��������Ƶ

Technocratic hubris presents politics as primitive, sentimental and irrational — a spiral of conflicts and personal interests. Technocrats — the clergy of governance models founded on technical expertise, data-driven solutions and computational models — argue that purely rational solutions can transcend the “chaos” of politics and tame its conflicts, quietly and effectively driving social progress.

The roots of technocrats’ contempt for politics have been deepening since the Industrial Revolution and the scientific boom following the Second World War. With their rational solutions coming to play a prominent role in shaping modern governance, they have portrayed the political sphere as an obstacle that hinders progress.

The intellectual foundations of this hubristic elitism can be traced back to the rationality and positivism of the Enlightenment, which valued empiricism above all else. Empirical science replaced theology as the ultimate source of truth, while politics was marginalized and relegated to a domain of emotions and subjective conflicts.

The roots of technocrats’ contempt for politics have been deepening since the Industrial Revolution

With the rise of systems theories, economics’ transformation into a mathematical science and the advent of modern management, the notion that societies could be managed like mechanical systems that can be analyzed through quantifiable indicators began to emerge. On the level of institutions, we saw globalization, the expansion of bureaucracies and transnational organizations empower technocratic elites at the expense of political voices and local contexts.

From the failure of the Soviet Union’s rigid five-year plans to economic experts’ predictions and data not preventing Britain’s exit from the EU, known as Brexit, history is replete with examples that attest to the limitations of cold, hard technocratic logic, whether in planning for the future or analyzing the present.

Many of those in Britain who advocated for remaining in the EU relied on experts’ economic forecasts to make their case, convinced that rational arguments about the virtues of the labor market and the free movement of people and goods would persuade the public. However, a wave of nationalist sentiment, as well as the cocktail of cultural and human factors that amounts to the beating heart of political and social decisions and broad skepticism of “elites,” proved stronger than all of their quantified projections.

Brexit makes clear that emotional, ideological and conflictual tensions are aggravated, not quelled, when societal challenges are framed as purely technical issues, the political side of governance is marginalized and the significance of reconciling conflicting interests, values and identities are downplayed. Among other things, the global rise of the right is fundamentally a reaction to the historical trajectory through which technocracy dominated politics, with its elites marginalizing cultural and local identities in favor of what they dubbed “rational” solutions built on data and technical expertise.

This trajectory, which is linked to globalization and the rise of global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, alienated broad segments of society, which felt that policies ignored their needs and identities, making them receptive to the populist and nationalist rhetoric of the right. This backlash, which revived cultural and religious identities under the guise of defending national sovereignty, emerged in light of policymakers’ perilous failure to balance administrative efficiency and popular legitimacy.

The fundamental epistemic shortcoming of technocratic reasoning is neither a potential bug in the data nor a limitation of expertise. Rather, it is an inherent feature of this reasoning, which fails to incorporate the complexity of human behavior and the composition of societies. Our behavior is shaped by an intricate system of interconnected beliefs, values and cultural factors, meaning that no indicators or projections can reliably ensure the avoidance of a particular outcome. Indeed, technocrats often encounter phenomena that resist quantification and do not conform to cold logic.

This reasoning fails to incorporate the complexity of human behavior and the composition of societies

Accordingly, revaluing politics is not a luxury but a need imposed by the Middle East’s complex political, security and economic questions, as well as its intertwined mesh of power centers.

The fact is that politics constitutes the broadest horizon for reconciling divergent interests, conflicting concerns, historical tensions, cultural differences and strategic considerations, none of which can be reduced to mathematical equations or performance indicators.

The urgent need for national dialogue frameworks, as well as engaging with sectors of the economy, civil society and cultural elites in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Sudan, Yemen and other countries, highlights the importance of developing shared visions that transcend narrow sectoral approaches. This underscores the need to reinforce the role of politics, opening the door to continuous negotiation among the various stakeholders in these nations, and to fostering more flexible and legitimate consensus.

There can be no stability without embracing politics and establishing a political culture that adapts to regional and international shifts. This is the only foundation that can pave the way to transitioning from merely “managing or exploiting crises” to “leading change” and shaping a sustainable future.

- Nadim Koteich is the General Manager of Sky News Arabia. X: @NadimKoteich