In an age of unending propaganda and spin, there are still rare times
when undeniable evidence leaves no room for argument. Such is the case
with the emerging artificial intelligence data centers and the energy
needed to sustain and grow them.
The evolving AI technologies and their rapid implementation in almost
every walk of life can be intimidating and even frightening. The
technology already seems in danger of outpacing the controls and
parameters necessary to harness AI’s astounding possibilities. The
Stanley Kubrick classic from 1968, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” warned about a future where “thinking” computers would refuse to obey the commands of their human creators.
While ethicists wrestle with the philosophical questions surrounding
AI and politicians debate laws to regulate it, the U.S. must not only
compete with other nations but make sure it remains the worldwide
leader. To that end, AI centers continue springing up across the
country, placing demands on electric grids unlike anything seen before.
Penn State’s Institute of Energy and the Environment recently reported
that in 2023, AI data centers consumed 4.4% of electricity in the U.S.
alone. That’s an impressive number. But the institute went on to predict
that by 2030-2035, data centers “could account for 20% of global
electricity use, putting an immense strain on power grids.”
MIT’s Energy Initiative noted earlier this year how
ubiquitous AI technology has become, with most people not giving it a
second thought as they utilize its services daily through companies like
Google, Meta, Microsoft and Amazon.
“Without realizing it, consumers rely on AI when they stream a video,
do online banking, or perform an online search,” MIT noted. “Behind
these capabilities are more than 10,000 data centers globally, each one a
huge warehouse containing thousands of computer servers and other
infrastructure for storing, managing, and processing data. There are now
over 5,000 data centers in the U.S., and new ones are being built every
day—both in the U.S. and worldwide.”
Universities such as Penn State and MIT are worried about the data
centers’ “environmental footprint.” But many who predicted that
“alternatives” would someday power the world are increasingly
acknowledging the fact that fueling the data center boom will require
traditional energy sources, especially natural gas.
“While renewables like wind and solar will play an important role in
the energy future, they alone cannot power a 24/7 AI infrastructure,” Forbes recently reported.
“That’s why natural gas and nuclear are regaining prominence in grid
planning. Several utilities have fast-tracked proposals for new natural
gas “peaker” plants. Others are evaluating small modular nuclear reactors as potential solutions for delivering steady, low-carbon baseload power.”
While some data center developers may be considering building small
nuclear reactors, natural gas has the upper hand because it is readily
available and can be utilized more quickly – and it’s increasingly
considered “green” energy, including by legislative fiat.
It’s important to step back and recall the conflicting courses being
charted less than a year ago by the U.S. government on one hand and the
AI boom on the other. While the U.S. desperately needed to keep pace
with other nations, particularly China, in building AI data centers, the
Biden administration was implementing policies designed to eliminate
fossil fuel-based energy in favor of taxpayer-subsidized solar and wind
farms.
In essence, the U.S. was on track to power down at the same time that
new technologies demanded greater and more reliable power sources than
ever before. Thank goodness voters came to the rescue in 2024. President
Trump and his administration are working overtime to undo the damage of
the previous administration. Trump’s Energy Department, guided by two
executive orders – “Removing Barriers to American Leadership in
Artificial Intelligence” and “Unleashing American Energy” – is examining
ways to facilitate and accelerate the AI infrastructure.
On July 15, the Trump administration announced more than $90 billion in
AI and energy investments in Pennsylvania, “including Google’s $25
billion investment in data centers and infrastructure, Blackstone’s $25
billion investment in data centers and natural gas plants, and
CoreWeave’s $6 billion investment in data center expansion.”
Last week, Trump delivered the keynote address at a half-day summit
in Washington D.C., hosted by the All‑In Podcast and the Hill &
Valley Forum, called “Winning the AI Race.” The event also featured
other administration officials and leaders in the AI tech world.
The Trump administration’s proactive posture toward AI and associated
data centers should be welcomed by all Americans. Likewise, people
across the political spectrum should be clear-eyed about the emergent
demands on our nation’s electric grid and the fact that “renewables”
such as wind and solar are simply not up to the task. No political
propaganda or spin will change that immutable scientific reality.
Natural gas is the future, and the future is now. If you’re not sure
about that, just Google it – which is possible thanks to an electric
grid powered mostly by reliable, affordable and available natural gas.
Critical juncture theory focuses on critical junctures, i.e., large, rapid, discontinuous changes, and the long-term causal effect or historical legacy of these changes. Critical junctures are turning points that alter the course of evolution
of some entity (e.g., a species, a society). Critical juncture theory
seeks to explain both (1) the historical origin and maintenance of social order, and (2) the occurrence of social change through sudden, big leaps.
Critical juncture theory is not a general theory of social order and change. It emphasizes one kind of cause (involving a big, discontinuous change) and kind of effect (a persistent effect). Yet, it challenges some common assumptions in many approaches and theories in the social sciences. The idea that some changes are discontinuous sets it up as an alternative to (1) "continuist" or "synechist" theories that assume that change is always gradual or that natura non facit saltus – Latin for "nature does not make jumps." The idea that such discontinuous changes have a long-term impact stands
in counterposition to (2) "presentist" explanations that only consider
the possible causal effect of temporally proximate factors.
Theorizing about critical junctures began in the social sciences
in the 1960s. Since then, it has been central to a body of research in
the social sciences that is historically informed. Research on critical
junctures in the social sciences is part of the broader tradition of comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism. It is a tradition that spans political science, sociology and economics. Within economics, it shares an interest in historically oriented research with the new economic history or cliometrics. Research on critical junctures is also part of the broader "historical turn" in the social sciences.
Origins in the 1960s and early 1970s
The
idea of episodes of discontinuous change, followed by periods of
relative stability, was introduced in various fields of knowledge in the
1960s and early 1970s.
Kuhn challenged the conventional view in the philosophy of science at the time that knowledge growth could be understood entirely as a process of gradual, cumulative growth. Stephen Jay Gould writes that "Thomas Kuhn’s theory of scientific
revolutions" was "the most overt and influential" scholarly work to make
a "general critique of gradualism" in the twentieth century.
Gellner's neo-episodic model of change
AnthropologistErnest Gellner
proposed a neo-episodic model of change in 1964 that highlights the
"step-like nature of history" and the "remarkable discontinuity" between
different historical periods. Gellner contrasts the neo-episodic model
of change to an evolutionary model that portrays "the pattern of Western
history" as a process of "continuous and sustained and mainly endogenous upward growth."
SociologistMichael Mann adapted Gellner's idea of "'episodes' of major structural transformation" and called such episodes "power jumps."
Lipset and Rokkan's critical junctures
Sociologist Seymour Lipset and political scientistStein Rokkan introduced the idea of critical junctures and their long-term impact in the social sciences in 1967. The ideas presented in the coauthored 1967 work were elaborated by Rokkan in Citizens, Elections, and Parties (1970).
Gellner had introduced a similar idea in the social sciences.
However, Lipset and Rokkan offered a more elaborate model and an
extensive application of their model to Europe (see below). Although
Gellner influenced some sociologists, the impact of Lipset and Rokkan on the social sciences was greater.
Gould's model of sudden, punctuated change (bottom image) contrasts with the view that change is always gradual (top image).
Gould's model of punctuated equilibrium drew attention to episodic bursts of evolutionary change followed by periods of morphological stability. He challenged the conventional model of gradual, continuous change - called phyletic gradualism.
The critical juncture theoretical framework in the social sciences
Since
its launching in 1967, research on critical junctures has focused in
part on developing a theoretical framework, which has evolved over time.
In studies of society, some scholars use the term "punctuated equilibrium" model, and others the term "neo-episodic" model. Studies of knowledge continue to use the term "paradigm shift". However, these terms can be treated as synonyms for critical juncture.
Developments in the late 1960s–early 1970s
Key
ideas in critical junctures research were initially introduced in the
1960s and early 1970s by Seymour Lipset, Stein Rokkan, and Arthur Stinchcombe.
Critical junctures and legacies
Seymour Lipset and Stein Rokkan (1967) and Rokkan (1970) introduced the idea that big discontinuous changes, such as the reformation, the building of nations, and the Industrial Revolution, reflected conflicts organized around social cleavages,
such as the center-periphery, state-church, land-industry, and
owner-worker cleavages. In turn, these big discontinuous changes could
be seen as critical junctures because they generated social outcomes
that subsequently remained "frozen" for extensive periods of time.
In more general terms, Lipset and Rokkan's model has three components:
(1) Cleavage. Strong and enduring conflicts that polarize a political system. Four such cleavages were identified:
The center–periphery cleavage, a conflict between a central
nation-building culture and ethnically linguistically distinct subject
populations in the peripheries.
The state–church cleavage, a conflict between the aspirations of a nation-state and the church.
The land–industry cleavage, a conflict between landed interests and commercial/industrial entrepreneurs.
The worker–employer cleavage, a conflict between owners and workers.
(2) Critical juncture. Radical changes regarding these cleavages happen at certain moments.
(3) Legacy. Once these changes occur, their effect endures for some time afterwards.
Rokkan (1970) added two points to these ideas. Critical junctures
could set countries on divergent or convergent paths. Critical junctures
could be "sequential," such that a new critical junctures does not
totally erase the legacies of a previous critical juncture but rather
modifies that previous legacy.
The reproduction of legacies through self-replicating causal loops
Arthur Stinchcombe (1968) filled a key gap in Lipset and Rokkan's
model. Lipset and Rokkan argued that critical junctures produced
legacies, but did not explain how the effect of a critical juncture
could endure over a long period.
Stinchcombe elaborated the idea of historical causes (such as critical junctures) as a distinct kind of cause that generates a "self-replicating causal loop."
Stinchcombe explained that the distinctive feature of such a loop is
that "an effect created by causes at some previous period becomes a
cause of that same effect in succeeding periods." This loop was represented graphically by Stinchcombe as follows:
X t1 ––> Y t2 ––> D t3 ––> Y t4 ––> D t5 ––> Y t6
Stinchcombe argued that the cause (X) that explains the initial
adoption of some social feature (Y) was not the same one that explains
the persistence of this feature. Persistence is explained by the
repeated effect of Y on D and of D on Y.
Developments in the early 1980s–early 1990s
Additional contributions were made in the 1980s and early 1990s by various political scientists and economists.
Douglass North, coauthor of Institutions, Institutional Change and Economic Performance
Punctuated equilibrium, path dependence, and institutions
Paul A. David and W. Brian Arthur, two economists, introduced and elaborated the concept of path dependence, the idea that past events and decisions affect present options and that some outcomes can persist due to the operation of a self-reinforcing feedback loop. This idea of a self-reinforcing feedback loop resembles that of a
self-replicating causal loop introduced earlier by Stinchcombe. However,
it resonated with economists and led to a growing recognition in
economics that "history matters."
The work by Stephen Krasner in political science incorporated the idea of punctuated equilibrium
into the social sciences. Krasner also drew on the work by Arthur and
connected the idea of path dependence to the study of political
institutions.
Douglass North, an economist and Nobel laureate, applied the idea of path dependence to institutions, which he defined as "the rules of the game in a society," and drew attention to the persistence of institutions.
A synthesis
Political scientists Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier, in Shaping the Political Arena
(1991), provided a synthesis of many ideas introduced from the 1960s to
1990, in the form of the following "five-step template":
(1) "Antecedent conditions are diverse socioeconomic and
political conditions prior to the onset of the critical juncture that
constitute the baseline for subsequent change."
(3) "Critical junctures are major episodes of institutional change or innovation."
(4) "The aftermath is the period during which the legacy takes shape."
(5) "The legacy is an enduring, self-reinforcing
institutional inheritance of the critical juncture that stays in place
and is stable for a considerable period."
Debates in the 2000s–2010s
Following
a period of consolidation of critical junctures framework, few new
developments occurred in the 1990s. However, since around 2000, several
new ideas were proposed and many aspects of the critical junctures
framework are the subject of debate.
Critical junctures and incremental change
An important new issue in the study of change is the relative role of critical junctures and incremental change. On the one hand, the two kinds of change are sometimes starkly counterposed. Kathleen Thelen
emphasizes more gradual, cumulative patterns of institutional evolution
and holds that "the conceptual apparatus of path dependence may not
always offer a realistic image of development."[38] On the other hand, path dependence, as conceptualized by Paul David is not deterministic and leaves room for policy shifts and institutional innovation.
Critical junctures and contingency
Einar Berntzen
notes another debate: "Some scholars emphasize the historical
contingency of the choices made by political actors during the critical
juncture." For example, Michael Bernhard writes that critical junctures "are
periods in which the constraints of structure have weakened and
political actors have enhanced autonomy to restructure, overturn, and
replace critical systems or sub-systems."
However, Berntzen holds that "other scholars have criticized the focus on agency
and contingency as key causal factors of institutional path selection
during critical junctures" and "argue that a focus on antecedent
conditions of critical junctures is analytically more useful." For example, Dan Slater and Erica Simmons place a heavy emphasis on antecedent conditions.
Legacies and path dependence
The use of the concept of path dependence in the study of
critical junctures has been a source of some debate. On the one hand,
James Mahoney argues that "path dependence characterizes specifically
those historical sequences in which contingent events set into motion
institutional patterns or event chains that have deterministic
properties" and that there are two types of path dependence:
"self-reinforcing sequences" and "reactive sequences." On the other hand, Kathleen Thelen and other criticize the idea of path dependence determinism, and Jörg Sydow, Georg Schreyögg, and Jochen Koch question the idea of reactive sequences as a kind of path dependence.
Institutional and behavioral path dependence
The study of critical junctures has commonly been seen as involving a change in institutions. However, many works extend the scope of research of critical junctures by focusing on changes in culture. Avidit Acharya, Matthew Blackwell, and Maya Sen state that the
persistence of a legacy can be "reinforced both by formal institutions,
such as Jim Crow laws (a process known as institutional path dependence), and also by informal institutions, such as family socialization and community norms (a process we call behavioral path dependence)."
In addition, many processes and events have been identified as critical junctures.
The
domestication of animals is commonly treated as a turning point in
world history. The image depicts an Egyptian hieroglyphic painting
showing an early instance of a domesticated animal.
Pre-1760 power jumps
Michael Mann, in The Sources of Social Power (1986),
relies on Gellner's neo-episodic model of change and identifies a series
of "power jumps" in world history prior to 1760 - the idea of power
jumps is similar to that of a critical juncture. Some of the examples of power jumps identified by Mann are:
Collier and Collier's Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and the Regime Dynamics in Latin America
(1991) compares "eight Latin American countries to argue that
labor-incorporation periods were critical junctures that set the
countries on distinct paths of development that had major consequences
for the crystallization of certain parties and party systems in the
electoral arena. The way in which state actors incorporated labor
movements was conditioned by the political strength of the oligarchy,
the antecedent condition in their analysis. Different policies towards
labor led to four specific types of labor incorporation: state
incorporation (Brazil and Chile), radical populism (Mexico and
Venezuela), labor populism (Peru and Argentina), and electoral
mobilization by a traditional party (Uruguay and Colombia). These
different patterns triggered contrasting reactions and counter reactions
in the aftermath of labor incorporation. Eventually, through a complex
set of intermediate steps, relatively enduring party system
regimes were established in all eight countries: multiparty polarizing
systems (Brazil and Chile), integrative party systems (Mexico and
Venezuela), stalemated party systems (Peru and Argentina), and systems
marked by electoral stability and social conflict (Uruguay and
Colombia)."
John Ikenberry's After Victory: Institutions, Strategic Restraint, and the Rebuilding of Order After Major Wars (2001) compares post-war settlements after major wars – following the Napoleonic Wars in 1815, the world wars in 1919 and 1945, and the end of the Cold War
in 1989. It argues that "international order has come and gone, risen
and fallen across historical eras" and that the "great moments of order
building come after major wars – 1648, 1713, 1815, 1919, 1945, and
1989." In essence, peace conferences and settlement agreements put in
place "institutions and arrangements for postwar order." Ikenberry also
shows that "the actual character of international order has varied
across eras and order building moments" and that "variations have been
manifest along multiple dimensions: geographic scope, organizational
logic, rules and institutions, hierarchy and leadership, and the manner
in and degree to which coercion and consent undergird the resulting
order."
Seymour Martin Lipset, in The Democratic Century
(2004), addresses the question why North America developed stable
democracies and Latin America did not. He holds that the reason is that
the initial patterns of colonization, the subsequent process of economic
incorporation of the new colonies, and the wars of independence varies.
The divergent histories of Britain and Iberia are seen as creating
different cultural legacies that affected the prospects of democracy.
Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson’s Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity, and Poverty (2012) draws on the idea of critical junctures. A key thesis of this book is that, at critical junctures (such as the
Glorious Revolution in 1688 in England), countries start to evolve along
different paths. Countries that adopt inclusive political and economic
institutions become prosperous democracies. Countries that adopt
extractive political and economic institutions fail to develop political
and economically.
Debates in research
Critical
juncture research typically contrasts an argument about the historical
origins of some outcome to an explanation based in temporally proximate factors. However, researchers have engaged in debates about what historical event should be considered a critical juncture.
The rise of the West
A key debate in research on critical junctures concerns the turning point that led to the rise of the West.
Jared Diamond, in Guns, Germs and Steel
(1997) argues that the development reaching back to around 11,000 BCE
explain why key breakthroughs were made in the West rather than in some
other region of the world.
Michael Mitterauer, in Why Europe? The Medieval Origins of its Special Path (2010) traces the rise of the West to developments in the Middle Ages.
Jerry F. Hough
and Robin Grier (2015) claim that "key events in England and Spain in
the 1260s explain why Mexico lagged behind the United States
economically in the 20th century."
Sebastián Mazzuca
attributes Latin America's poor economic performance in the twentieth
century to the distinctive state weakness resulting from the process of
state formation in the nineteenth century, and the way in which national
territories were formed, combining dynamic areas and backward
peripheries. This claim complements and refines the usual ideas that attribute all
forms of economic and social backwardness in Latin America to colonial
institutions.
Atul Kohli (2004) argues that developmental states originate in the colonial period.
Tuong Vu (2010) maintains that developmental states originate in the post-colonial period.
Reception and impact
Research on critical junctures is generally seen as an important contribution to the social sciences.
Within political science, Berntzen argues that research on
critical junctures "has played an important role in comparative
historical and other macro-comparative scholarship." Some of the most notable works in the field of comparative politics since the 1960s rely on the concept of a critical juncture.
Barrington Moore Jr.'s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy: Lord and Peasant in the Making of the Modern World (1966) is broadly recognized as a foundational study in the study of democratization.
Ruth Berins Collier and David Collier's Shaping the Political Arena: Critical Junctures, the Labor Movement, and the Regime Dynamics in Latin America (1991) has been characterized by Giovanni Capoccia
and R. Daniel Kelemen as a "landmark work" and by Kathleen Thelen as a
"landmark study ... of regime transformation in Latin America."
Robert D. Putnam's Making Democracy Work: Civic Traditions in Modern Italy (1993) provides an analysis of the historical origins of social capital in
Italy that is widely credited with launching a strand of research on social capital and its consequences in various fields within political science.
Johannes Gerschewski describes John Ikenberry After Victory (2001) as a "masterful analysis."
Frank Baumgartner and Bryan D. Jones's Agendas and Instability in American Politics (2009) is credited with having "a massive impact in the study of public policy."
Within economics, the historically informed work of Douglass North, and Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson, is seen as partly responsible for the disciple's renewed interest in
political institutions and the historical origins of institutions and
hence for the revival of the tradition of institutional economics.
