Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-g7gxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-10T10:41:12.633Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

11 - The United States as Radical Innovation Driver: The Politics of Declining Dominance?

from IV - The American Knowledge Economy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 October 2021

Jacob S. Hacker
Affiliation:
Yale University, Connecticut
Alexander Hertel-Fernandez
Affiliation:
Columbia University, New York
Paul Pierson
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
Kathleen Thelen
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Get access

Summary

Perhaps the most extraordinary contribution of the United States since the late nineteenth century has been as driver of the three great successive waves of radical technological and techno-organizational innovation through the subsequent 120 or so years. Economic historians often refer to these three waves respectively as the Scientific Revolution (late nineteenth and early twentieth century);1 the Fordist Revolution (1920s to the 1970s); and the ICT Revolution (1980s on).2 (They were preceded by the first wave, the so-called Industrial Revolution, based on iron, steam, coal and textiles, and centered on the UK, which had taken place from the late eighteenth through the mid nineteenth century.) By driver of radical innovation is meant the carrier-through of these innovation waves across society, typically from research to the rapid scaling-up of giant companies. The USA has also been central to scientific inventions.

Type
Chapter
Information
The American Political Economy
Politics, Markets, and Power
, pp. 323 - 350
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×