Ontologies of technocracy: actors, institutional structures, or governmentality?

This article presents an interpretive literature review of the concept of technocracy, aiming to clarify the conceptual landscape by analyzing how technocracy is defined, located, and how its ‘triggers’ are understood in key theoretical and empirical scholarship. The review identifies three ontological categories in the literature: (1) Technocracy as actors with specific educational backgrounds, mentalities and behaviors, located in cabinets or ministries, often emerging in times of crisis or when political trust is low. (2) Technocracy as an institutional mechanism of depoliticization by (in)formal shifts in power, located in non-majoritarian institutions (e.g. central banks, international organizations), driven by globalization, economic crises and centralization processes. (3) Technocracy as a culture, logic or governing rationality that is ideational in origin, and is located in discourse, policy paradigms or practices, and shaped by socio-historical developments such as modernization and industrialization.