Nanotechnology, Governance and Public Management: A Techno-Economic Paradigms Perspective

This essay investigates, from the perspective of Carlota Perez' theory of Techno-Economic Paradigms, the possible impact of a specific technology, nanotechnology, on governance and public management. Based on this example, it argues, i.a., that techno-economic paradigms do come with their own optimal (and less optimal) forms of governance and indeed public management, but that both the attitude towards the state and thus public management and the need for good public policy and its institutional prerequisites are a matter of the period within the paradigm, not of the paradigm itself.