Political Implications of the Knowledge Economy and Technological Transition

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

This panel examines political implications of the knowledge economy transition and recent technological change. The papers examine compensatory and regulatory policies that mitigate the effects of technological change for citizens from two perspectives: first, they study sources of citizens’ support for such policies, and second, they study the impact of these policies on distributive outcomes.

The joint framework of the panel starts from the uncontroversial observation that advanced economics have “evolved” such that different skills for successful career opportunities have become increasingly demanded by employers, and that rapid technological change can have growth-enhancing but severe distributional consequences.
Thus, individuals are likely to vary in the policies they prefer to respond to these economic changes. Understanding the drivers of such preferences requires theorizing different risks posed by this economic transition, and how they matter regarding different government policies to respond. Correspondingly, more should be understood about the political consequences of such policies in terms of whether they actually improve voters and workers’ conditions, or affect their political preferences.

This panel develops this framework with four related papers, presenting evidence from Europe and other advanced industrialized states. The first two papers focus on novel theorizing and new data (with attempts at causal inference) regarding the sources of policy preferences to respond to the knowledge-economy transition and technological change. The second two papers focus on new data to assess the political implications of policies that have been deployed to respond to such changes. Short descriptions of the four papers are as follows; they bring together junior and senior scholars from both US and European based Universities.

On public preferences, Aina Gallego (University of Barcelona) and Alexander Kuo (University of Oxford) present new survey data from 5 EU countries that tests theories of support for a wide suite of policies to regulate contemporary technological change in the workplace, examining a broad suite of technological “protectionist” policies to slow down technological change. These include policies that are infrequently asked about in the literature, such as empowering workers to control the rate of technological adoption and taxing companies that technologically replace workers, among others. They examine whether informing individuals of redistributive and socio-tropic consequences of such policies affects their support, and whether technological risks condition such support.

The second paper by Seobin Han and Philipp Rehm (Ohio State University) investigates the relationship between perceived risks associated with technological change and social policy attitudes. They apply insights on the concept and measurement of risk perceptions from the decision sciences and explore whether risk perceptions are one- or multi-dimensional; whether the source of a hazard shapes risk perceptions (holding constant the hazard); whether risk perceptions are subject to framing effects; and whether the relationship between risk perceptions and social policy attitudes varies across risk dimension and/or source of hazard. The paper presents results from an original opinion survey with embedded survey experiments.

On the political impact of policies responding to the knowledge economy transition and technological change, the third paper by Reto Bürgisser, Silja Häusermann, and Thomas Kurer (University of Zurich) examines whether policies can moderate potential political backlash to technological change. It does so by examining the turnout and voting preferences of participants in a specific French compensation scheme (the CSP) focused on helping such individuals. The paper uses a mix of fine-grained register data from the French Public Employment Service, municipal level data, and new survey data to study underlying mechanisms and test potential explanations of why a sizeable state intervention does (not) moderate political responses.

The final paper by Briitta van Staalduinen (University of Leiden) examines whether a common policy tool urged to respond to the knowledge economy transition and technological transition – social investment – has affected immigrants minorities’ ability to integrate in labor markets. This paper uses cross-national survey and party manifesto data to test claims about the politics of opportunity in ethnically diverse knowledge economies.

The proposed discussant Nina Obermeier (King’s College London) will comment and highlight the relevance of the papers to interested audiences in the fields of comparative politics of industrialized states, European politics, and political economy and behavior. The panel papers provides ample, coherent, new theoretical claims and much new granular data on the pressing question of how the rapid economic transitions affect political views today.

Sub Unit

• Division 15: European Politics and Society

Cosponsor

• Division 14: Comparative Politics of Advanced Industrial Democracies

Chair

• Alexander Kuo University of Oxford

Discussant

• Nina Obermeier King's College London

Individual Presentations

• Support for Policies to Regulate Technological Change - Aina Gallego, UB and IBEI; Alexander Kuo, University of Oxford

• Risk Perceptions and Political Attitudes - Seobin Han, Ohio State University; Philipp Rehm, Johns Hopkins University

• Can Government Policies Moderate Political Backlash to Technological Change? - Reto Bürgisser, University of Zurich; Silja Haeusermann, University of Zurich; Thomas Kurer, University of Zurich

• Occupational Change, Ethnic Inequality, and the Politics of Opportunity - Briitta van Staalduinen, University of Konstanz