Innovation today often connotes progress, but the speed and scale of innovation processes frequently strain the capacity of societies and institutions. Few foundational innovations arrive accompanied by the knowledge or social intelligence necessary to assess their effects or steer their impact.
In most cases, societies are called on to act and regulate on the basis of promises, anticipations or barely apprehended scenarios. In the 21st century this condition is exacerbated by the ubiquity of technological innovation. In fields as diverse as financial markets, biotechnology and nanotechnology, energy and food production, higher education, and environmental services, innovation has created a wealth of new actors and technical capacities long before regulatory institutions are in a position to identify their consequences, let alone manage them. At the same time, old or familiar technologies, such as those we use to deliver energy or manage drinking water and sewage, seem enormously resistant to change.
The interaction of innovation dynamics, governance structures, and forms of accountability represents a crucial arena for academic research, policy-making and democratic deliberation.
The Programme in Governance, Accountability and Innovation (GAIn) supports research at the interface between innovation, governance and accountability with a series of common themes that include:
- the micro-foundations of social solidarities;
- path dependency and socio-technical lock-in;
- the differential scales and timings of innovation and the regulatory responses they evoke;
- ‘wicked problems’, uncomfortable knowledge, and clumsy solutions;
- boundary-work and the stabilization of the distinctions between new and old,
- accountable and unaccountable, resilient and unsustainable, change and stasis;
- the role of the social sciences and of institutions of higher education in contemporary politics, economy, and society.
In GAIn, we hope to advance our understanding of how legacy institutional and social arrangements favour or impede the development of novel social, technological and economic arrangements, and conversely, how innovations reshape the existing institutional terrain. Through our work and its dissemination we also intend to contribute to public conversations over the means and ends of social reform.
Selected Projects
Social Capital and Competitiveness: New Perspectives. This project, sponsored by the Regional Council of Gipuzkoa and the San Sebastian City Council, seeks to explore novel ways of conceptualising and measuring the social capital and competitiveness of networks, cities and territories.
Climate Governance and Governmentality challenges conventional thinking on policy responses to climate change and its implicit models of social behaviour and control to explore options for the development and implementation of new technology.
Governance of Transgenic Life explores the development of particular forms of governance, accountability and policy-making in relation to the life sciences.
University Governance Innovations and Accountability analyses the impact of contemporary attempts to rethink the activities and organization of institutions dedicated to the transmission and diffusion of knowledge.
Intermediaries in Emerging Carbon Markets investigates the roles played by expert intermediaries and others in configuring the global landscape of carbon market forms and functions, with focus on governance regimes.
Processes and Institutions of Expert Advice analyzes the shifting dynamics of expert communities and scientific advisory bodies in European policy-making. The initial research focuses on the Joint Research Centre, the arm of the European Commission dedicated to providing technical and scientific support for the policies of the EU.
Infrastructure, Institutions, and Innovation in the Global Securities Markets is a research programme that explores changes in the industry architecture of the financial markets, the evolving role of post-trade services (clearing and settlement), and the transformation of strategy and competition among exchange-traded markets.
Student Research Projects include the export control regime for dual-use technologies, social learning about nanotechnology, scientific labour mobility, management and communication of pesticide risk, alliance partner choice in new technology, sustainable governance of the Tonle Sap lake, and getting clean water technology to the "bottom billion."
People
Convening faculty
Javier Lezaun, Director and James Martin Lecturer in Science and Technology Governance
Steve Rayner, James Martin Professor of Science and Civilization and Director of the Institute for Science, Innovation and Society
Marc Ventresca, Co-Convenor, GAIn, University Lecturer in Strategy
Research fellows
Will Davies
Ray Loveridge, Research Fellow and Professor Emeritus
Students
Maja Korica, DPhil student
Danielle Logue, DPhil student
Meng Zhao, DPhil student
Associate fellows
Chris Caswill
Catherine Dolan
Anthony Hopwood
Nathan Hultman
Ariane König
Sarabajaya Kumar
Eamonn Molloy
Roger Pielke, Jr,
Daniel Sarewitz
Mike Thompson