Summary
Lev Grinberg’s term, following John Williamson (1994), for state experts who design economic policies and structural adjustments as apolitical solutions, expanded in Chapter 9 to state elites — economic and military alike — who intervene in decision-making in the name of professional expertise, using apolitical professional speech as a language of state power (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.305-306).
Details
- State actors must camouflage the promotion of their institutional power interests as professional, apolitical and disinterested interventions, because their legitimacy rests on the appearance of the state as a neutral, impartial and universal service for all citizens (PDF p.305).
- The National Unity Government of 1984-1990 formalized the state’s autonomous economic policy making and partially rebuilt the IDF’s apolitical image by suspending Labor-Likud struggles and authorising economic and military technopols to work out solutions to hyperinflation and military withdrawal from Lebanon; the legitimacy of those decisions was professional, not political, and political space was effectively shrunk (PDF p.305-306).
- De-politicization of economy and security is facilitated when dominant political actors have no clear idea how to face major state crises and no language to legitimize new policies; institutionalized actors can then protect their positions by relying on technopols for bailout plans and nonpolitical, expert legitimacy — the cooperation between political actors and state technopol actors is at the core of institutional redesign during counter-mo(ve)ments (PDF p.306).
- Military professionals do the same in the security domain: they occupy the political space of decision-making, closing space for civil society demands while touting their expertise as apolitical; the total success of the economic technopols since the 1990s and of the security technopols since 2000 was, on Grinberg’s account, crucial in the emptying of democratic political spaces that provoked the 2011 resistance movement (PDF p.306).
- To Skocpol’s (1985) three conditions for autonomous state action — crisis, a well-trained professional team, and autonomous financial resources — the Israeli case adds a fourth, crucial condition: the interests and support of dominant political actors; and a second condition for successful intervention is the existence of languages of power legitimized by civil society, such as security and economic stability (PDF p.307).
Related pages
Moments of Resistance, Political Space, Emergency Economic Stabilization Plan, Washington Consensus, Movements of Resistance