Is there a hole in the whole? Knowledge, technology, interdependence, and the construction of international regimes

Abstract

This essay seeks to make the following points: (1) The search for holistic intellectual constructs to legitimate the construction of international regulatory regimes is fruitless if it is based on some notion of naturalness suggested by science itself. The purposes to be served by the use and regulation of science and technologies cannot be subordinated to the scientific attributes of the activities to be regulated. (2) Darwinian evolutionary propositions concerning survival imperatives are not adequate guides for the definition of political purposes governing the international regulation of science and technology. (3) If holistic constructs are not fruitful as organizing devices entirely disaggregated and fragmented solutions to technological problems are self-defeating in terms of achieving political purposes. What kind of knowledge do we have to suggest the creation of cognitive links among parts which add up to wholes consistent with political purposes as units-to-be-regulated? The identification of links demands a closer type of cooperation among technical experts and political decision makers than practiced hitherto. Hence a notion of the public interest is advanced to suggest the identification of links through new types of institutions and procedures for combining scientific with political knowledge. (4) Wholes to be identified through such processes can be analyzed in terms of the language of complexity and decomposability, leading to various notions of interdependence. Political purposes and technological developments are discussed jointly to show how a given concern can be characterized by different kinds of interdependencies at different times. “Interdependence” then emerges as a multi-dimensional and dynamic device for identifying wholes. (5) Various types of interdependence are matched to various forms of international organizational cooperation and the evolution of organizations is examined in terms of learning to manage interdependence. (6) By combining organizational forms with changing political purposes we arrive at provisional wholes called “technology-task-environments” which permit the scientist and the politician to contribute jointly to the management of interdependence issues triggered by changing technologies and scientific ideas until the evolving mix of knowledge and purpose leads them to construction of alternative (but equally temporary) wholes.