How should we govern nanotechnology?

There has been a lot of interest in recent years in governing new technologies, especially for AI. Yet, before the current hype in AI, there was nanotechnology and others before it. In his doctoral thesis, Nicholas Surber details the extensive politics, and their consequences, that have taken place across Europe to enable a successful development of nanotechnology. Surber defends his thesis on May 27.

What challenges do you focus on in your research?

Governing new science and technology is frequently talked about as a gap or pacing problem. That is, science and technology develop first, while the means to govern them come later, if at all. This is and remains a large challenge for nanotechnology due to its promised applications across the economy, large amounts of public funding and lingering questions about its (nano)safety to minimize environment and human health harms.

How do you address the problem?

My research begins from one simple point. To govern nanotechnology effectively, one must account for the politics that arise in how they determine which policies become possible, less possible, or perhaps impossible. Such governing has been dominated by technical discussions, technocratic or expert-led decision-making, and technical development of tools that offer solutions to this challenge by hiding their political aspects. In this way, governing nanotechnology has been seen as a gap to fill with more and more tools.

In order to analyze nanotechnology governing as politics, I rely on two steps.

One, I apply an idle theory of politics called sub-politics. Sub-politics is defined as politics occurring outside of the political system of government, like parliaments and assemblies. It is often associated with NGOs, environmentalism, social media and consumer-focused activism. I specifically look at the sub-politics between science, industry and civil society. This is organized around nanosafety and innovation in promoting innovation that is also safer and more sustainable.

Two, the research emphasizes an important shift in understanding the political system: from government to governance. During the last century, studying politics meant studying government. Multiple converging factors have increased the attention on governance, that focuses on responsibility of actors subject to regulation. This new array of approaches, without traditional compliance, is called soft law and soft regulation.

What are the main findings?

Here I will recount three main findings and the general logic that titles the thesis, “Too Enabling to Fail.”

First, I document a new type of organizing in civil society that I term promissory advocacy. This means an organization that combines elements of technical intermediaries (for example, consultancies like Research Institutes of Sweden), promissory forecasting organizations (as in, companies selling market predictions, like Gartner group), and advocacy organizations (for instance, with environmental NGOs like Greenpeace). I argue that nanotechnology reveals these converging elements of promissory advocacy.

Second, I understand the increase in voluntary tools for soft regulation through the paradox of a multiplication of uncertainty. In general, experts make tools and assessments that allow non-experts like politicians and managers to make decisions by simplifying the uncertainty in knowledge and expertise. The thesis looks at a few specific tools for nanotechnology. I suggest that perhaps a larger issue than making these tools is for the professionals to take decisions without this clarity. I explain that professionals face a multiplication of uncertainty.

Third, I diagnose a risk for future crises using the term promissory legitimation crisis. In recent years, crisis has resurfaced as a popular term, with notions of (permanent) permacrisis and (overlapping) polycrisis, often to describe climate change. In innovation, concrete outcomes are hard to predict, but investment is essential.

I examine the credibility of promised outcomes by stressing that commonly used nanotechnologies (nanomaterials), often hyped to bring the fourth industrial revolution, seem to be environmentally concerning and could become regulated. Nanotechnology is then vulnerable due to its promise of nanosafety through innovation to avoid a future promissory legitimation crisis.

I propose finally that nanotechnology, like other enabling technologies said to enable the economy, highlights a new political and economic logic: too enabling to fail. Since the financial crisis of 2008, there has been a large focus on economic concentration and too big to fail under financial capitalism. At the same time, there has been relatively less interest in the politics and economics of innovation, which has been analyzed as technoscientific capitalism where science and technology begin to drive economic growth. Too enabling to fail is a logic deserving our attention alongside too big to fail.

What do you hope your research will lead to?

I hope the research can encourage more studies and policy emphasis on the governance and broader politics in innovation, like I have started with nanotechnology. Moreover, all too often, these problems are directed into calls for more scientific knowledge and for novel tools and frameworks. I believe lasting solutions will additionally require attention and alterations to the governing and governance structures of science, technology and innovation.

Given the dominant focus on voluntary responsibility, I expect it will remain an important topic given the structures and complexity of science and technology. Professionals are discussed as relevant actors, alongside experts, who need better incentives to pursue greater safety and sustainability in business settings. Still, responsibility only provides some early steps. I suggest that governing at a system level will be key to ensuring change.