ABSTRACT
Although there are firm grounds for being optimistic about the survival of nation states with parliaments, competitive parties, elections and the other formal institutions of modern democracy, and these institutions being adopted by other nations, what is less certain is the fate of substantive democracy. Francis Fukuyama's understanding of the current state of the democratic project rests on a Hegelian conception of history in which history progressively satisfies by means of social and political change the desires and aspirations of men and women. One possible future for democratic nations is that their theory and practice become little more than legitimating devices for a corporate capitalism, the dominant feature of which would be a partnership between governments and giant financial, industrial information-technology and other companies. Technocracy, the root word of which is techne, the Greek for knowledge, means rule by people with knowledge or technical skill.
