List of forms of government
84-416: Technocracy is a form of government in which the decision-makers are selected based on their expertise in a given area of responsibility, particularly with regard to scientific or technical knowledge. Technocracy follows largely in the tradition of other meritocratic theories and assumes full state control over political and economic issues. This system explicitly contrasts with representative democracy ,
168-426: A "flawed theory of knowledge". With respect to the first point, Cole argues that technocracy excludes citizens from policy-making processes while advantaging elites. With respect to the second, he argues that the value of expertise is overestimated in technocratic systems, and points to an alternative concept of "smart democracy" which enlists the knowledge of ordinary citizens. Government A government
252-723: A "legislative monopoly" over the EU lawmaking process. The briefing suggests that this system, which elevates the European Parliament to a vetoing and amending body, was "originally rooted in the mistrust of the political process in post-war Europe". This system is unusual since the Commission's sole right of legislative initiative is a power usually associated with Parliaments. Several governments in European parliamentary democracies have been labelled 'technocratic' based on
336-547: A "socialist in economics, a liberal in politics, and a conservative in culture." Bell is best known for his contributions to post-industrialism . His most influential books are, The End of Ideology (1960), The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), and The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973). Two of his books, the End of Ideology and the Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism , were listed by
420-426: A "technocratic divide" exists between a governing body controlled to varying extents by technocrats and members of the general public. Technocratic divides are "efficacy gaps that persist between governing bodies employing technocratic principles and members of the general public aiming to contribute to government decision making." Technocracy privileges the opinions and viewpoints of technical experts, exalting them into
504-829: A Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association in 1992, and the Talcott Parsons Prize for the Social Sciences from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1993. He was given the Tocqueville Award by the French government in 1995. Bell was a director of Suntory Foundation and a scholar in residence of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Bell once described himself as
588-491: A certain grasp of technical skill rather than democratic mandate. Technocrats are individuals with technical training and occupations who perceive many important societal problems as being solvable with the applied use of technology and related applications. The administrative scientist Gunnar K. A. Njalsson theorizes that technocrats are primarily driven by their cognitive "problem-solution mindsets" and only in part by particular occupational group interests. Their activities and
672-420: A conflict between physical efficiency and cost efficiency in the new corporate capitalist enterprises of the late nineteenth-century United States . Because of their perceptions of market demand, the profit-conscious, non-technical managers of firms where the engineers work often impose limits on the projects that engineers desire to undertake. The prices of all inputs vary with market forces, thereby upsetting
756-526: A democratic cabal directed by Mark Zuckerberg and the entire cohort of " Big Tech " executives. In his 1982 Technology and Culture journal article, "The Technocratic Image and the Theory of Technocracy", John G. Gunnell writes: "...politics is increasingly subject to the influence of technological change", with specific reference to the advent of The Long Boom and the genesis of the Internet , following
840-416: A direction of production processes under scientific management. According to Daniel Bell : "St. Simon's vision of industrial society, a vision of pure technocracy, was a system of planning and rational order in which society would specify its needs and organize the factors of production to achieve them." Citing the ideas of St. Simon, Bell concludes that the "administration of things" by rational judgment
924-446: A form of meritocracy , where the ablest are in charge, ostensibly without the influence of special interest groups. Critics have suggested that a "technocratic divide" challenges more participatory models of democracy, describing these divides as "efficacy gaps that persist between governing bodies employing technocratic principles and members of the general public aiming to contribute to government decision making". The term technocracy
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#17327867999841008-456: A goal to create a typology or taxonomy of polities , as typologies of political systems are not obvious. It is especially important in the political science fields of comparative politics and international relations . Like all categories discerned within forms of government, the boundaries of government classifications are either fluid or ill-defined. Superficially, all governments have an official de jure or ideal form. The United States
1092-425: A governing body, such as a legislature or jury . Some governments combine both direct and indirect democratic governance, wherein the citizenry selects representatives to administer day-to-day governance, while also reserving the right to govern directly through popular initiatives , referendums (plebiscites), and the right of recall . In a constitutional democracy the powers of the majority are exercised within
1176-457: A kind of aristocracy while marginalizing the opinions and viewpoints of the general public. As major multinational technology corporations (e.g., FAANG ) swell market caps and customer counts, critiques of technocratic government in the 21st century see its manifestation in American politics not as an "authoritarian nightmare of oppression and violence" but rather as an éminence grise :
1260-407: A lengthy philosophical treatise of original ideas, Tectology: Universal Organization Science . Tectology anticipated many basic ideas of systems analysis , later explored by cybernetics . In Tectology , Bogdanov proposed unifying all social, biological, and physical sciences by considering them as systems of relationships and seeking organizational principles that underlie all systems. Arguably,
1344-505: A quarter of the world's population under democratically backsliding governments. Daniel Bell Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Daniel Bell (May 10, 1919 – January 25, 2011) was an American sociologist, writer, editor, and professor at Harvard University , best known for his contributions to
1428-466: A standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Historically prevalent forms of government include monarchy, aristocracy , timocracy , oligarchy , democracy , theocracy , and tyranny . These forms are not always mutually exclusive, and mixed governments are common. The main aspect of any philosophy of government is how political power is obtained, with the two main forms being electoral contest and hereditary succession . A government
1512-407: A standalone entity or as a hybrid system of the main three. Scholars generally refer to a dictatorship as either a form of authoritarianism or totalitarianism. An autocracy is a system of government in which supreme power is concentrated in the hands of one person, whose decisions are subject to neither external legal restraints nor regularized mechanisms of popular control (except perhaps for
1596-477: A striking parallel with star formation, new structures suddenly appeared, together with a new level of complexity. Like stars, cities and states reorganize and energize the smaller objects within their gravitational field. Another explanation includes the need to properly manage infrastructure projects such as water infrastructure. Historically, this required centralized administration and complex social organisation, as seen in regions like Mesopotamia. However, there
1680-609: A technical background. In 1986, 89% of Politburo members were engineers. Leaders of the Chinese Communist Party used to be mostly professional engineers. According to surveys of municipal governments of cities with a population of 1 million or more in China , it has been found that over 80% of government personnel had a technical education. Under the five-year plans of the People's Republic of China, projects such as
1764-549: A technocrat if "at the time of their appointment to government, they: have never held public office under the banner of a political party; are not a formal member of any party; and are said to possess recognized non-party political expertise which is directly relevant to the role occupied in government". In Russia, the President of Russia has often nominated ministers based on technical expertise from outside political circles, and these have been referred to as "technocrats". Before
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#17327867999841848-542: A technocratic government led by Mehdi Jomaa . The article "Technocrats: Minds Like Machines" states that Singapore is perhaps the best advertisement for technocracy: the political and expert components of the governing system there seem to have merged completely. This was underlined in a 1993 article in "Wired" by Sandy Sandfort, where he describes the information technology system of the island even at that early date making it effectively intelligent. Following Samuel Haber, Donald Stabile argues that engineers were faced with
1932-493: Is a federal constitutional republic, while the former Soviet Union was a federal socialist republic . However self-identification is not objective, and as Kopstein and Lichbach argue, defining regimes can be tricky, especially de facto , when both its government and its economy deviate in practice. For example, Voltaire argued that "the Holy Roman Empire is neither Holy, nor Roman, nor an Empire". In practice,
2016-429: Is a form of government that places power in the hands of a small, elite ruling class , such as a hereditary nobility or privileged caste . This class exercises minority rule , often as a landed timocracy , wealthy plutocracy , or oligarchy . Many monarchies were aristocracies, although in modern constitutional monarchies, the monarch may have little effective power. The term aristocracy could also refer to
2100-448: Is a political concept in which a group of members are bound together by covenant with a governing representative head . The term "federalism" is also used to describe a system of government in which sovereignty is constitutionally divided between a central governing authority and constituent political units, variously called states, provinces or otherwise. Federalism is a system based upon democratic principles and institutions in which
2184-474: Is also sometimes used in English as a synonym for rule or governance. In other languages, cognates may have a narrower scope, such as the government of Portugal , which is actually more similar to the concept of "administration" . The moment and place that the phenomenon of human government developed is lost in time; however, history does record the formations of early governments. About 5,000 years ago,
2268-405: Is an entire government running as a technical or engineering problem and is mostly hypothetical . In more practical use, technocracy is any portion of a bureaucracy run by technologists . A government in which elected officials appoint experts and professionals to administer individual government functions, and recommend legislation, can be considered technocratic. Some uses of the word refer to
2352-605: Is archaeological evidence that shows similar successes with more egalitarian and decentralized complex societies. Starting at the end of the 17th century, the prevalence of republican forms of government grew. The English Civil War and Glorious Revolution in England, the American Revolution , and the French Revolution contributed to the growth of representative forms of government. The Soviet Union
2436-471: Is called an aristocracy. In other kinds of Commonwealth there can be none: for either one, or more, or all, must have the sovereign power (which I have shown to be indivisible) entire. According to Yale professor Juan José Linz , there a three main types of political systems today: democracies , totalitarian regimes and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with hybrid regimes . Another modern classification system includes monarchies as
2520-486: Is derived from the Greek words τέχνη, tekhne meaning skill and κράτος, kratos meaning power , as in governance , or rule . William Henry Smyth, a California engineer, is usually credited with inventing the word technocracy in 1919 to describe "the rule of the people made effective through the agency of their servants, the scientists and engineers", although the word had been used before on several occasions. Smyth used
2604-622: Is led by an unelected prime minister, such as in the cases of the 2011-2012 Greek government led by economist Lucas Papademos and the Czech Republic's 2009–2010 caretaker government presided over by the state's chief statistician, Jan Fischer . In December 2013, in the framework of the national dialogue facilitated by the Tunisian National Dialogue Quartet , political parties in Tunisia agreed to install
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2688-585: Is the system to govern a state or community. The Columbia Encyclopedia defines government as "a system of social control under which the right to make laws, and the right to enforce them, is vested in a particular group in society". While all types of organizations have governance , the word government is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments on Earth, as well as their subsidiary organizations, such as state and provincial governments as well as local governments . The word government derives from
2772-408: Is the hallmark of technocracy. Alexander Bogdanov , a Russian scientist and social theorist, also anticipated a conception of technocratic process. Both Bogdanov's fiction and his political writings, which were highly influential, suggest that he was concerned that a coming revolution against capitalism could lead to a technocratic society. From 1913 until 1922, Bogdanov immersed himself in writing
2856-507: Is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a state . In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature , executive , and judiciary . Government is a means by which organizational policies are enforced, as well as a mechanism for determining policy. In many countries, the government has a kind of constitution , a statement of its governing principles and philosophy. While all types of organizations have governance ,
2940-581: Is to be reconceptualised where in times of climatic change the needs and desires of the individual are reshaped to generate sufficiency for all. The quality of a government can be measured by Government effectiveness index , which relates to political efficacy and state capacity . List of forms of government Plato in his book The Republic (375 BC) divided governments into five basic types (four being existing forms and one being Plato's ideal form, which exists "only in speech"): These five regimes progressively degenerate starting with aristocracy at
3024-421: Is typically the case with majority governments, but even a minority government may consist of just one party unable to find a willing coalition partner at the moment. A state that continuously maintains a single-party government within a (nominally) multiparty system possesses a dominant-party system . In a (nondemocratic) one-party system a single ruling party has the (more-or-less) exclusive right to form
3108-560: The Times Literary Supplement as among the 100 most important books in the second half of the twentieth century. Besides Bell, only Isaiah Berlin , Claude Lévi-Strauss , Albert Camus , George Orwell , and Hannah Arendt had two books so listed. In The End of Ideology (1960), Bell suggests that the older grand humanistic ideologies, derived from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, are exhausted and that new more parochial ideologies will soon arise. With
3192-411: The 1973–1975 recession . Gunnel goes on to add three levels of analysis that delineate technology's political influence: In each of the three analytical levels, Gunnell foretells technology's infiltration of political processes and suggests that the entanglement of the two (i.e. technology and politics) will inevitably produce power concentrations around those with advanced technological training, namely
3276-550: The National Trunk Highway System , the China high-speed rail system , and the Three Gorges Dam have been completed. During China's 20th National Congress , a class of technocrats in finance and economics are replaced in favor of high-tech technocrats. In 2013, a European Union library briefing on its legislative structure referred to the Commission as a "technocratic authority", holding
3360-471: The North American population, according to resource availability. There is in common usage found the derivative term technocrat . The word technocrat can refer to someone exercising governmental authority because of their knowledge, "a member of a powerful technical elite", or "someone who advocates the supremacy of technical experts". McDonnell and Valbruzzi define a prime minister or minister as
3444-565: The Platonic idea of philosopher-kings represents a sort of technocracy in which the state is run by those with specialist knowledge, in this case, knowledge of the Good rather than scientific knowledge. The Platonic claim is that those who best understand goodness should be empowered to lead the state, as they would lead it toward the path of happiness. Whilst knowledge of the Good differs from knowledge of science, rulers are here appointed based on
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3528-488: The Technocracy movement . In 1932, Howard Scott and Marion King Hubbert founded Technocracy Incorporated and proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates. The group argued that apolitical, rational engineers should be vested with the authority to guide an economy into a thermodynamically balanced load of production and consumption, thereby doing away with unemployment and debt . The technocracy movement
3612-516: The "decline in mainstream engagement", imperil the "networked young citizen" to inconspicuous coercion and indoctrination by algorithmic mechanisms, and, less insidiously, to the persuasion of particular candidates based predominantly on "Social Media engagement". In a 2022 article published in Boston Review , political scientist Matthew Cole highlights two problems with technocracy: that it creates "unjust concentrations of power" and relies on
3696-664: The 1938–1939 academic year. He received a PhD in sociology from Columbia in 1961 after he was permitted to submit The End of Ideology: On the Exhaustion of Political Ideas in the Fifties (a 1960 essay collection), instead of a conventional doctoral dissertation . Bell began his professional life as a journalist, being managing editor of The New Leader magazine (1941–1945), labor editor of Fortune (1948–1958), and later, co-editor (with his college friend Irving Kristol ) of The Public Interest magazine (1965–1973). In
3780-447: The Greek verb κυβερνάω [ kubernáo ] meaning to steer with a gubernaculum (rudder), the metaphorical sense being attested in the literature of classical antiquity , including Plato 's Ship of State . In British English , "government" sometimes refers to what's also known as a " ministry " or an " administration ", i.e., the policies and government officials of a particular executive or governing coalition . Finally, government
3864-653: The Reality" (1952), "Japanese Notebook" (1958), "Ethics and Evil: Frameworks for Twenty-First Century Culture" (2005), and "The Reconstruction of Liberal Education: A Foundational Syllabus" (2011). Bell received honorary degrees from Harvard, the University of Chicago , and fourteen other universities in the United States, as well as from Edinburgh Napier University and Keio University in Japan . He also received
3948-772: The Soviet Union was a centralized autocratic one-party state under Joseph Stalin . Identifying a form of government is also difficult because many political systems originate as socio-economic movements and are then carried into governments by parties naming themselves after those movements; all with competing political ideologies. Experience with those movements in power, and the strong ties they may have to particular forms of government, can cause them to be considered as forms of government in themselves. Other complications include general non-consensus or deliberate " distortion or bias " of reasonable technical definitions of political ideologies and associated forms of governing, due to
4032-546: The United States has been chiefly associated with right-wing politics and the Republican Party . However, during the era of segregation many Southern Democrats were conservatives, and they played a key role in the conservative coalition that controlled Congress from 1937 to 1963. Opinions vary by individuals concerning the types and properties of governments that exist. "Shades of gray" are commonplace in any government and its corresponding classification. Even
4116-429: The activities of associated government officials and candidates for office. In a multiparty system of government, multiple political parties have the capacity to gain control of government offices, typically by competing in elections , although the effective number of parties may be limited. A majority government is a government by one or more governing parties together holding an absolute majority of seats in
4200-402: The basis of governments. These governments gradually became more complex as agriculture supported larger and denser populations, creating new interactions and social pressures that the government needed to control. David Christian explains As farming populations gathered in larger and denser communities, interactions between different groups increased and the social pressure rose until, in
4284-442: The economic sphere, for hard-working, productive individuals. Bell articulates this through his "three realms" methodology, which divides modern society into the cultural, economic, and political spheres. Bell's concern is that, with the growth of the welfare state throughout the post-war years, more and more of the population demand that the state fulfil the hedonistic desires which the cultural sphere encourages. That dovetails with
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#17327867999844368-608: The engineer's careful calculations. As a result, the engineer loses control over projects and must continually revise plans. To maintain control over projects, the engineer must attempt to control these outside variables and transform them into constant factors. The American economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen was an early advocate of technocracy and was involved in the Technical Alliance , as were Howard Scott and M. King Hubbert (the latter of whom later developed
4452-843: The first small city-states appeared. By the third to second millenniums BC, some of these had developed into larger governed areas: Sumer , ancient Egypt , the Indus Valley civilization , and the Yellow River civilization . One reason that explains the emergence of governments includes agriculture. Since the Neolithic Revolution , agriculture has been an efficient method to create food surplus. This enabled people to specialize in non-agricultural activities. Some of them included being able to rule over others as an external authority. Others included social experimentation with diverse governance models. Both these activities formed
4536-570: The framework of representative democracy, but the constitution limits majority rule , usually through the provision by all of certain universal rights , such as freedom of speech or freedom of association . A republic is a form of government in which the country is considered a "public matter" ( Latin : res publica ), not the private concern or property of the rulers, and where offices of states are subsequently directly or indirectly elected or appointed rather than inherited. The people, or some significant portion of them, have supreme control over
4620-811: The functions and number of branches. An independent, parallel distribution of powers between branches of government is the separation of powers . A shared, intersecting, or overlapping distribution of powers is the fusion of powers . Governments are often organised into three branches with separate powers: a legislature, an executive, and a judiciary; this is sometimes called the trias politica model. However, in parliamentary and semi-presidential systems , branches of government often intersect, having shared membership and overlapping functions. Many governments have fewer or additional branches, such as an independent electoral commission or auditory branch. Presently, most governments are administered by members of an explicitly constituted political party which coordinates
4704-503: The garment industry. His father died when he was eight months old, and he grew up poor, living with relatives along with his mother and his older brother Leo. When he was 13 years old, the family's name was changed from Bolotsky to Bell. Bell was graduated from Stuyvesant High School . He received a bachelor's degree from the City College of New York in 1938, and completed graduate work at Columbia University during
4788-628: The government and where offices of state are elected or chosen by elected people. A common simplified definition of a republic is a government where the head of state is not a monarch. Montesquieu included both democracies , where all the people have a share in rule, and aristocracies or oligarchies , where only some of the people rule, as republican forms of government. Other terms used to describe different republics include democratic republic , parliamentary republic , semi-presidential republic , presidential republic , federal republic , people's republic , and Islamic republic . Federalism
4872-401: The government, and the formation of other parties may be obstructed or illegal. In some cases, a government may have a non-partisan system , as is the case with absolute monarchy or non-partisan democracy . Democracy is the most popular form of government. More than half of the nations in the world are democracies—97 of 167, as of 2021. However, the world is becoming more authoritarian with
4956-555: The implicit threat of a coup d'état or mass insurrection ). Absolute monarchy is a historically prevalent form of autocracy, wherein a monarch governs as a singular sovereign with no limitation on royal prerogative . Most absolute monarchies are hereditary , however some, notably the Holy See , are elected by an electoral college (such as the college of cardinals , or prince-electors ). Other forms of autocracy include tyranny , despotism , and dictatorship . Aristocracy
5040-515: The increasing success of their ideas are thought to be a crucial factor behind the modern spread of technology and the largely ideological concept of the " information society ". Technocrats may be distinguished from " econocrats " and " bureaucrats " whose problem-solution mindsets differ from those of the technocrats. The former government of the Soviet Union has been referred to as a technocracy. Soviet leaders like Leonid Brezhnev often had
5124-713: The late 1940s, Bell was an Instructor in the Social Sciences in the College of the University of Chicago . During the 1950s, it was close to the Congress for Cultural Freedom . Subsequently, he taught sociology, first at Columbia (1959–1969) and then at Harvard until his retirement in 1990. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1964 and a member of the American Philosophical Society in 1978. Bell also
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#17327867999845208-531: The most liberal democracies limit rival political activity to one extent or another while the most tyrannical dictatorships must organize a broad base of support thereby creating difficulties for " pigeonholing " governments into narrow categories. Examples include the claims of the United States as being a plutocracy rather than a democracy since some American voters believe elections are being manipulated by wealthy Super PACs . Some consider that government
5292-463: The nature of politics in the modern era. For example: The meaning of "conservatism" in the United States has little in common with the way the word's definition is used elsewhere. As Ribuffo notes, "what Americans now call conservatism much of the world calls liberalism or neoliberalism "; a "conservative" in Finland would be labeled a " socialist " in the United States. Since the 1950s conservatism in
5376-550: The non- peasant , non-servant, and non- city classes in the feudal system . Democracy is a system of government where citizens exercise power by voting and deliberation . In a direct democracy , the citizenry as a whole directly forms a participatory governing body and vote directly on each issue. In indirect democracy , the citizenry governs indirectly through the selection of representatives or delegates from among themselves, typically by election or, less commonly, by sortition . These select citizens then meet to form
5460-479: The notion that elected representatives should be the primary decision-makers in government, though it does not necessarily imply eliminating elected representatives. Decision-makers are selected based on specialized knowledge and performance rather than political affiliations, parliamentary skills, or popularity. The term technocracy was initially used to signify the application of the scientific method to solving social problems. In its most extreme form, technocracy
5544-440: The ongoing requirement for the state to maintain the kind of strong economic environment conducive to continual growth. For Bell, the competing, contradictory demands place excessive strain on the state that was manifest in the economic turbulence, fiscal pressure, and political upheaval characteristic of the 1970s. Written at a time of significant shifts in U.S. politics, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism offers reasons for
5628-405: The parliament, in contrast to a minority government in which they have only a plurality of seats and often depend on a confidence-and-supply arrangement with other parties. A coalition government is one in which multiple parties cooperate to form a government as part of a coalition agreement . In a single-party government, a single party forms a government without the support of a coalition, as
5712-484: The participation of unelected experts ('technocrats') in prominent positions. Since the 1990s, Italy has had several such governments (in Italian, governo tecnico ) in times of economic or political crisis, including the formation in which economist Mario Monti presided over a cabinet of unelected professionals . The term 'technocratic' has been applied to governments where a cabinet of elected professional politicians
5796-458: The people as a whole (a democracy, such as a republic). Thomas Hobbes stated on their classification: The difference of Commonwealths consisteth in the difference of the sovereign , or the person representative of all and every one of the multitude. And because the sovereignty is either in one man, or in an assembly of more than one; and into that assembly either every man hath right to enter, or not everyone, but certain men distinguished from
5880-470: The post-industrial society would replace the industrial society as the dominant system. There are three components to a post-industrial society, according to Bell: Bell also conceptually differentiates between three aspects of the post-industrial society: data, or information describing the empirical world; information, or the organization of that data into meaningful systems and patterns such as statistical analysis; and knowledge, which Bell conceptualizes as
5964-432: The power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments, creating what is often called a federation . Proponents are often called federalists . Governments are typically organised into distinct institutions constituting branches of government each with particular powers , functions, duties, and responsibilities. The distribution of powers between these institutions differs between governments, as do
6048-461: The rest; it is manifest there can be but three kinds of Commonwealth. For the representative must need to be one man or more; and if more, then it is the assembly of all, or but of a part. When the representative is one man, then is the Commonwealth a monarchy; when an assembly of all that will come together, then it is a democracy or popular Commonwealth; when an assembly of a part only, then it
6132-560: The rise of affluent welfare states and institutionalized bargaining between different groups, Bell maintains, revolutionary movements that aim to overthrow liberal democracy will no longer be able to attract the working classes. In The Coming of Post-Industrial Society: A Venture in Social Forecasting (1973), Bell outlined a new kind of society, the post-industrial society . He argued that post-industrialism would be information -led and service -oriented. Bell also argued that
6216-625: The study of post-industrialism . He has been described as "one of the leading American intellectuals of the postwar era". His three best known works are The End of Ideology (1960), The Coming of Post-Industrial Society (1973), and The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976). Daniel Bell was born in 1919 in the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City . His parents, Benjamin and Anna Bolotsky, were Jewish immigrants, originally from Eastern Europe. They worked in
6300-460: The technocrats. Forty years after the publication of Gunnell's writings, technology and government have become, for better or for worse, increasingly intertwined. Facebook can be considered a technocratic microcosm, a "technocratic nation-state" with a cyberspatial population that surpasses any terrestrial nation. In a broader sense, critics fear that the rise of social media networks (e.g. Twitter , YouTube , Instagram , Pinterest ), coupled with
6384-789: The term Technocracy in his 1919 article "'Technocracy'—Ways and Means to Gain Industrial Democracy" in the journal Industrial Management (57). Smyth's usage referred to Industrial democracy : a movement to integrate workers into decision-making through existing firms or revolution. In the 1930s, through the influence of Howard Scott and the technocracy movement he founded, the term technocracy came to mean 'government by technical decision making', using an energy metric of value. Scott proposed that money be replaced by energy certificates denominated in units such as ergs or joules , equivalent in total amount to an appropriate national net energy budget, and then distributed equally among
6468-408: The term government is often used more specifically to refer to the approximately 200 independent national governments and subsidiary organizations . The main types of modern political systems recognized are democracies , totalitarian regimes , and, sitting between these two, authoritarian regimes with a variety of hybrid regimes . Modern classification systems also include monarchies as
6552-425: The term technocracy was coined, technocratic or quasi-technocratic ideas involving governance by technical experts were promoted by various individuals, most notably early socialist theorists such as Henri de Saint-Simon . This was expressed by the belief in state ownership over the economy, with the state's function being transformed from pure philosophical rule over men into a scientific administration of things and
6636-401: The theory of peak oil ). Veblen believed technological developments would eventually lead to a socialistic reorganization of economic affairs. Veblen saw socialism as one intermediate phase in an ongoing evolutionary process in society that would be brought about by the natural decay of the business enterprise system and the rise of the engineers. Daniel Bell sees an affinity between Veblen and
6720-401: The top and tyranny at the bottom. In his Politics , Aristotle elaborates on Plato's five regimes discussing them in relation to the government of one, of the few, and of the many. From this follows the classification of forms of government according to which people have the authority to rule: either one person (an autocracy , such as monarchy), a select group of people (an aristocracy), or
6804-405: The use of information to make judgments. Bell discussed the manuscript of The Coming of Post-Industrial Society with Talcott Parsons before its publication. In The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (1976), Bell contends that the developments of twentieth-century capitalism have led to a contradiction between the cultural sphere of consumerist instant self-gratification and the demand, in
6888-702: Was briefly popular in the US in the early 1930s during the Great Depression . By the mid-1930s, interest in the movement was declining. Some historians have attributed the decline to the rise of Roosevelt's New Deal . Historian William E. Akin rejects this conclusion. Instead, Akin argues that the movement declined in the mid-1930s due to the technocrats' failure to devise a 'viable political theory for achieving change'. Akin postulates that many technocrats remained vocal, dissatisfied, and often sympathetic to anti-New Deal third-party efforts. Critics have suggested that
6972-502: Was the first large country to have a Communist government. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall , liberal democracy has become an even more prevalent form of government. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, there was a significant increase in the size and scale of government at the national level. This included the regulation of corporations and the development of the welfare state . In political science, it has long been
7056-595: Was the visiting Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University in 1987. He served as a member of the President's Commission on Technology in 1964–1965 and as a member of the President's Commission on a National Agenda for the 1980s in 1979. Bell served on the board of advisors for the Antioch Review , and published some of his most acclaimed essays in the magazine: "Crime as an American Way of Life" (1953), "Socialism: The Dream and
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