The political theory of technological change: Lessons from the liberalism-ecologism debate
| Published date | 01 February 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231173371 |
| Author | Michael Keary |
| Date | 01 February 2024 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957231173371
Politics
2024, Vol. 44(1) 155 –172
© The Author(s) 2023
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957231173371
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The political theory of
technological change: Lessons
from the liberalism-ecologism
debate
Michael Keary
Research Institute for Sustainability–Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, Germany
Abstract
Little consideration has been given to the process of technological change in political theory.
Given that ideas about this process play an important role in many strands of normative political
thought, and are especially crucial to climate change politics, this is a remarkable oversight. It risks
political theory being irrelevant to climate change mitigation. The implications of this oversight
for political theory are explored here through an analysis of the liberalism-ecologism debate. The
article argues that attempts to green liberalism – to move it beyond environmentalism – cannot
succeed while liberalism is silent about technological change. More broadly, given that most political
theory traditions make claims about technological change, claims crucial to their worldviews and
normative goals, it argues that much more theorisation of the concept is necessary. Especially now
that they shape how the world understands climate change mitigation, contests over the meaning
of technological change are intensely political contests. Political theory needs to get much more
involved.
Keywords
ecologism, liberalism, normative political theory, technological change, technological optimism
Received: 2nd February 2022; Revised version received: 8th March 2023; Accepted: 9th March 2023
Introduction
Technological change is a mute presence in political theory, important but mostly unno-
ticed. In an era of environmental crisis, when expectations about future technologies are
driving the global response, the time is ripe to start paying attention. After Adam Smith,
liberalism in particular has ignored technological change. Liberals consider neither the
process itself, nor prevalent ideas about it, politically important. This is an error. Its
Corresponding author:
Michael Keary, Research Institute for Sustainability–Helmholtz Centre Potsdam, Berliner Strasse 130,
D-14467 Potsdam, Germany.
Email: michael.keary.nu@gmail.com
1173371POL0010.1177/02633957231173371PoliticsKeary
research-article2023
Article
156 Politics 44(1)
absence thwarts their efforts to adapt liberalism to meet the threat of environmental
disaster.
Other political theories should take note. Though not as deficient in this regard as lib-
eralism, few possess detailed treatments of technological change. What are they missing?
Technological change is the process by which, depending on your perspective, technolo-
gies and technological infrastructures transform, improve, develop, and/or grow more
sophisticated and pervasive. As a concept, it is broad, taking in major transformations,
like the spread of electric lighting in the late 19th century, as well as small developments,
like improvements in LED light bulb efficiency in the early 21st century. Related con-
cepts such as innovation, invention, technology, technics, and technique have all been
given various meanings over the years (Ellul, 1964; Heidegger, 1977; Keary, 2016;
Mumford, 1967). Contests over these meanings, as discussed in the final section of this
article, are contests for power.
Still, serious consideration of technological change will raise two salient questions:
what is it doing? And how does it work? The first of these questions motivated earlier
critical discussions of technology (Ellul, 1964; Marcuse, 2002; Postman, 1992; Stiegler,
1998; Winner, 1977). These debates explored how technologies alter the human experi-
ence, but also considered technological trajectories and the impacts of change itself, such
as feelings of dislocation. I ignore this aspect of the concept.
The second question – how does technological change work? – motivates this article.
It has two streams. First, is it outside human control (exogenous)? Second, if it is control-
lable (endogenous), how controllable is it? In other words, can the pace and direction of
technological change fall under the will of a political programme? The idea that it can is
called ‘directed technological change’ (Acemoglu, 2015).
Some conservatives have treated technological change as under human control, others
not, though they agree that there is little of merit to be controlled (Gray, 2007; Oakeshott,
2014). Other political theories tend to treat technological change as subject to human
agency; indeed, this conceptualisation has sparked much utopian thinking (Bastani, 2019;
Bookchin, 1971; Feenberg, 1990; Firestone, 2015).
The exception is liberalism. Adam Smith (1993: 8) integrated an endogenous model of
technological change into Wealth of Nations. It played a crucial role in supporting the
‘universal opulence’ he saw as the inevitable result of his politico-economic programme.
However, liberals since Smith have hardly touched the subject. Only Mill (1965) has
written substantially on technological change and then only in his economics. This divi-
sion of liberalism into economic and political domains is likely the reason why liberalism,
alone of political theories, is silent about technological change. Considered economics, it
has been walled off by political liberals who, again alone of political theorists, respect the
artificial barrier between economics and politics.
The developing environmental crisis has knocked holes in this wall. Liberal political
theorists have been forced to consider the economic dimension of the problem, and with
it, the factor of technological change. This move in political theory is called ‘green liber-
alism’. Proposed by Wissenburg (1998), Bell (2002), Hailwood (2004) and others, green
liberalism claims that liberal political theory can accommodate all that is of merit in
ecologism. Scholars of ecologism counter that liberalism is incompatible with non-
anthropocentrism, limits to growth, and other ideas crucial to a stable and equitable envi-
ronmental politics (Dobson, 2007; Eckersley, 2004). The debate quietened around 2008,
and though recently revived by Welburn (2017), one might ask: what more needs to be
said?
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