Institutional Roles and the Brain Drain

Extract

Historically, the intelligentsia—originally the clergy and later men of letters—played a significant role in the development of the Western world. Their importance derived from their function as the critics of society and guardians of its conscience. Institutionally, the intelligentsia were found in the churches and on the margins of society. Later, they moved to schools and colleges that subsequently developed into universities as we know them today. As a class, bureaucrats and technocrats—engineers, doctors, etc.—evolved much later. Their institutional role in society was to implement the ideas of the intelligentsia, particularly those ideas relating to the solidification of the nation-state and the creation of the wealth of the nation. Thus, the bureaucrats and technocrats were much closer to the nation and its historical development than the intelligentsia proper.