By Richard Martin, Chief Strategist, Alcera Consulting Inc.
Introduction: The Illiberal Soul of Managerial Care
In liberal democratic societies, overt authoritarianism is typically met with resistance. Yet a subtler, more pervasive form of control has taken root in the contemporary state: technocratic progressivism. Unlike classical authoritarianism, it does not demand submission to the collective or the glorification of the state. Instead, it frames governance as care and supervision as protection.
Technocratic progressivism retains the vocabulary of liberalism—freedom, rights, wellbeing—but subtly reorders its foundations. In place of agency and responsibility, it offers guidance and insulation from harm. In this final installment of the trilogy on liberalism, technocracy, and strategic realignment, we explore how this therapeutic mode of governance alters the Strategic Epistemology (SE) and Strategic Tetrahedron (ST) of the liberal state, gradually replacing personal autonomy with institutional paternalism.
Epistemological Drift: From Empowerment to Protection
The strategic logic of technocratic progressivism begins with a revised anthropology: individuals are not primarily capable agents, but fragile, irrational actors prone to error and vulnerability. This produces a distinctive epistemic structure:
| SE Level | Classical Liberalism | Technocratic Progressivism |
| Worldview | Individuals are autonomous agents with moral responsibility. | Individuals are vulnerable beings requiring protection and correction. |
| Ideology | Liberty, pluralism, responsibility. | Safety, equity, behavioural optimization. |
| Beliefs | People make better choices for themselves than elites can. | People are biased and misinformed; experts must guide outcomes. |
| Values | Risk-taking, self-ownership, tolerance of dissent. | Harm avoidance, social cohesion, regulatory trust. |
| Ends | Human flourishing through freedom and consequence. | Managed wellbeing through expert intervention. |
| Ways | Civic debate, markets, rule of law. | Behavioural nudging, technocratic mediation, soft constraints. |
| Means | Rights, institutions, competition of ideas. | Data, algorithms, preemptive governance, credentialed authority. |
This is not totalitarianism. It is post-liberal paternalism. It does not crush opposition but redefines dissent as misinformed or dangerous. It does not demand obedience but renders non-compliance pathologized or algorithmically suppressed.
Strategic Tetrahedron: Subtle Structural Reconfiguration
Within the Strategic Tetrahedron (ST), technocratic progressivism reorganizes power flows without necessarily appearing coercive:
- Territory is transformed into regulatory space—not a boundary of sovereignty, but a network of overlapping legal, environmental, and behavioural jurisdictions.
- Population becomes data: segmented, profiled, and subject to behavioural targeting. Citizens become subjects of systemic correction.
- Infrastructure includes surveillance systems, compliance enforcement tools, and “smart” environments that condition choice.
- Economic Activity is subordinated to ESG, equity metrics, and algorithmic planning—replacing entrepreneurial freedom with curated outcomes.
- Defence & Public Order frames power as protection, invoking emergencies to justify exceptional authority in the name of health, safety, or climate.
- Government expands through expert-administered bureaucracies, insulated from electoral accountability.
- Leadership becomes symbolic—public-facing while real decisions occur within elite expert networks.
The result is a regime that appears liberal but functions as a therapeutic Leviathan: a structure built not to dominate bodies, but to guide minds, contain risks, and eliminate consequences.
Infantilization and the Erosion of Strategic Agency
Technocratic governance infantilizes not through force but through the erosion of consequences:
- Risk is reframed as injustice.
- Failure is a systemic problem, not a personal event.
- Responsibility is offloaded to institutional safeguards.
- Punishment becomes therapy; correction replaces retribution.
The citizen is no longer a free actor but a managed subject. The danger is not overt oppression but the deactivation of personal sovereignty.
“You will be free from consequences—and you will thank us for it.”
This paternalism erodes the moral infrastructure that supports liberty. In shielding people from harm, it inadvertently shields them from the experiences that produce maturity, judgment, and resilience.
Strategic Implications: When Coherence Becomes Constriction
Strategic resilience requires not just capacity and capability, but credibility. When the population no longer believes in its own agency, when institutions replace trust with control, the state loses its foundational legitimacy. What remains is a hollowed procedural order that appears coherent but is incapable of sustaining challenge, dissent, or renewal.
The long-term strategic risk of technocratic infantilization is not rebellion, but civic decay: apathy, dependency, symbolic compliance, and the retreat of initiative.
Conclusion: Reclaiming the Strategic Meaning of Freedom
Technocratic progressivism is not authoritarian collectivism. It does not impose ideology by brute force. Rather, it governs through protection, optimization, and the systematic erasure of friction. But in doing so, it forgets what liberalism once knew: that freedom means risk, responsibility, and the right to fail.
If liberalism is to survive, it must be rebuilt not merely as a structure of rights, but as a strategic system of personal sovereignty. The true challenge is not to protect the individual from the world, but to restore the individual’s ability to act meaningfully within it.
“The therapeutic state offers to shield you from consequence. Liberalism demands you confront it. One coddles; the other empowers.”
About the Author
Richard Martin is the founder and president of Alcera Consulting Inc., a strategic advisory firm specializing in exploiting change (www.exploitingchange.com). Richard’s mission is to empower top-level leaders to exercise strategic foresight, navigate uncertainty, drive transformative change, and build individual and organizational resilience, ensuring market dominance and excellence in public governance. He is the author of Brilliant Manoeuvres: How to Use Military Wisdom to Win Business Battles. He is also the developer of Worldview Warfare and Strategic Epistemology, a groundbreaking methodology that focuses on understanding beliefs, values, and strategy in a world of conflict, competition, and cooperation.
© 2025 Richard Martin
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