Culture, Innovation, and Growth Dynamics: A New Theory for the Applicability of Ideas (Hardcover, 2021)

Introduction This chapter contains the study's main issues and arguments, prevailing counter-arguments when applicable. The main objective is to illustrate the coherent line of reasoning and would provide the ground work for a better understanding of the arguments in this study. Chapter 1: Ideas as a medium This chapter will begin with the proposition that an idea is derivative of its history in a sense that such history marks the boundaries of its permissible horizon (discourse) [just as a language helps mark the boundaries of its cultural reach]. In this respect, an idea is non-transferable when such history is absent. As a corollary, there is no shared pattern that allows us to use an idea in recurrent patterns to achieve its intended objective. In this context, this chapter attempts to arrive at an understanding of what an idea is in the context of language, religion, political, and economic factors. We will discuss the philosophical aspects of idea as medium infused with meaning/intent and relevant applications, such as Maiorescu's theory of 'form without content', follow by a brief reiterating of philosophical debates on 'form' and 'content', i.e. Hegel's dialectic, in which there can be no form without content and no content without form. Chapter 2: Political Culture In this chapter, we start with defining the construct of political culture, as it refers to the system of beliefs about patterns of political interaction and political institutions. We will mainly concentrate on the most celebrated modern ideological platforms, e.g., liberal (neo-liberalism), socialism, liberal socialism, and so forth; and the circumstances within which they rose to become the crown jewels of modern civilization. Here, our objective is to convey that incompatible historical and social circumstances in which political culture in individual nations prevail and finally stand these ideological platforms to the test of history and in light of what can be called remaking (nation-state building, socialist revolutions, and regime change). In the final section, we will link the previous discussions and to make a coherent argument in support our main arguments by several case studies: e.g. Democracy building in Post-Soviet World, Nation-state building in 20 th century. Chapter 3: Revisiting Economic Growth Paradigm The main objective of this chapter is to depict the inapplicability of "one model fits all". In this context, we argue that conventional wisdom does not take into consideration historical development as well as cultural conditions, and hence failed to achieve stated objective. Conventional wisdom requires certain preconditions and institutional setting that are necessary or sufficient to achieve the proposed objective because they are either absent or incompatible. In doing so, we intend to examine well-documented 'experiments' such as market-oriented economic transition. Chapter 4: Knowledge transference On the context-agnostic ideas and technical know-how, we will present conceptual paths for knowledge transference and will provide examples as we argue that certain type of what is called actionable or how-to knowledge that is 'technical' in content and does not reflect values and ideology and is transferable and easily assimilated. Within this chapter there will be a number of case studies that will examine the successes and failures of technical and procedural knowledge transfers closely: e.g. international standards such as accounting standards, institutional design blueprints, technologies and engineering constructs such as Qanat type of underground irrigation canal. Another case study example includes using indigenous knowledge in environmental and agricultural steps forward to preserve the Amazon rainforest. This is a good example of reverse conformity. Modern society cannot grasp the core of this indigenous knowledge and by definition would be harder to bring it in.