Hey everyone, welcome back to My Weird Prompts. I am Corn, and I am joined as always by my brother, the man who probably has a spreadsheet for every decision he has ever made.
Herman Poppleberry, at your service. And you are not wrong, Corn. I actually just updated my spreadsheet for the optimal humidity levels for our bookshelf in the living room. It is a work in progress, but the data is starting to trend toward a very crisp sixty-two percent.
Of course it is. Well, we have a really fascinating prompt today from our housemate Daniel. He was telling us about a conversation he had with his wife, who is an architect, about the urban planning situation here in Israel. They were looking at all these high-rise buildings going up and wondering why the government seems to ignore the expert consensus on what makes a city livable. That led him to a much bigger question about who actually runs things. He wants to know about ministers who actually have a professional background in the portfolios they lead. Does it make a difference? Do they make better decisions? Is there stability when the person at the top actually knows the subject matter?
This is such a great question because it touches on the fundamental tension in modern governance. It is the clash between the politician and the technocrat. Most of us are used to the generalist model, where a minister is a career politician who might lead the health department one year and the defense department the next. But there are very different approaches around the world, and the data on which one works better is actually quite nuanced.
It is interesting that Daniel mentioned the civil service as the common counter-argument. The idea is that the minister provides the political vision, and the experts in the department provide the technical knowledge. But as Daniel pointed out, if the minister is a total novice in that field, they might not even know which questions to ask. They might be easily swayed by lobbyists or short-term political gains because they lack the deep context of the field.
Exactly. And that is where things get messy. To start our exploration, let us look at some different models. If you want to see the extreme end of the expertise model, you have to look at China. For decades, the Chinese Communist Party has been famously dominated by what people call the technocracy. If you look at the top leadership over the last thirty or forty years, a huge percentage of them are engineers. Jiang Zemin was an electrical engineer. Hu Jintao was a hydraulic engineer. Even in the current administration in twenty twenty-six, while there has been a shift toward more security-focused backgrounds, a significant portion of the Politburo still holds advanced degrees in hard sciences and engineering.
That is fascinating. So, in that system, you do not just rise up by being a good orator or a political campaigner. You often have to prove yourself by managing massive technical projects or regional economies first. Does that translate to better policy outcomes?
It is a double-edged sword. On one hand, you get a government that is very comfortable with long-term infrastructure planning and technical complexity. They look at a city and see a system to be optimized. On the other hand, critics argue that this engineering mindset can lead to a lack of focus on social nuances or human rights. When you treat a society like a bridge to be built, you might forget that the people on the bridge have feelings and individual rights. But purely from a domain expertise perspective, they are the gold standard for putting experts in charge of technical portfolios.
Then you have a place like Singapore, which is often cited as the most meritocratic government in the world. They actively recruit the top students from universities, give them scholarships, and then track them into the civil service and eventually into political leadership.
Singapore is a great example because they almost treat government like a high-performing corporation. Their ministers often have deep backgrounds in law, finance, or medicine before they ever enter politics. For instance, their Prime Minister Lawrence Wong, who took over a couple of years ago, spent years as a high-level civil servant and headed the Ministry of Finance. Their health ministers are frequently former hospital administrators or have deep ties to the medical establishment. The result is a government that is incredibly efficient and stable, but again, the trade-off is often a very top-down approach that can feel disconnected from the grassroots.
Let us contrast that with the Westminster model, which is what we see in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and to a large extent, here in Israel. In this model, the minister is almost always a member of parliament first. They are a politician whose primary skill is winning elections and navigating the party hierarchy.
Right, and in the Westminster system, it is almost a point of pride that a minister is a generalist. The theory is that a good leader is a good leader, regardless of the topic. They are supposed to be the bridge between the public will and the bureaucratic machine. But as Daniel noted, this can lead to some truly bizarre appointments. You might have a minister of energy whose previous job was in the arts, or a minister of transport who has never worked a day in infrastructure.
I have always wondered if that creates a culture of musical chairs. If you know you might only be in a position for eighteen months before a cabinet reshuffle, are you really going to invest the time to understand the deep technical challenges of, say, nuclear waste management or agricultural subsidies? Probably not. You are going to look for the quick political win.
That is a huge point, Corn. Short-termism is the natural byproduct of a lack of domain expertise. If you do not understand the underlying mechanisms, you cannot see the second-order effects of your decisions. You just see the immediate headline. There was a significant study by researchers at the University of Geneva that looked at the professional backgrounds of ministers in twenty-eight different countries over several decades. They found that ministers with professional experience in their portfolio were actually less likely to be reshuffled. They stayed in their jobs longer.
That makes sense. If you are actually good at the job and you understand the department, the prime minister is probably less likely to move you. Plus, you probably find the work more rewarding because you are actually speaking the same language as your staff.
Exactly. Think about the morale in the department. Imagine you are a career expert in the ministry of health. You have spent twenty years studying infectious diseases. And then a new minister is appointed who has no medical background and starts making decisions based on what will play well on social media that afternoon. It is incredibly demoralizing. The study I mentioned found that domain expertise in leadership leads to higher levels of trust within the civil service. When the staff feels like the person at the top actually understands the constraints and the science, they are more willing to go above and beyond.
What about the United States? The cabinet system there is a bit of a hybrid, right? The president can appoint whoever they want, and they do not have to be an elected official.
The United States is a very interesting case study because it varies wildly from one administration to the next. You have examples like Steven Chu, who was the secretary of energy under Barack Obama. He was a Nobel Prize-winning physicist. That is about as much domain expertise as you can possibly get. He understood the science of climate change and renewable energy at a level that very few politicians ever could. On the other hand, you often see cabinet positions given out as rewards for political loyalty or to big donors, which is exactly what Daniel was worried about.
I remember when Steven Chu was appointed, there was a lot of talk about whether a scientist could actually handle the politics of Washington. Because being a genius in a lab does not necessarily mean you know how to negotiate with a hostile congress or manage a massive federal bureaucracy.
And that is the classic counter-argument. People say that if you put a pure expert in charge, they might get bogged down in the details and lose sight of the political reality. There is a famous saying that experts should be on tap, not on top. The idea is that you want them as advisors, but you need a politician to make the final call because the final call is always a value judgment, not just a technical one.
But is it really a binary choice? I mean, why can we not have people who are both? Surely there are doctors who are also good leaders, or engineers who understand how to negotiate.
Of course there are. But the political systems in many Western democracies are not set up to find them. To become a minister in a place like the United Kingdom or Israel, you usually have to spend years climbing the greasy pole of party politics. That is a full-time job. If you are a high-level surgeon or a successful tech entrepreneur, you probably do not have the time or the inclination to spend your evenings at local party branch meetings for a decade just for a shot at a junior ministerial post.
So we have a selection bias. The people who are best at getting into power are often the people who have spent the least amount of time becoming experts in anything other than getting into power.
Precisely. And this leads to what some scholars call the hollow state. You have the appearance of leadership, but the people in charge are essentially actors playing a role, while the real power sits with the permanent bureaucracy or, increasingly, with outside consultants. If a minister does not understand the subject, they become entirely dependent on the briefing notes they are handed. They cannot challenge the assumptions in those notes because they do not have the knowledge base to do so.
That brings us back to Daniel's point about the high-rise buildings in Jerusalem. If the minister of housing or the head of the planning committee does not understand the long-term social costs of high density without proper infrastructure, and they are just looking at the tax revenue or the housing start numbers, they are going to make decisions that look good on a balance sheet today but create a nightmare for the city twenty years from now.
Right. And an expert minister might say, wait a minute, I have seen the studies on social cohesion in these types of developments, and we need to adjust the plan to include more green space or better transit. They have the confidence to push back against the developers or even against their own civil servants because they have their own independent source of truth.
Let us talk about Italy for a moment. They have had several periods where they essentially gave up on the politicians and appointed what they called a government of technocrats.
Italy is the laboratory for this experiment. When the country faces a severe financial crisis or a political deadlock, they often turn to an outsider, usually an economist or a high-level judge, to lead the country. Mario Monti in twenty eleven and Mario Draghi in twenty twenty-one are the prime examples. Draghi was the former head of the European Central Bank. He did not have a political party. He was appointed specifically because he was the expert that everyone trusted to handle the economy.
And how did that go? Did the expertise translate into better outcomes?
In the short term, yes. Markets usually calm down when a technocrat takes over because they believe the decisions will be rational and evidence-based. Draghi was very effective at stabilizing the Italian economy and rolling out the vaccine program during the pandemic. But the problem with technocratic governments is that they lack democratic legitimacy. Eventually, the public gets frustrated because they feel like they did not vote for these people and they cannot hold them accountable at the ballot box. This often leads to a populist backlash, which is exactly what we saw in Italy after the technocratic periods ended.
So the ideal seems to be a politician who also happens to be an expert. But since those are rare, maybe we should look at how we can bring more expertise into the existing systems.
There are some interesting models for that. In some countries, they use a system of junior ministers or state secretaries who are chosen specifically for their expertise, even if the top minister is a politician. In the Netherlands, for example, it is very common for the state secretaries to be experts in their field. They do the heavy lifting on policy, while the minister handles the parliament and the media.
That seems like a more balanced approach. It acknowledges that the top job is political, but it ensures that there is technical competence right at the heart of the decision-making process.
Another interesting example is the role of the chief scientific advisor in the United Kingdom. Almost every department has one now. These are high-level scientists who have a direct line to the minister. During the pandemic, the chief medical officer and the chief scientific advisor became household names. They were on television every day alongside the prime minister. That was a moment where expertise was brought right to the front of the stage.
But even then, there was a lot of friction. We saw moments where the scientists were saying one thing and the politicians were doing another because they were worried about the economy or their polling numbers. It felt like the expertise was being used as a shield when things were going well, and being ignored when it was politically inconvenient.
That is the risk. Expertise can be weaponized. If a politician wants to do something unpopular, they can say, well, the experts told me to do it. And if the experts say something the politician does not like, they can just find another expert who agrees with them. As the saying goes, for every P h D, there is an equal and opposite P h D.
So, is there actual evidence that expert ministers make superior decisions? If we look at the data, can we say that a minister of finance with an economics degree actually produces better economic growth than one with a history degree?
The data is actually surprisingly mixed, but there are some clear trends. A study by researchers at the University of Oxford and the London School of Economics looked at the performance of finance ministers across several decades. They found that ministers with a background in economics or finance were significantly better at controlling inflation and managing debt, especially during times of crisis. However, they were not necessarily better at promoting long-term growth than the generalist politicians.
That is interesting. So the experts are better at the technical, defensive side of the job, like keeping the ship steady, but maybe they lack the creative or visionary side that a politician might bring?
That is one interpretation. Another factor is that expert ministers might be more prone to groupthink. If all the people in the room went to the same schools and studied the same economic theories, they might miss an unconventional solution that a generalist might spot. There is a benefit to having a fresh pair of eyes that is not burdened by the orthodoxies of the profession.
I can see that. Sometimes being an expert means you know all the reasons why something cannot be done. A politician might be naive enough to ask, well, why not? And sometimes that leads to a breakthrough.
Exactly. It is the classic outsider versus insider dynamic. But I think the area where expertise really shines is in departmental stability. When you have a minister who knows the field, the department tends to have a much clearer sense of direction. They are not constantly pivoting every time a new wind blows in from the prime minister's office. There is a sense of continuity.
And that stability is so important for the long-term projects Daniel was talking about, like urban planning or energy infrastructure. These are things that take twenty or thirty years to come to fruition. If the leadership changes every two years and the new person has no idea what the previous person was doing, you end up with a mess.
You end up with the high-rise buildings in Jerusalem. You end up with half-finished transit lines and energy policies that change with every election. One of the best examples of expertise leading to stability is in central banking. Most countries have moved toward making their central banks independent, and they are almost always led by deep experts. The result has been much more stable monetary policy over the last few decades compared to when politicians were in direct control of interest rates.
So we have already accepted that some areas, like the central bank, are too important and too technical to be left to the politicians. Why have we not done that for health or education or the environment?
That is the big debate. Some people argue that we should have more independent agencies led by experts who are insulated from the political cycle. But others worry that this is an erosion of democracy. If you move all the important decisions to expert committees, what is the point of voting?
It is a tough balance. But I think there is a middle ground. We could change the way we recruit and train our political class. In some countries, there is a much stronger tradition of people moving between the private sector, academia, and government. In the United States, for example, it is very common for a university professor to take a leave of absence to serve in a high-level government role for four years and then go back to teaching. That brings a huge amount of fresh expertise into the system without creating a permanent technocracy.
I love that model. It creates a bridge between the world of ideas and the world of action. In many European and Westminster systems, the walls between those worlds are much higher. Once you are in politics, you are a politician. Once you are an academic, you are an academic. There is very little cross-pollination.
We should also talk about the role of the civil service itself. In some countries, like France, the civil service is incredibly prestigious and highly trained. The people who run the departments are often graduates of the elite schools, and they have as much, if not more, expertise than the ministers.
The French system is fascinating. They have what they call the grand corps, which is a group of elite civil servants who are trained in both law and engineering or economics. They are the permanent backbone of the state. Even if the minister is a total amateur, the people running the show are some of the most highly trained experts in the world. The downside is that this can create a very rigid and arrogant bureaucracy that is resistant to change.
It sounds like every system has its own set of problems. The generalist model leads to amateurism and short-termism. The technocratic model leads to a lack of democratic legitimacy. And the elite civil service model leads to a rigid bureaucracy.
So the question is, how do we get the best of all worlds? I think it starts with what Daniel was talking about—valuing domain expertise more in our political culture. We should be asking our politicians, what have you actually done? What do you actually know? If you want to be the minister of health, have you ever worked in a hospital? Have you ever studied public health?
It is funny, we expect more qualifications from a plumber or an electrician than we do from the people who run our entire country. If I want someone to fix the pipes in my house, I want to see their license. But if I want someone to run the national health system, I just check to see if they are a good public speaker.
It is a bizarre oversight in our modern world. As the world gets more technically complex, the cost of having amateurs at the top goes up. Think about things like artificial intelligence or biotechnology. These are not things you can just wing. You need a deep understanding of the technology to even begin to regulate it properly.
That is a great point. The speed of change is making the generalist model even more dangerous. In the nineteenth century, a smart person with a good education could probably wrap their head around most of the issues facing the government. But today, the level of specialization required is so high that no one person can be an expert in everything.
Exactly. So we need a system that prioritizes collaboration between experts and leaders. And that requires leaders who are humble enough to know what they do not know, and curious enough to actually learn it.
I think one of the best things a minister can do is to surround themselves with a diverse group of experts, not just the ones in their own department. They should be talking to academics, to people in the industry, and to the people who are actually affected by the policies on the ground.
And they need to be able to synthesize all that information. That is the real skill of a leader. It is not just about knowing the facts; it is about knowing how to weigh the different trade-offs. An expert might tell you that a certain bridge is the most efficient way to cross a river, but a leader has to decide if that is the best use of the public's money or if that money should be spent on a school instead.
So, to answer Daniel's question, do we have evidence that domain expertise makes for superior decisions? It seems like the answer is a cautious yes, especially in terms of stability, technical competence, and long-term planning. But it has to be balanced with political skill and democratic accountability.
I think that is a fair summary. The ideal is a system where expertise is respected and integrated, but where the final decisions are still made by people who are accountable to the public. And we can definitely do a better job of encouraging people with real-world expertise to enter public service.
I wonder what it would take to change the culture here in Israel. Daniel was talking about the high-rise construction and the lack of planning. If we had a minister of housing who was a world-class urban planner, would things look different?
I suspect they would. They would probably be pushing for more integrated transit, more walkable neighborhoods, and more diverse housing types. They would be looking at the city as a living organism, not just a series of construction sites. But to get that person into office, we would have to change the way our political parties work and the way we value expertise in our elections.
It is a big challenge, but it is one that more and more people are starting to talk about. We are seeing a real hunger for competence in government. People are tired of the constant bickering and the feeling that no one is actually in charge of the long-term future.
That is very true. And hey, if you are listening to this and you happen to be an expert in urban planning or public health or anything else, maybe consider getting involved. We need you.
Absolutely. And if you are enjoying these deep dives into the weird and wonderful world of policy and technology, we would love it if you could leave us a review on your podcast app. It really does help other curious people find the show.
It really does. We read all of them, and we appreciate the feedback. It helps us know what topics you want us to explore next.
Well, Herman, I think we have covered a lot of ground today. From the engineers in China to the technocrats in Italy to the architects in Jerusalem. It is a complex issue, but a really important one.
It is the foundation of how our society functions. If we do not get the leadership right, nothing else matters.
Well said. Thanks to Daniel for the great prompt. It gave us a lot to think about.
Definitely. I am going to go back to my humidity spreadsheet now. I think I need to adjust the sensors.
Of course you do. Well, this has been My Weird Prompts. You can find us on Spotify and at our website, myweirdprompts dot com. We have all our back episodes there, including episode four hundred and twelve where we talked about the future of cities, which connects quite well to what we discussed today.
Oh, that was a good one. I forgot about that. I should go back and listen to it myself.
You should. Anyway, thanks for listening, everyone. We will be back next week with another weird prompt.
Until then, stay curious.
Goodbye!
