ELITE TRANSFORMATION IN ADVANCED INDUSTRIAL SOCIETIES An Empirical Assessment of the Theory of Technocracy

w h o will rule tomorrow, as our societies move into the advanced stages of industrialism and beyond? How, if at all, will tomorrow’s decision makers differ from today’s? For more than a century the most influential theory of elite transformation in advanced industrial society has posited the emergence of “technocracy, ” defined by Web-ster’s with admirable simplicity as “government by technicians. ” At a moment when both America and the Soviet Union are led by men trained as engineers, and the two major European powers, Germany and France, are led by men trained as economists, it may be especially appropriate to explore this theory of technocracy. Some have hailed technocracy as the wise and disinterested rule of philosopher-kings, whereas others have fulminated against techno-crats as despots of a new and peculiarly inhuman sort. Yet these grand theoretical debates have evoked surprisingly little empirical investiga-tion, so that many central tenets of the theory remain untested. In this paper I shall confront one of these tenets with evidence from a recent survey of European administrative elites. These data will by no means resolve all unanswered questions about technocratic rule, but I hope that the findings, striking and in some respects unex-pected, will challenge other students of technocracy to hone their theories, tempered in the fires of polemic, against the abrasive whet-stone of empirical evidence. AUTHOR’S NOTE: Celinda Lake deserves special thanks for her extraordinary contri