Analytical Frames for Studying Technology and Politics

(Isms You Can Use)

Dr. Philip N. Howard

Attributes Realism Liberalism Marxism Science and Technology Studies

Actor Unitary state: mutually exclusive, State representative and other non-state Classes: social elites, civil society, Nodes, defined by links in a network;
territorially distinct; benevolent actors, including corporations, consumers social and material actors; whistle
hegemon accepts costs with eye to domestic political parties blowers, coders, bots and other
long-term power; malevolent hegemon software agents; digerati, netizens
thinks short term
System Anarchy; balance of power Interdependence; trans-nationalism; Hierarchical; powerful groups structure Socio-technical systems and networks,
transactions capitalist world economy made up of sub-networks
Action Interruptions in balance of power; Market fluctuations, different Class conflict, historical materialism Information asymmetry, conflicting
cycles of concern and disinterest technology & information code, technological competition;
capacity and constraint
Interests Power; security Welfare; liberty Capital accumulation Science or network driven, temporary
and project based
Peace & Balance of power Actors with complimentary Always in interests of rich & Northern, Power distributed equally across links
Cooperation capabilities; market and at the expense of poor & Southern; and nodes, consensus behind technical
until the revolution! standards, protocols IP and code
Action Interruptions in balance of power; Market fluctuations, different Class conflict, historical materialism Information asymmetry, conflicting
cycles of concern and disinterest technology & information code, technological competition;
capacity and constraint
Authors Bull, Gilpen, Morgenthau, Kennedy Keohane, Nye, Putnam Both Andersons, Marx, Lenin Castells, Latour
Methods Comparative, large-N Single case, comparative, large-N Comparative, natural experiment Network metaphor or formal analysis
Strengths One strong dominant power can really Explains multi-polarity & declining Good critique of motivations; global & Interpretive, inductive; politics of code
get things done role of American state; parsimonious systemic trends and infrastructure
Weaknesses Not explain lags between changes; Not everybody maximizes utility in Not great on policy recommendations Too much historical contingency, path
persistence of other actors voluntary and rational ways dependence, and complex causation
Understanding Diplomacy 2.0, cyber-war, -terror, Dot-com and heterarchical firms, Data as ultimate extracted value, hyper- Implied
the Pax -espionage, information war permanently beta organization, death of capitalism, information barons,
Technica? distance, long-tail economics, corporate fetishization of consumer electronics,
cyber-espionage, bureaucratic alienation experienced through privacy
rationalization and data loss
* With apologies to cognitivism, constructivism, and feminism, and the critical, phenomenological and epistemic perspectives.

This work can be cited as Howard, P. (2016). Analytical Frames for Studying Technology and Politics. Retrieved from philhoward.org. This work is licensed
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