The term "technocracy" has a different popular connotation in France t — Technocracy

"This book describes the role of technological experts and expertise in a democratic society. It places decision-making strategies - studied in organization theory and policy studies - into a political context. Fischer brings theory to bear on the practical technocratic concerns of these disciplines and hopes to facilitate the development of nontechnocratic discourse within these fields. The book adopts a critical perspective and addresses the restructuring of the policy sciences."

"Genuine alternatives to existing social organizations seldom appear viable except in times of rapid cultural transformation or crisis. The Great Depression was such a crisis. The valley and the shadow of the depression sorely tempted the country to reject its beliefs and principles. The faith that the twenties had placed in big business and the free marketplace seemed an illusion. At least until the New Deal, representative politics offered little constructive help to those victimized by economic events beyond their control. Traditional culture, with its emphasis on the individual, the local community, and Protestant virtues, had been found wanting previously. Americans might be nostalgic about the cultural values of the past, but reversion to them was hardly likely. The crisis demanded new ways of viewing and organizing society, a new set of values."

"Although the label "technocrat" has come to be generally applied to the economys technical elite, the technocracy movement was a short-lived episode of the thirties. It had little direct influence on the politics of the New Deal years. Nor has it influenced subsequent American thought to any lasting extent."

"When a Nation - exercising its freedom of choice - discards Autocracy and selects Democracy as its social principle it cannot successfully retain the working elements of the discarded social organization. If it is to survive, it must adopt ways and means and methods of life in consonance with its chosen principle."

"By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian. For "totalitarian" is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulation of needs by vested interests."

"More broadly, technocracy may be understood as ‘a theory of governmental decision making designed to promote technical solutions to political problems’ (Fischer, 1990, p. 18). The models and practices of engineering, honed and refined in the manipulation of the material world, are promised as the tools to produce progress and harmony in the social world (Akin, 1977; Segal, 1985)."