Stupid Buzzword: Technocrat

This is something that I've wanted to do for years.  Every once in a while the political media (both big corporate institutions and public discussions) seem to pick up a term that then gets repeated constantly for weeks or months, often becoming horribly abused and distorted by the end, sometimes to the point that its original meaning risks getting lost.  The first time that I noticed this phenomenon was around 2003-2004 with the word "unilateral", referring of course to the American invasion of Iraq.  The Bush administration's diplomatic strategy and justification for the intervention was derided constantly for so long that I began to see "unilateral" used almost as a synonym simply for "bad".  Any action might be called "unilateral" simply to imply that it was stupidly or unreasonably aggressive or independent.  Eventually, I grew to hate the word itself, and resent anyone I saw or heard using it.

That was the first stupid buzzword I personally noticed.  But I have no doubt that there have been many, many cases before; especially since I occasionally notice new ones cropping up.  Thus, the inspiration for what may be a recurring series of commentary for me: Stupid Buzzwords, in which I will complain about new iterations of this phenomenon as I observe them.

Today's stupid buzzword: Technocrat.

"Technocrat" worked its way into the public consciousness most recently with the installation of new Prime Ministers in Greece and Italy as attempts to contain those countries' relevant portions of the European debt crisis.  Lucas Papademos and Mario Monti are technocrats.  In their case, it's usually a distinguishing term, commentators are attempting to separate them from "other" politicians (or all politicians, if the commentator has a crappy definition of that word).  Ordinary Greek and Italian politicians have failed to resolve the debt crises, possibly because they're too stupid and/or ignorant to know how, and probably because they're constrained by unforgiving public political opinions or ideology.  The technocrats, however, are experts in their fields (economics, in this instance); they not only understand the plans to save their countries' finances, they may very well have written those plans in the first place.  In the cases of Papademos and Monti, the technocrats are also unconstrained (at least in the hopes of the people who selected them) by the typical political machinations which have previously blocked the sorts of policies which they are now expected to implement.

You may see how the definition is beginning to blur.  "Technocracy" means government by experts, technocrats.  Even before the current surge in the term's popularity, its meaning had decayed somewhat.  I've seen technocrat used to describe any politician with a reputation for having better than a layman's understanding of various fields of public policy (usually economics, but also sometimes technical disciplines like engineering, or other sciences).  In that usage, the word may be thought of as a synonym for "policy wonk".  Personally, I like that definition just fine, as it means that I could sometimes be described as a technocrat.

But now it's getting out of hand.

For me, technocrat became a stupid buzzword when I saw that Egypt's Supreme Council of the Armed Forces had offered to replace the cabinet so that the country could be run by "technocrats" for the remainder of the transition to democratic rule.  Now, Egypt has been facing a pretty serious economic conundrum because of the upheaval, so the SCAF may be legitimately concerned about making sure that the people running the treasury are experts.  But it strikes me much more as just an attempt to appropriate a label in order to cast whoever they selected in a good light.  Technocrats were hailed as the solution to a crisis in Greece and Italy, so let's get some technocrats for Egypt, too!

Right now, "technocrat" mostly still has a positive connotation: they're the good guys, coming to save us from those useless politicians.  But that could very easily change, especially if Papademos or Monti screw up or fail, as time goes on and people begin to question them.

Wrapping up, now that's it's become a stupid buzzword, you can use "technocrat" to mean pretty much whatever the hell you want.  To review some of the more common recent usgages, a technocrat may be:

• An expert. ("The technocrats have a 108-point plan to restructure the economy.")
• An autocrat. ("Who put these technocrats in charge, anyway?")
• A non-politician. ("The technocrats have no allegiance to either the majority or opposition parties!")
• Good.  ("We should do what the technocrats say.")
• Incomprehensible.  ("The technocrats' 108-point plan revises the formula for calculating official future deficit projections.")
• Fascist.  ("We will do what the technocrats say.")
• Any combination of the above. ("The EU is sending in technocrats to save us from our own government.")

And that's today's stupid buzzword.  Use at your own risk, and please not anywhere that I will ever see or hear.  These things make me gag whenever I encounter them.