technocracy
/tɛkˈnɒkrəsi
/noun (plural technocracies) [mass noun]
1The government or control of society or industry by an elite of technical experts: failure in the war on poverty discredited technocracy...
- They stand against ‘industrial society in all its forms; against neoliberalism and technocracy, and against corporate crooks and their allies in government’.
- With the decline of the critical intellectual, the thinker gives way to the expert, politics yields to technocracy, and culture and education lapse into forms of social therapy.
- Admittedly, this optimism was tempered by his faith in democracy, and his hints about the growing threat of technocracy to democracy.
1.1 [count noun] An instance or application of technocracy.I do believe direct representation should be the defining aspect of democracy and what you find in Europe is more a ruling technocracy than a democracy....
- I had already done a theocratic technocracy, so why not a feudal democracy?
- Not in so many words, she viewed my new handset as just another exotic creation of a transnational technocracy using technology to get us to spend our obsessive consumerist, materialist dollars.
1.2 [count noun] An elite of technical experts.So you're not worried about the development of a sort of elite technocracy running the global brain machines?...
- I say despite itself, because to advance its legitimacy, the technocracy has promoted an exaggerated secularization of society that is simultaneously radical and very damaging.
- Thus, the highest positions of prestige and authority would be assumed by a meritocratic elite of intelligence and creativity: the technocracy.
Origin
Early 20th century: from Greek tekhnē 'art, craft' + -cracy.