Course Code: HHM9020

Course Name: Special Course in Public Administration

Student Name: Pisith San
Instructor Name: Dr. Amirouche Moktefi
Date: Thursday, 20 April 2023

Commentary III
The focus of this review will be on the paper by Laur Kanger et al. (2022) entitled Deep Transitions:
Towards a Comprehensive Framework for Mapping Major Continuities and Ruptures in Industrial
Modernity. The main argument of the article is that the previous analyses of industrial modernity have
focused on narrow technical or economic perspectives and ignored broader social-cultural and ecological
perspectives, and the authors present evidence from a range of studies to support their argument. The
paper proposes a framework for understanding the historical patterns and the concept of industrial
modernity which has been generated by the co-evolutionary dynamics of multiple systems during the
last 250 years, which is called the Deep Transition.

The article is well-researched and provides a comprehensive understanding and novel approach which
would simultaneously measure the ideational, institutional, and practice related dimensions of industrial
modernity while incorporating the relations between industrial societies and the natural environment,
science, and technology. The authors use a range of studies and a variety of databases from three
different countries: Australia, Germany, and Soviet Union/Russia to develop a novel comprehensive
multidimensional and multidomain approach for the empirical measurement of industrial development
as conceptualized in the Deep Transitions framework between 1900 and 2020. Throughout the article,
the writing is clear and concise, making it easy to follow, and the arguments are effectively presented.

Apart from the strength of the paper, the authors used mainstream newspapers and magazines, which
are often biased (even the authors themselves acknowledge this) because the influence of elites and
politicians on the content of different sources can affect the accuracy of historical events. Despite these
limitations, the article provides an important contribution to the field of economic growth and ecological
concern, as it provides a comprehensive overview of deep transition of industrial modernity in three
different countries between 1900 and 2020. The findings suggest that industrial modernity might be
hollowing out along ideational and institutional dimensions in the environmental domain, but not so
much in the technological and innovative domain.

As a whole, "Deep Transitions: Towards a Comprehensive Framework for Mapping Major Continuities
and Ruptures in Industrial Modernity" by Laur Kanger et al provides an important contribution to the
field in both its research and presentation. Despite some limitations in the research design and scope of
this article, the authors provide an extensive literature review and present compelling evidence for their
claims.

Question for the authors: In regard to the influence of elites and politicians, how did the authors identify
and analyze the potential bias of mainstream newspapers and magazines in Germany, Australia, and
Soviet Union/Russia, and which country exhibited the most significant bias?