Democracy, Morality and Innovation

• In Event: Policy, Taxation and Welfare

Abstract

When do citizens tolerate the emergence of new technologies with economic transition costs? It has been claimed that democracies are better in providing public goods, and in promoting a skill-base for their citizens. By and large, the access to new skill formation, should enable citizens in democracies to participate in growth generated by new technologies. This narrative however clashes with evidence for technology protectionism in several Western Democracies. Citizens often prefer to erect regulations and barriers against new technologies, despite the possibility to acquire new skills. Using comprehensive comparative survey data, text data, and experiments, our study contributes to our understanding for the conditions under which democracy provides, and under which it prevents innovations from emerging. We challenge explanations based on skills and economic incentives alone. Specifically, we focus on the role of moral economic norms in democracies. Pluralistic democracies are accompanied by a dilemma of social coordination, to stronger extent than autocracies are. In our argument, technological innovation is only feasible in pluralistic settings, if it is accompanied with a set of permissible social norms of moral character. These are, for examples, norms which tolerate sharing of data, or the acceptance of the risks which come with new technology for society. Our results suggest that there is an inherent moral character of technology protectionism in pluralistic societies. We discuss the wider implications of our research on the ability of advanced democracies to match the requirements of modern market economies, or rather their need to rethink and restructure themselves in the wake of (economic) crisis.

Author

• Soenke Ehret, University of Lausanne