Technocratic Research Articles

WINTER EFFECT ON STUDENTS: AN EXPERIENCE CASE AT CENTRAL CHINA NORMAL UNIVERSITY IN WUHAN, HUBEI PROVINCE

Winter is a cold season at CCNU-Wuhan, Hubei province in China. New students from warm countries do experience winter for the first time at CCNU. There is a deeper winter effect in the lives of new student in their dormitories. This paper explains a scenario of the researcher’s first experience winter season at CCNU, and the strategy outcome of the idea that developed through his struggle to overcome the winter impact in the dormitory room. The paper starts by giving a background of the condition of dormitory and the insight of the environment. It reveals some knowledge of the subject. It then continues to show strategies applied by the researcher to get warm in addition to the air conditioner excluding quick heat. The researcher used qualitative explanation to show the method of warming himself in the room, and later thought of converting the experience to an invention of making a FAN WARMER that is movable, portable, economical and safer. The paper then concludes by stating some recommendation. It is anticipated that, this idea will receive great attention to authorities of the university, technocrats, engineers and philosophers for the full implementation of the recommended project that will serve humanity at large. Article visualizations:

Wastewater technopolitics on the southern coast of Belize

After a massive hurricane devastated Belize's south coast in 2001, “sustainable tourism” was the national government's answer to spurring economic redevelopment. Since then, the communities of the Placencia Peninsula, in particular, have engaged in rapid tourism development as an economic strategy for securing local livelihoods, culminating in the arrival of mass cruise tourism in 2016. In a region where environmental resources and services shape the backbone of the tourism industry, controversies have erupted around current and future impacts of tourism on the environment. One of the more polarizing debates to emerge surrounds the role of wastewater management, which is not centralized in the region and has resulted in discharges of untreated or partially treated wastewater into local waterways where many residents and nongovernmental organizations perceive negative consequences for both human and environmental health. Friction between local residents and government technocrats on how to address the issue reveals how infrastructure planning can become a technopolitical practice in which cost–benefit analyses in the form of life cycle costing and environmental impact assessment, presented through the rhetoric of sustainability, are used to influence how water and wastewater are governed in Placencia. More broadly, our findings suggest that the micropolitics of infrastructure design and development can be a powerful force that organizes technocratic governance.

Las políticas públicas: entre la teoría y la práctica

Objective: this Reflection paper intends to question some theoretical issues that cloud the practice and whose improvement could increase the social benefit of management. Methodology: an interpretative and critical reflection was made on the social phenomenon of Public Policies (PP); thus, the analysis of some issues from the fundamental theoretical perspectives on the subject were taken into account such as the cited original sources. This reflection was particularly focused on five issues to help understand the rationality of PP and their performance: the formal issues, the actors, the contexts, the processes, and the results. Results: It was found that in many social scenarios, including academic, the PPs are introduced as technocratic options that political leaders assume neutrally and rationally for the benefit of people. Although this concept is very interesting, it is ideological and far from reality. The PPs are political devices that were developed in late modernity to control the tangible and intangible resources of society, and, as such, they are administered by different subgroups in defense of their own interests. Unlike the aim of the official discourse, the PPs are not always decisions made in favor of public interests, rather they are changeable expressions of social conflicts between antagonistic groups fighting for their own benefit. Conclusions: beyond technical matters, the PPs are political issues whose main characteristic comes from the particular interests of their defenders. The PPs have become a good opportunity to face and solve priority public problems.

Technical Analysis of Security Management in Terms of Crowd Energy and Smart Living

In this paper, a technical and statistical analysis of security system and security management is provided for crowd energy and smart living. At the same time, a clear understanding is made for crowd energy concept and next generation smart living. Various case examples have been studied and a brief summary has been provided. Furthermore, a statistical analysis has been provided in terms of security management in smart living where it is found that young technocrats give the highest importance to security management in smart living. Last but not the least, current limitation, constraints, and future scope of security implementation have been discussed in terms of crowd energy clustered with next generation smart living.

Why Aren't We Paying Attention? Religion and Politics in Everyday Life.

The sociology of contemporary religious behavior is vital to understanding a whole range of other social and political issues. The current deep division in contemporary American political and social life tracks the deep ideological divide between white conservative Christians and others (both white and nonwhite) so closely that it is almost impossible to intellectually suggest there is no relationship between the two. Contemporary sociology has assumed that American institutions (if not individuals) have become so secular that they are shielded from religious practices, in favor of organizing logics that are scientific, technical, and organizational in nature. What most sociologists missed were the roots of contemporary backlash against technocratic regimes in the white suburbs and small towns of America where conservative religious affiliations became aligned with a profoundly nativist, anti-intellectual populism.

Self-Government in a Republic of 325 Million: Distracting Anachronism or Worthy Aspiration?

What do modern Americans mean when they say they believe in self-government—or do they mean anything at all? This article attempts to offer a reasonable, realistic expectation of what self-government can be in an extended republic of 325 million citizens characterized by a highly developed division of labor and intense specialization. It argues that if self-government is taken too literally, it becomes an impossible ideal likely to promote cynicism. On the other hand, if self-government is dismissed as an anachronism, the resulting technocratic government is likely to become irresponsible and illegitimate. Representative government offers the best middle way, but our practice of it must be repaired and defended against critics.

Reconfiguring the state: executive powers, emergency legislation, and neoliberalization in Italy

ABSTRACTThe article examines the evolution of legal and institutional mechanisms over four decades in Italy (1976–2015). Through an original data analysis of legislation on macroeconomic and financial measures, the paper investigates the reconfiguration of state institutions during the rise, consolidation and crisis of neoliberalism. I argue that the strengthening of the policy-making role of the executive, in particular through emergency legislation, proved to be key in the insulation and imposition of neoliberal and austerity policies. Furthermore, in the post-2008 period further coercive dynamics, such as the abuse of confidence question, the abuse of decree laws to impose austerity measures, and the constitutionalization of the balanced budget principle gained momentum. The data presented in this article also shows that the rise of executive power is paralleled by a gradual but steady marginalization of the policy-making role of the parliament, now often relegated to a mere ratifying institution of decisions taken elsewhere. Moreover, the growing tendency to resort to emergency and delegated legislation can be found in centre-left, centre-right and technocratic governments. Accordingly, the paper calls attention not only to the increasingly coercive legal and institutional dynamics that enshrine neoliberal policy-making, but also to an intrinsic and structural tension between the liberal democratic form of the state and increasingly authoritarian forms of neoliberalization.

Technokratie und Posttechnokratie

Technokratie ist heute nahezu allgemein ubel beleumundet. Ein Gutteil politischer Fundamentalkritik (insbesondere an der Europaischen Union) ist Kritik an technokratischem Entscheiden. Gleichwohl macht man sich mit dem Vorschlag, die Regierung hauptsachlich oder gar ausschlieslich mit „Expertinnen und Experten“ zu besetzen, im Wahlvolk eher beliebt als unbeliebt. Und prominente Okonomen beklagen den Mangel an Sachverstand, wie er sich in Austeritatspolitiken manifestiere, die nicht zuletzt von genau denjenigen Instanzen verordnet werden, die unter Technokratie-Verdacht stehen. Manche bezweifeln auch explizit, dass wir an zu viel Technokratie laborieren wurden. Um den Widerspruch zwischen Technokratie-Kritik und Technokratie-Leugnung (bzw dem Wunsch nach mehr Expertise in der Politik) aufzulosen, schlage ich den Begriff der Posttechnokratie vor. Einiges an heutiger Technokratie-Kritik, so meine These, bezieht sich eigentlich auf die Posttechnokratie. Im Folgenden unterscheide ich Technokratie und Posttechnokratie, indem ich ihr jeweiliges Verhaltnis zu Burokratie, Hierarchie, Partizipation und ideologischer Vielfalt naher betrachte.

Institutional Arrangements and Political Shifts in Curitiba, Brazil: A Comparative Analysis of the 2004 and 2014 Master Plans

In theory, shifts in institutional arrangements result in new public policies. This articles focuses on Curitiba, Brazil, an international flagship city of urban planning recognized for its technocratic government. The 2012 municipal elections and the 2013 nationwide political upheaval led to a change in the city's institutional arrangement. As a consequence, the 2014 Master Plan was conceived with the tagline of more public participation. This paper analyzes whether the changes in institutional arrangements influenced the city's planning process and the Master Plan.

Su un rapporto armonico tra uomo e natura: una riflessione etico-giuridica

SOMMARIO: 1. Valore intrinseco della natura ed economia umana - 2. Caratteristiche e implicazioni delle teorie antropocentriche - 3. Sull’approccio antropocentrico dell’attuale declinazione giuridica della sostenibilita dell’agire scientifico nei confronti dell’ambiente e della vita, e sui suoi limiti - 4. Il principio dello sviluppo sostenibile - 5. Limitare lo sviluppo non significa impedirlo - 6. Sulla necessita di limiti per l’autonomia tecnocratica. On a harmonious relationship between man and nature: an ethical-juridical reflectio n ABSTRACT: The break in the harmonious relationship between man and nature has been evident for some decades now. This break is the consequence of the use of science and technology in the interest of only some, an approach that led to an exploitation of nature not respectful of its intrinsic value. Hence the technocracy. In fact, today we are witnessing the domination of the technocratic power, which has as its purpose the utility for those who manage it, in the absence of consideration of the damage that derives from the realization of profit. This latter position marries the anthropocentric conception in the relationship between man and nature and blows both the religious vision of this relationship, which entrusts man with power over nature, but also the duty to guard it, and the natural-evolutionary vision. Hence the need for a limitation of the autonomy of scientific action to effectively protect the ecosystem.

Modelling for a living: two-level games and rhetorical action in the foreign debt negotiations of post-revolutionary Tunisia

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the global-level financial constraints that shape Tunisia's foreign policy, this debtor state's international agency and the way its post-2011 authorities have managed/negotiated the issue of foreign debt both internally and internationally, including the ‘odious debt’ inherited from the Ben Ali dictatorship and the renewed borrowing necessities of the country. Viewed against the backdrop of the geopolitical and economic vulnerability that has driven Tunisian foreign policy throughout history, foreign debt is shown to have featured as a highly politicised issue in the domestic sphere in 2011–2012, until the February 2013 crisis enabled an increasingly technocratic government to halt the parliamentary bill calling for a debt audit and to break the taboo on new borrowing from the IMF. On the external front, a distinction is drawn between an adaptive/compliant and a resistant type of foreign policy agency, which can be observed in the international action and rhetoric on this matter deployed by Essebsi and Marzouki respectively. Adaptive/compliant foreign policy agency is technocratic and de-politicising in nature, as it attempts to isolate or blackbox domestic politics when negotiating Tunisian foreign debt abroad – while paradoxically exploiting an ideal representation of Tunisia's democratic transition (role modelling) in order to demand greater international financial support. Resistant foreign policy agency is more openly political inasmuch as its builds on post-revolutionary domestic politics and contestation. Although the latter approach bore some material fruit in the form of debt conversion measures by the country's major bilateral creditors, adaptive/compliant foreign policy agency prevailed from 2013 onwards.

Recasting Pensions in Europe: Policy Challenges and Political Strategies to Pass Reforms

Recasting Pensions in Europe: Policy Challenges and Political Strategies to Pass Reforms

Paradoxes of Democracy and Depoliticisation in the Social Peripheries of Modernity

At the end of the 20th Century, the global diffusion of economic neoliberalism represents, seen from diverse perspectives, the outcome of a communicative overlapping between the economic system and the political system. This overlapping is equivalent to a functional intrasparency, which generates paradoxes of democracy as the depoliticisation and exclusion phenomena when facing inclusion expectations, as occurs in the peripheries of the world. Depoliticisation, in fact, appears as a paradox of democratic systems closely related to the development of the technocratic practices and the enhancement of the bureaucratic apparatus. One of the characteristics of technocracy is that it lies on the assumption that great decisions are of technical nature, not political. If great decisions may be taken by means of technical instruments, it means that there is no longer need for 'professional politicians', and even less need for people's participation. Technocracy and burocracy converge above the traditional sphere reserved to politics. The consequence of this convergence is, in fact, depoliticisation. In other words, there is a relation between technocracy, burocracy and ideological crises. Hence, the more technical the decision-making process, the more burocratized will the process of power be, and the more deideologized will the process of fundamental choices be. Populist movements thus describe the effect of the attempt of providing responses to the issues of modern society, to the extent in which the economic value becomes the only discriminating variable between what is correct and what is wrong (what is economically pointless must be discarded) and it actually move the decisional process away from the political sphere, enhancing the differences between the center and the periphery, between inclusion and exclusion. In the light of such trends, which have become extensively resilient in the systems, how can the process of functional specification of social systems (economics, politics) be implemented in the peripheries of modernity? If trust in the political system lessens vis a vis problem-solving capabilities, how the consequent uncertainty be absorbed? This essay aims to describing the extent in which the depoliticisation process can compensate for the pressure put on expectations against inclusion values. The theme is tackled with an outlook that stems from the epistemological mutation of globalization and, consequently, from the resolution of the traditionally axial center/periphery pattern, and focuses on the analysis of peripheries that come into play as the protagonists of the two-way relationship with their center, albeit the unusual democratic participation, yet to be interpreted.

Securing Central America Against Communism: The United States and the Modernization of Surveillance in the Cold War

The US.-sponsored programs of military and police collaboration with the Central American governments during the Cold War also contributed to the surveillance capacity of those states during the period when the Central American state formation process was being completed. Guatemala is used as a case study. Washington’s contribution was framed by the conventional discourse of “security against communism” but also by an underlying technocratic ethos in which “modernization” and “security” were higher priorities than democratization.

No Great Wall: Trade, Tariffs, and Nationalism in Republican China, 1927–1945 by Felix Boecking

Reviewed by: No Great Wall: Trade, Tariffs, and Nationalism in Republican China, 1927–1945 by Felix Boecking Jeremy Tai Felix Boecking. No Great Wall: Trade, Tariffs, and Nationalism in Republican China, 1927–1945. Harvard East Asian Monograph Series. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2017. 280 pp. $39.95 (cloth). Decades after the publication of Lloyd Eastman's The Abortive Revolution: China under Nationalist Rule, 1927–1939 in 1974,1 historians of Republican China continue to assess the successes and failures of the Guomindang's rule in mainland China. Building on the field's foundational question of who lost China, explanations of the limits, shortcomings, and missteps of the Guomindang state have included the lack of a social base, factionalism, ineffectual administration, runaway military expenditures, increasing extraction and extortion, the collapse of social welfare, and widespread discontent voiced in popular media. At the same time, revisionist studies have drawn attention to what the Guomindang was able to achieve before the outbreak of war with Japan, often centering on technocratic transformations of the state, industry, and cities. Felix Boecking's No Great Wall: Trade, Tariffs, and Nationalism in Republican China, 1927–1945 attempts to provide another layer of nuance by turning to the Maritime Customs Service, whose collection of duties provided the Guomindang with its greatest source of revenue, and arguing for effective fiscal management during the Nanjing Decade. Long mired in controversy as a symbol of the treaty system, the Maritime Customs Service was a Chinese government agency headed by a foreign inspector general and eventually serviced China's indemnity payments and foreign loans. Building on the work of John Fairbank as well as recent studies by Hans van de Ven and Robert Bickers,2 Boecking attempts to move scholarly inquiries beyond analyses of imperialism to consider how the Guomindang was willing to accommodate an "informal imperial institution" in order to maintain a steady source of revenue, appear politically reliable to foreign powers, and modernize China (3). Focusing on Nationalist China, Boecking draws on previously unavailable sources from the Second Historical Archives in Nanjing and "analyzes the relationship between the Maritime Customs and the Guomindang only to the extent that it is relevant to a revisionist argument about the success of Nationalist tariff policy in terms of revenue extraction and midterm sustainability" (19). The book chapters present cases of state success and end with wartime failure. Chapter 1 provides a general sketch of protectionism in modern China, with Qianlong's rejection of the Macartney mission serving as a straw man for discussion of how Chinese intellectuals eventually came to accept the legitimacy of foreign trade but demanded tariff control to foster domestic production. Following an unsuccessful attempt to declare tariff autonomy unilaterally, the Guomindang was able to achieve that goal through a series of negotiations with foreign powers set within the interwar context of nationalist movements and mass politics. Chapter 2 turns to how the Guomindang was also able to increase Chinese control [End Page E-5] over Maritime Customs through the appointment of inspector general Frederick Maze (1871–1959), who was widely considered sympathetic to Chinese nationalism and promoted Chinese nationals to higher offices. For Boecking, bilateral treaties and the Guomindang's working relationship with Maze reflect a shift from "revolutionary diplomacy to a more consensual, negotiated approach" (83). Increased tariff revenue allowed the Guomindang to bring the amount of national debt in arrears down from 50% in 1928 to 10% in 1937 and to inspire bondholders' confidence (84). Chapter 3 argues that the Maritime Customs Service's dissemination of scientific expertise and technology intersected with the Guomindang's desire to install a technocratic regime. In particular, its trade statistics provided a uniform, national standard for weights and measures and helped constitute a modern, integrated national economy (105–6). In chapter 4, Boecking focuses on the impact of high tariffs on the consumption of imported sugar, chemical fertilizer, kerosene, and cigarettes. In his view, the Guomindang was committed to increasing government revenue and managing public debt, even at the expense of economic growth and hardship for Chinese consumers (151, 157, 237). Increased tariffs, however, also increased incentives for smuggling, the most serious challenge to the Guomindang's...

Quality of Life among Executives and Technocrats

The present investigation aims to study the four aspects of quality of life i.e. health, psychological well being, social relationship and environment between executives and technocrats. The sample comprised of 200 executives and 200 technocrats with equal number of both the genders, within the age range of 25-40 years. Data were gathered by using WHOQOL-BREF Scale (1996). Findings indicated significant differences between executives and technocrats and males and females on all the four aspects of quality of life. Results revealed that executives who are the planners of the organization are high on most of the aspects of quality of life as compared to technocrats. And males, the dominant sex of the society stood higher on all the aspects as compared to females.

Natural and social sciences have to merge? A view from Russia

The UNESCO’s Social and Natural Sciences Councils launched a process of the merging of these two Councils aimed at enhancing if interdisciplinary research and education. The paper based on some inquires in the history of science, the author’s long-term experience of participation in the UNESCO’s ‘Man and the Biosphere’ program as well as on some current international interdisciplinary research and developments, analyses the state of affairs in this realm, the impetuses and impediments of the merging process. The author came to conclusion that: (1) it’s not a volitional decision but a reaction on integrating processes embracing all forms of human activity stimulated by the Fourth industrial revolution and rapid development of the information-communication systems embracing all spheres of human activity; (2) this revolution makes our life and its environment more ‘compressed’ and interdepended; (3) we are now in the zenith of technocratic aspirations and predominance of socio-constructivist viewpoint on social and natural processes; (4) some major research findings age gradually replaced by ‘dramatized’ and short-lived news produced by media; (5) global dynamics outstrips research-and-development processes; (6) the objective processes of sciences merging and a tough market competition clash with each other.

Legitimacy and the Paradox of Technocratic Government in Newer European Democracies: The Fischer Administration in the Czech Republic Revisited

The creation of technocratic caretaker governments in several European countries in the wake of the Great Recession (2008–2009) and the Eurozone crisis led to renewed academic interest in such administrations. Although such governments are often assumed to be illegitimate and democratically dysfunctional, there has been little empirical consideration of if and how they legitimate themselves to mass publics. This question is particularly acute given that, empirically, caretaker technocrat-led administrations have been clustered in newer, more crisis-prone democracies in Southern and Eastern Europe where high levels of state exploitation by parties suggest a weak basis for any government claiming technocratic impartiality. This article uses Michael Saward’s “representative claims” framework to re-examine the case of one of Europe’s longer-lasting and most popular technocratic administrations, the 2009–2010 Fischer government in the Czech Republic. The article maps representative claims made for Fischer and his government, as well as counterclaims. Claims drew on the electoral mandate of sponsoring parties, the government’s claimed technocratic neutrality, and on Fischer’s “mirroring” of the values and lifestyle of ordinary Czechs (echoing some populist framings of politics). The article argues that the Fischer government benefited from multiple overlapping representative claims, but notes the need for robust methodology to assess the reception claims by their intended constituency. It concludes by considering the implications of actors’ ability to combine populist and technocratic claims, noting similarities in technocratic governments and some types of anti-establishment party.

Retrospective voting in the Italian 2013 election: a sub-national perspective

The Italian 2013 election ended the period of bipolarism that characterized the so-called ‘Second Republic’, and paved the way for new parties such as the Five Star Movement. We investigate that election, which took place after the technocratic government led by Mario Monti, through the analytical lenses of the retrospective theory of economic voting applied at the provincial level. Local unemployment rates shape the electoral performances of those parties that were more supportive and sympathetic to the caretaker executive, thus confirming a distinction between incumbent and non-incumbent even in that critical and politically undecided election. We further contribute to the literature on retrospective voting by relaxing the locally untenable assumption of independence among the units. Making use of spatial regression models, we demonstrate the relevance of both the internal and contiguous economies, and their relative impact due to the different size of the provinces.

THE READINESS OF PRIMARY SCHOOLS TO IMPLEMENT THE NEW CURRICULUM IN ZIMBABWE AT ECD (A) LEVEL: A CASE STUDY OF BANDURA URBAN PRIMARY SCHOOLS

In a bid to align the Zimbabwe education and training sub-sectors to the evolving needs of the nation, the Nziramasanga Commission of Inquiry into Education and Training (CIET) put forward several recommendations. One of the recommendations was that the state should increase access to Early Childhood Development (ECD) by coming up with a formal primary school based ECD curriculum (CIET: 1992). Technocrats in the Ministry of Primary and Secondary Education (MoPSE) translated the CIET recommendations into an actionable curriculum policy. Between 2014 and 2016, the MoPSE designed a new curriculum and prepared the relevant teaching-learning inputs (Curriculum Framework for Primary and Secondary Education: 2015-2022 (CFPSE: 2015-2022). The MoPSE said, schools were ready to implement the new curriculum with effect from January 2017 (CFPSE: 2015-2022) . On the contrary, some sectors of the society doubted that schools were prepared. The Progressive Teachers’ Union of Zimbabwe (PTUZ), alleged teachers and parents were not consulted and schools were ill prepared (News Day Zimbabwe: 09/01/17). A pre-research research established that 16 private ECD centers dotted around Bindura urban had a combined enrolment of 1200 children which was almost 50% of the ECD market share. This background motivated the researchers to find out if primary schools were prepared to implement the ECD curriculum. Article visualizations: