| dc.description.abstract | Anthropogenic climate change and increasing tensions between countries pose a serious threat to international security. On the one hand, governments around the world turn towards technological solutions as a remedy to environmental problems. Thus, securing access to clean infrastructural technologies is crucial at a global level. On the other hand, the recent trade war between the USA and China signals the unfolding of a New Cold War. Despite the similarities to the frictions between the Soviet Union and the USA in the postwar period, this New Cold War is much less about ideology and more about technology. Yet, little is known about the influence of international relations on cross-country technology diffusion. This research takes an interdisciplinary approach, it combines Roger’s paradigm of diffusion of innovations, social contagion theory and the realist approach to international relations to build a conceptual framework. The hypotheses are tested quantitatively to examine how alliances affect technology adoption decisions by national governments. Logistic regression is used to analyze the secondary data on the worldwide adoption of eight infrastructural technologies (from the energy, transportation, and space sectors) between 1954 and 2012 on a sample of 161 countries. The results showed that membership in alliances had a positive impact on the adoption likelihood. However, the influence of the alliance leader differed for the technological sectors. The finding that the similarity of political systems was disproved highlights the role of interaction between countries in the diffusion process. The results suggest that the theory of social contagion can be applied to the field of international relations to explain technology adoption among countries. The findings imply that countries can use the tools of foreign policy to promote their technologies but also to obtain access to the crucial technologies. This research contributed to the theoretical understanding of the drivers of adoption and proved the worthiness of interdisciplinary research designs. Lastly, “contagiousness” of specific technologies seems to play a role in the dynamics of diffusion. | |
