The Engineers Versus the Economists

Abstract

This article observes the competition between two groups of technocrats in Indonesia during the New Order era that has hitherto afflicted national policy making. The first group is the engineers who advocate technology-based development strategy. The other group is the market-oriented economists who promote a comparative-advantages approach in development policies. The rivalry between these technocratic groups occurs in the arenas of policy-making process and bureaucratic structure. To explain how such a clash has emerged, this article offers a notion of disunity of technocracy to examine different logics, rationalities, and argumentations used by each group. It emphasizes that this confrontation is rooted in the epistemological foundations of technocratic expertise.