Jonathan White

That democratic authorities are systematically focused on short-term considerations is a charge often made. This "democratic myopia" thesis typically becomes the basis for advocating the empowerment of technocratic institutions, e.g. in economic or environmental policy. Much less examined is what one may call the technocratic myopia thesis – the possibility that technocratic institutions have their own distinctive drivers of short-termism. This project aims to explore the thesis, with reference to the legitimacy forms, epistemologies and organisational structures in which technocratic authority is grounded. The suggestion is that not only may technocrats fall short of the claims to long-sightedness made of them, but that this is directly bound up in some of the core features of the technocratic method. This carries some important implications for how contemporary societies govern the future in key domains of public policy.