Ceris-Cnr, W.P. N° 6 /2008

Mokyr (2002) points out that income growth
in the twentieth century would not have taken
place without technological changes, which are
underpinned within more democratic countries.
Kuznets (1965) writes that modern economic
growth is based on the growth of the stock of
useful or tested knowledge. Moreover, Mokyr
(2002) claims that the failure of technological
progress in the pre-1750 environment to
generate sustained economic growth is due to
institutional negative feedback. In fact, before
the civil war in England, the French revolution
and democratization wave diffusion (Kurzman,
1998), the social and environmental conditions
to sustain worldwide technological progress are
not present. The civil war in England (1688), the
revolution of the American colonies (between
1775 and 1783) and the French revolution
(1789–1799) generated a variety of social and
political forces that led to the exploiting of
several techniques (since 1800s) based on pathbreaking classical inventions such as the steam
engine. Mokyr (2002) also argues that scientific
revolution and the Enlightenment [within most
free and high democracy countries] helped
expand the epistemic base of techniques in use
and thus created the conditions for more
sustainable technological progress. In order to
support this process, the Industrial Revolution
requires not just new knowledge but the ability
of society to access this knowledge, use it,
improve it, and find new applications and
combinations for it. As Headrick (2000)
emphasizes, the age of industrial revolution
through a variety of technological as well as
institutional innovations did exactly that, thanks
to a new political and social climate within more
democratic counties. Had the institutional
feedback been negative, as it had been before
1750, technological progress would have been
on the whole short-lived. Yet the feedback
between institutions and technology was and is
positive. As a matter of fact, the years after 1815
were more and more subjugated by the free
market liberal ideology which provides

incentives for scientific and entrepreneurial
behaviour within more democratic countries.
Moreover, since the democracy of European
countries as well as of the United States of
America was, before 1815, at an early stage,
innovations had minor effects on economic
growth, real wages and living standards. When
the democratization processes of countries
entered a steadier state, another wave of
innovations created – in a more global and
democratic Europe – a new economic wind
which, after the 1850s, increased productivity
growth, income per capita and real wages. This
was a period of unprecedented growth, and
achieved triumphs ... equal, if not superior, to
all centuries combined (Smith, 1994). The coevolution of democratization and technical
change has been assuming new forms in the
current economy and the most important
development
is
the
Information
and
Communication
Technologies
Revolution
(Devezas et al., 2005). As a matter of fact, the
Third wave of democratization (1980s-1990s)
generated a receptive political and economic
environment to absorb a new techno-economic
paradigm and the benefits of converging
technologies (Freeman and Louçã, 2001).
This historical discussion confirms that the
democratization process underpins technical
change and is prior to technological progress as
well as economic growth (Figure 2).
Marchetti (1979) and Ayres (2005) consider
the importance of energy as a driving force of
economic growth and of Kondratieff waves (KWaves or long wave dynamics). I actually
assign a fundamental role to democratization,
which is also an antecedent process to the use of
energy resources and energy conversion as well
as technology, economic growth and K-wave
dynamics. For instance, some countries in
Eurasia, which have the majority of the world’s
known
energy
resources,
without
democratization cannot research and develop
technology, absorb it and follow economic
growth patterns.

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