Modern state leaders need technical literacy to adjudicate expert proposals

Evidence

The question is thus raised of modifying the training of technical-political personnel, completing their culture in accordance with the new necessities, and of creating specialised functionaries of a new kind, who as a body will complement deliberative activity. The traditional type of political “leader”, prepared only for formal-juridical activities, is becoming anachronistic and represents a danger for the life of the State: the leader must have that minimum of general technical culture which will permit him, if not to “create” autonomously the correct solution, at least to know how to adjudicate between the solutions put forward by the experts, and hence to choose the correct one from the “synthetic” viewpoint of political technique. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 333

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines Gramsci’s new ideal of the technical-political leader who synthesizes expert inputs rather than merely exercising formal-juridical authority.
• XREF: connects to: Modern democracy depends on insulated expert knowledge for its administrative state — Russell Muirhead and Nancy L. Rosenblum, A Lot of People Are Saying: The New…, 189