As Latin America began a new period of political and economic transformation during the early 1990s, a term was coined to describe a group who entered the fray of politics from the sidelines, technocrats. Several empirical studies from the 1990s focused on academics with postgraduate degrees (usually in economics) from US universities who came to occupy high-ranking positions in political administrations during the initial shift to market-based economies. Their rise to politically powerful positions was often regarded as essential for the successful implementation of neoliberal reforms. However, as their star started to fade during the late 1990s, technocrats were usually considered instruments or vicarious agents in the hands of other actors, be them politicians, business interests or international financial institutions. As soon as technocrats fulfilled their assigned tasks, they were to disappear from the political scene.

However, as time has shown, technocrats are here to stay, though not everywhere and in every policy sector. What explains this variation over time and space? Eduardo Dargent, an associate professor of political science at the Pontífica Universidad Católica in Lima, takes issue with the instrumentalist perspective on technocrats in Latin America. He develops a theory of ‘technocratic autonomy’ that provides these actors with pride of place as influential players in the political game irrespective of other societal and international actors. In other words, their influence on policy decisions is not necessarily bound to the fate of a specific politician who brings them into the game in the first place. Dargent aims to answer three questions with the help of his theory. First, what are the sources of technocratic autonomy? Second why is there variation across policy areas in terms of technocrats’ influence and third, why is technocratic autonomy resilient in some situations and vulnerable in others?

In terms of the first question, the answer is straightforward and well-established in the extant literature: as policy-making became more complex, politicians needed to bring in technical knowledge. In turn, narrow expertise is the technocrats’ entrance ticket to political circles, first as advisors in the background and later as ministers in the foreground in order to provide neoliberal policies with an aura of legitimacy and inevitability. Dargent's novel contribution lies in his answer to the second and third questions. What explains the variation of technocratic autonomy within state agencies across specific policy sectors? Why, for example, do we see high autonomy in economic policy and low autonomy in health policy?

First of all, he identifies two crucial factors that are classified as ‘the politics of policy’: (a) whether the incumbent is sensitive to poor policy performance and thus driven to limit the wiggle room for technocrats; and (b) the balance of power between stakeholders, namely the more competition between stakeholders, the more space exists for experts to make their own choices. Two additional factors associated with the specific issue area at hand are: (c) the complexity of the policy sector; and (d) the existence of a consensus among experts about what constitutes adequate policy. Depending on the specific constellation of the four factors at a temporal or spatial conjuncture, technocrats enjoy greater or lower intrusion from politicians and socio-economic actors and their autonomy is either entrenched or short-lived.

Dargent tests his argument on two cases: policy-making in Colombia and Peru during the second half of the twentieth century in two policy areas, economic and health policy. Applying his analytical matrix he classifies different periods in the political history of the two countries as characterised by high or low technocratic autonomy, which in turn leads to technical entrenchment or not. In both countries, economic policy is characterised by high and durable autonomy, whereas health policy enjoys at best medium autonomy leading to meaningful continuity (Colombia 1993–2013), or low autonomy coupled with no entrenchment (Peru 1990–2002).

There can be no doubt about Dargent's important contribution to the advancement of our theoretical and empirical knowledge about technocrats in Latin America. He convincingly shows that they can indeed acquire autonomy from their political masters and become independent actors on their own. Yet, their reign is not assured, either. Whether they manage to exert their autonomous power over longer periods of time hinges on eminently political as well as area-specific constellations. As a result, technocratic autonomy may outlive its political sponsors, but nonetheless ends abruptly when political or area-specific constellations change in countries.

However, Dargent's analysis lacks a deeper look into the technocrats themselves. They appear as rather monolithic actors eternally striving for autonomy in order to implement their technical solutions and thereby facing constantly changing political winds. I am surprised that personality or indeed ideology plays no role in Dargent's account of their fate. Can we technocrats influence the economic policy in Latin America during the recent past only by reference to structural factors? Are actor-specific characteristics completely irrelevant? An interesting test for this argument would be technocrats who have worked in different policy areas during the same time period or political administration. According to Dargent's theory, they would have faced different degrees of autonomy in different policy sectors. Unfortunately, such cases are rare, but the analysis of their trajectory would strengthen the empirical basis of the book.