Power Without Knowledge: A Critique of Technocracy

Technocrats claim to know how to solve the social and economic problems of complex modern societies. But as Jeffrey Friedman argues in Power without Knowledge, there is a fundamental flaw with technocracy: it requires an ability to predict how the people whom technocrats attempt to control will act in response to technocratic policies. However, the mass public's ideas-the ideas that drive their actions-are far too varied and diverse to be reliably predicted. But that is not the only problem. Friedman reminds us that a large part of contemporary mass politics, even populist mass politics, is essentially technocratic too. Members of the general public often assume that they are competent to decide which policies or politicians will be able to solve social and economic problems. Yet these ordinary "citizen-technocrats" typically regard the solutions to social problems as self-evident, such that politics becomes a matter of vetting public officials for their good intentions and strong wills, not their technocratic expertise. Finally, Friedman argues that technocratic experts themselves drastically oversimplify technocratic realities. Economists, for example, theorize that people respond rationally to the incentives they face. This theory is simplistic, but it gives the appearance of being able to predict people's behavior in response to technocratic policy initiatives. If stripped of such gross oversimplications, though, technocrats themselves would be forced to admit that a rational technocracy is nothing more than an impossible dream. Ranging widely over the philosophy of social science, rational choice theory, and empirical political science, Power without Knowledge is a pathbreaking work that upends traditional assumptions about technocracy and politics, forcing us to rethink our assumptions about the legitimacy of modern governance.

About the Author :
Jeffrey Friedman, a Visiting Scholar in the Charles and Louise Travers Department of Political Science, University of California, Berkeley, is the editor of Critical Review: A Journal of Politics and Society, the editor of The Rational Choice Controversy: Economic Models of Politics Reconsidered (Yale University Press), and coauthor of Engineering the Perfect Storm: The Financial Crisis and the Failure of Regulation. He has taught political and social theory at Barnard College, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, Harvard University, and Yale University.

Review :
"A book loaded with profoundly important arguments that I have never seen brought together so skillfully." -- Philip E. Tetlock, Annenberg University Professor, University of Pennsylvania; author of Expert Political Judgment "Today, many embrace their own 'alternative facts, ' but Jeffrey Friedman contends that we still all too often believe our preferred experts can guide human behavior to good results-when we should doubt that any know how to do so. The bold alternative he raises is to seek to provide people with the resources needed to make their own choices. While so many today claim to champion 'the people, ' Friedman seeks instead to help people champion themselves." -- Rogers M. Smith, Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of Political Science, University of Pennsylvania "In this deeply learned, passionately argued book, Jeffrey Friedman offers a trenchant critique of technocracy that indicts both the epistocratic 'rule of experts' and the opinion-based policy produced by democratic collectives. Rejecting the idea that either experts or ordinary citizens are capable of attaining the knowledge necessary to solve the social problems of modernity, he urges that the choice of individual exit is epistemically superior to voice and offers 'exitocracy' as a radical alternative to existing forms of government. His bold, carefully reasoned argument challenges social theorists to rethink our most cherished assumptions about the potential of public policy to foster ameliorative change." -- Josiah Ober, Stanford University "Friedman offers a powerful critique of technocratic politics. He marvelously pricks the hubris of social scientists with their naive epistemologies and their claims to predictive powers. And he provides an invigorating call for greater freedom and experimentation with a basis in universal welfare." -- Mark Bevir, University of California, Berkeley "This is just the book for social scientists still in thrall to the capacity of technocratic elites to bring the utopian ideas of political philosophers to the people by virtue of their instrumental skills. Friedman's critique will remove the scales from your eyes. The improvement of society may be possible but it will never emerge from the cost-benefit analyses of what he calls the 'Epistocrats.' Densely and convincingly argued, lucidly written, Power without Knowledge is perhaps the most convincing case yet against the worship of classical economics in political life." - James C. Scott, Sterling Professor of Political Science and Anthropology, Yale University