American Hegemony and the Global Governance of High Technology.

The development and regulation of high technology are defining features of modern capitalist economies. The U.S. and the European Union represent the richest markets for technological innovation, and transatlantic disputes over technology-related issues ? such as nuclear power, biotechnology, and information technology - make headlines on a regular basis. These disputes also reveal fundamental differences in thinking about risk management and the role of American hegemony in governing risk. America is often responsible for the creation and global diffusion of new technologies, and it deliberately attempts to impose its own free-market, science-based approach to the regulation of technology-related risks. Europe offers a competing approach, largely based on the precautionary principle, which involves a broader societal-based conception of risk. This paper investigates this principled debate by first developing a comprehensive analytical framework for the major competing approaches to governing such technologies. It then applies this framework to the question of America’s potential and real power (hegemonic or otherwise) to influence global technology governance. The paper also assesses the possible challenges America faces in this domain from Europe and other countries, particularly in the developing world. It concludes by examining the extent to which the U.S. and Europe will be able to reconcile their differences and thus facilitate a global regime for balancing knowledge diffusion and technology regulation, possibly through the use of technological fixes, public-private partnerships, and transnational actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]