Technocracy is rule by expertise when technical competence becomes a substitute for political legitimacy.
Modern institutions increasingly present political choices as technical necessities. A policy is described as what the data requires, a target is treated as neutral because it is measurable, and disagreement is dismissed as ignorance. This hides the prior decision about whose knowledge counts, which goals matter, and who gets to define success.
Technocracy is a form of governance in which experts, engineers, economists, administrators, or other specialists exercise decisive authority because of their technical knowledge. The term gained public force in the United States during the Progressive era and the Great Depression, especially through arguments that engineers should direct industrial society in the public interest. Its central promise is competence: complex systems should be managed by people who understand how they work.
The problem is that expertise can answer questions of means without settling questions of ends. A model can optimise growth, stability, or efficiency, but it cannot establish whether those should outrank dignity, freedom, justice, or divine obligation. Technocracy therefore does not remove politics. It moves politics into the selection of experts, the design of metrics, the definition of evidence, and the distribution of authority, often making those choices harder to contest.
Source: Encyclopaedia Britannica, “Technocracy”; EBSCO Research Starters, “Technocracy.”