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Similarly, writers in the broadly evolutionary economics tradition tend to steer clear of the mention of politics, other than as part of the exogenously given ‘fitness environment’

within which firms operate:

“In many cases the evolutionary processes at work seem to involve a blend of market, professional, and political processes, and it is likely an enormous task to sort these out and get an accurate assessment of operative “fitness” criteria and selection mechanisms.” (Nelson 1995: 82)

This absence is somewhat surprising given the observation that the process of politics is very closely connected to the development and operations of institutions, and that there is a general consensus amongst writers on technological change in the evolutionary tradition that technologies co-evolve with institutions (North 1990a, 1994; Unruh 2000;

Foxon 2006, 2011). Indeed, institutional variables are critical to the notion of lock-in in a number of influential accounts:

“In general, the limits on technological change lie not with science and technology, which tend to evolve much faster than governing institutions, but rather with the organizational, social and institutional changes that allow the diffusion of new technological solutions.” (Unruh 2002: 318)

While criticized for their limited treatment of power and politics, it is perhaps the transitions accounts that have gone furthest in developing a systematic approach to the political issues raised by technological change. There has been increasing interest in the discussion of, getting the institutions ‘right’.³² Where politics has been considered it has frequently been conceived of, rather narrowly, as a problem related to governance, of putting the right institutions and strategies in place (Smith et al 2005; Scrase & Smith 2009). The question of policy and of governance therefore becomes a technical one.

Smith et al (2005) present the question of governance in just this kind of way. Power is considered important within a socio-technological system, the process of governance stands somehow outside it and independent of it:

“The legitimate authority to push change through, or the resources available to build consent, to raise informed dissent, or even to block change, will depend on power relations across the networks of actors involved in a regime. Governance processes can be seen as acting as an independent influence to ‘manage’ or modulate regime transformation for sustainable development.” [emphasis added](Smith et al 2005: 1508)

32 Williamson’s (2000) ‘third-order’ economizing.

The conception of the political process is one where politics is somehow divorced from the forces to which the rest of a system is subject. Torvanger & Meadowcroft (2011) go some way to bringing in political economy considerations, but this is limited to a more nuanced recognition of the constraints the political process is subject to. In this case, recognizing binding technological and economic constraints, and advising that policy should follow the path of ‘least resistance’ by promoting technologies in line with local interests and incumbent industries (Torvanger & Meadowcroft 2011). In a recent paper Meadowcroft (2011) also comments on the importance of ‘getting the politics right,’

rather than just the policies:

“So far sustainability researchers have focused largely on policy: what it is and what it could/should be…[…]… much less attention is devoted to the political circumstances that make the adoption of such policies likely. But behind policy there is always politics, and getting the politics right appears to be a prerequisite to getting the policies right.” [emphasis added] (Meadowcroft 2011: 73)

This account goes a long way to recognizing the likely constraints on the policy process and the limited space to make policy decisions this implies. More recent papers by Smith

& Stirling (2007; 2010) have also sought to better address issues of political power and agency, including the recognition that the political process may not be external to the particular technological system in place, and that therefore the room for the exercise of

‘governance’ maybe constrained:

“It cannot be assumed that existing institutions and infrastructures will afford the requisite space and resources for the kinds of continual adaptations and social learning necessary for effective transition governance…[…]...Structural change in something as pervasive as a socio-technical regime entails both losers and winners. In considering what a transition to sustainability actually means, the stakes are typically very high.” (Smith & Stirling 2010: 19)

This position comes close to a recognition that politics in many cases should be treated, in the first instance as an endogenous part of technological change, but there is a deep-seated reluctance to grasp the nettle:

“The argument is not that conceptual distancing between socio-technical governance subjects and objects is always necessarily unhelpful or wrong…[…]… there needs to be greater appreciation of the internal loci of governance processes within the socio-technical systems themselves…[…]…In contrast to governance conceptualized outside the system, positioning governance inside the negotiation of socio-technical change

requires processes for opening up debate and revealing technology’s inherently political nature. In short, we need to move from a view of ‘steering as management’ to an understanding of ‘steering as politics.’” [emphasis added] (Smith & Stirling 2007: 369)

The strategy is one not of endogenising politics but in the creation of ever-increasing orders of meta-theorizing, from the techno-economic aspects of technological change, to institutional, to policy, to governance, to politics. On these accounts feedbacks proliferate between technology, the economy and institutions, politics may not sit entirely outside this as it is linked through budget constraints, and the process in virtue of which power to make decisions is vested in the political process. Nevertheless, the conception seems to be one of politics as somehow insulated from the workings of the technological system as broadly conceived.

We can perhaps agree with Smith & Stirling (2007) that, ‘distancing between socio-technical governance subjects and objects’ can be a helpful approximation. Where in Simonian terms, they may be considered ‘approximately independent subsystems’. In the case where we are considering largely distributionally neutral or otherwise incremental shifts in technology, such as shifts characterized by technological change within a particular techno-economic paradigm. It is surely not the case when we are considering disruptive technological change. Nor would it be the case where institutional arrangements link techno-economic systems more closely to the accrual and articulation of political power. Moreover, while running the risk of being accused of pedantry - from a theoretical perspective it is always wrong, and this would seem to be a necessary implication of evolutionary micro-foundations.

The omission of a satisfactory treatment of politics on the part of the evolutionary economists is probably a result of the focus on firm level technological change in a relatively competitive environment.³³ It is perhaps a less forgivable omission on the part of governance and institutional theorists, as well as those writing specifically on governance issues related to technological change (Smith & Stirling 2007, 2010;

Meadowcroft 2011). There is a failure to anticipate the possible extent of political capture (Lawhon & Murphy 2011). We can conjecture that this may be a result of a preoccupation with technological change in the context of relatively liberal democracies                                                                                                                

33 Indeed, a good proportion of the literature on latecomer catch-up; i.e. on the process of technological change outside a competitive firm level environment, does deal more of less explicitly with politics.

where government has made concrete commitments to technological change and as such at least appears to be relatively independent of vested economic influences.³⁴ This might just be a failure in neglecting to delimit the application of the theory – to the rather small set of industrialized Western liberal democracies.

More seriously, it is probably a sin of commission on behalf of the transitions account.

The transitions literature is normative. It is concerned with the promotion of technological sustainability. For their normative project to the feasible, there must be space for political agency to act to seriously promote a transition to sustainable technologies. This is recognized by Meadowcroft:

“Ultimately, the most potent of the sceptical arguments is the one that focuses on the economic imperative confronting states. There is no doubt that the stability of modern societies…[…]… has depended upon the maintenance of steady economic growth. But the indictment of the state to which this points really rests on a specific claim about the modern (capitalist) economy - that economic advance can only be purchased at the expense of the environment. And there are grounds for doubting the validity of this contention.”

[emphasis added] (Meadowcroft 2005: 495)

Where we may not be as sanguine regarding the economic implications of switching away from cheap energy sources, the transitions approach requires the technological, economic and political feasibility of a transition to sustainable technologies. It creates this space thus by a rejection of technology skepticism, underplaying cost and the political economy context within which technology is embedded. There maybe room for a more nuanced rendering of the political economy, which may mean there is space for transitions to more sustainable technologies – but whether this space exists or not in a particular context is a condition of the political economy and should be shown rather than assumed.

Leaving this criticism to one side, it seems to be that this lack of interest in the political process is a significant theoretical problem. It is not only that political processes are amenable to the micro-foundations of evolutionary theory, but the implications of an evolutionary approach which conceives of technological change as embedded in institutions is likely to entail the emergence of political economy processes.

34 For example, as in Michell’s (2010) characterization of the ‘regulatory state’ in the UK.