random individuals who were able to market their way into judicial power.
I imagine a similar thing would happen for other issues.