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Chapter 3
Politics and the Science of Science Policy
written by
Harvey Sapolsky
Professor of Public Policy and Organization, Emeritus
Department of Political Science
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
sapolsky@mit.edu
and
Mark Zachary Taylor
Assistant Professor
Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
Georgia Institute of Technology
HYPERLINK "mailto:mzak@gatech.edu" mzak@gatech.edu
in Handbook of Science of Science Policy eds. John H. Marburger III, Kaye Husbands Fealing, Julia Lane, Bill Valdez, & Stephanie Shipp. (Stanford University Press, 2011).
Introduction
Politics is the main obstacle to the development and application of a science of science policy (SOSP). Scientists and engineers need patrons. Government is the richest of all patrons but also the most difficult with which to deal. Several authors in this volume grieve the fact that those who want to plan research and development investments can control neither the level of government allocations nor their purpose. We argue that this is because governments support the advancement of science and technology (S&T) mostly through their support of specific missions such as defense or health, and it is the politics of these missions, and the many contextual goals of government, that determines the rate and direction of its research and development investments ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1995116[1]11611617Sapolsky, Harvey M.The Truly Endless FrontierTechnology Review (00401692)Technology Review (00401692)37988SCIENCE & state1995Massachusetts Institute of Technology / MIT00401692http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=aph&AN=9511131565&site=ehost-live[1]. Governments can also affect the supply and demand conditions for science and technology outside of the budgetary process via regulatory regimes, anti-trust, taxes, standards, and so on. These politically imposed limits do not necessarily hinder rapid advances in knowledge or useful societal application or major innovation, but they do impede the quest for a science of science policy and the rational management of science and technology.
This chapter will describe the politics of government patronage of research and development activities, focusing on the main missions and searching for the guiding principles. It will also explain how political scientists theorize public support for, and opposition to, science and technology outside of fiscal policy. The changing role of government in the face of globalization is part of this discussion. It begins, however, with a discussion of innovation and the politics that underlies the process of bringing significant change to society. In modern society, and most especially contemporary America, all claim to be promoters of innovation, seeing it as progress and primarily beneficial. But innovation always has costs and opponents among those who are to bear them. The success of the opponents relates very little to the outcome of a disinterested cost-benefit analysis of any given innovation, something that advocates of a science of science policy might favor, and much more to their ability to punch back politically. The opponents are not properly labeled the delayers of progress but, rather, the defenders of legitimate rights and interests. And contrary to popular perception, globalization is not decreasing these political dynamics but changing them, along with the role of government in S&T policy.
Finally, we should recognize that cross-national comparisons are useful, but only to a limited extent ADDIN EN.CITE Spiegel-Rosing1976117[2]11711728Spiegel-Rosing, Inade Solla Prince, DerekScience, Technology and Society: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective1976London, UKSage Publications[2]. In the United States, the main governmental missions that science and technology serve are national security, health, economic prosperity, and safety and environmental regulation. Most other nations concentrate their S&T investments on economic development goals to the extent that they support research domestically, while free riding on the need for larger nations to tend to a broader array of public concerns. In fact no nation approaches anywhere near the investments the United States makes on either defense or health care research. We are truly the guardians of the global commons, invited or not ADDIN EN.CITE Posen2003198[3]19819817Posen, Barry R.Command of the Commons: The Military Foundation of U.S. HegemonyInternational SecurityInternational Security5-462812003The MIT Press01622889http://www.jstor.org/stable/4137574[3].
The Politics Of Innovation
Although specific definitions of innovation vary across scholars ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [4-9], most political scientists argue that innovation is not just creating something new, not just discovery or invention. Innovation requires at least the implementation of an idea, the placement into practice of something new. Following James Q. Wilson, however, we see innovation as involving more than implementing simple change ADDIN EN.CITE Wilson1971159[10]1591596Wilson, James Q.Thompson, James D.Notes Toward a Theory of InnovationOrganizational Design 1971PittsburghUniversity of Pittsburgh Press[10]. Innovation is change that has significant impact on an organizations main tasks and personnel incentives. It changes the organization, what it does, and who leads it.
Take aircraft for an example. The U.S. Air Force believes in the centralized management of air power and is dominated at its highest levels by pilots, usually fighter or bomber pilots. A faster aircraft, one that has a longer range, or one that has a larger payload, generally, is not innovative because, such a craft, although an improvement, would likely do little to change significantly the doctrine of the air force. The switch to unmanned aircraft, however, would likely alter dramatically the air forces doctrine and hierarchy, even if it did not itself lead the innovation. The air force is already feeling the pressure of the U.S. Armys interest in unmanned craft for battlefield surveillance and its use of enlisted soldiers as unmanned system controllers. If the army independently can see and target enemy forces far beyond the next hill, then the air forces combat role is threatened.
It is this aspect of innovationchange that threatens some groups and favors othersthat is often ignored in discussions of the development of a science of science policy. Such threats are at the core of Joseph Schumpeters insights into innovation. He called innovation creative destruction, the killing off of the old by the new ADDIN EN.CITE Schumpeter1942119[11]1191196Schumpeter, Joseph A.Captialism, Socialism and Democracy1942New York, NYHarper[11]. The destruction element is crucial for Schumpeter as it clears the path for the new. Airlines killed off intercity passenger railroads and cross ocean liners in the process of improving commercial and recreational travel. The premium people were willing to pay for faster travel gradually ate away alternative transport as airliner safety and comfort improved. Schumpeters insight explains the opposition to innovation. The losers see their fate. Innovation may benefit society, but it has its victims, and these victims fight back.
Government is never the neutral observer in these upheavals but, rather, is pursued by both sides in the hope of gaining policy advantages in their mortal conflict ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [12-16]. These politics are often neglected by SOSP and innovation researchers, who tend to assume widespread support for progress in science and technology and then ask which types of policies will achieve the best results. Yet political resistance to technological change can obstruct or warp otherwise good S&T policy ADDIN EN.CITE Bauer1995125[17, 18]12512528Bauer, Martin W.Resistance to new technology : nuclear power, information technology and biotechnology1995CambridgeCambridge University PressCohen199148484828Cohen, L. R. NollThe Technology Pork Barrel1991Washington, DCBrookings Institution[17, 18]. Recent examples in the United States include resistance to nuclear power ADDIN EN.CITE Rogers2007126[19, 20]1261266Rogers, Kenneth A.Kingsley, Marvin G.Calculated risks: highly radioactive waste and homeland security2007Burlington, VTAshgate PublisingDuffy19971271271276Duffy, Robert JNuclear politics in America : a history and theory of government regulation1997Lawrence, KSUniversity Press of Kansas[19, 20], stem cell research ADDIN EN.CITE Banchoff2005128[21]12812817Thomas BanchoffPath Dependence and Value-Driven Issues: The Comparative Politics of Stem Cell ResearchWorld PoliticsWorld Politics200-2305722005[21], alternative energy ADDIN EN.CITE Hahn2009129[22, 23]12912917Hahn, RobertCecot, CarolineThe benefits and costs of ethanol: an evaluation of the government's analysisJournal of Regulatory EconomicsJournal of Regulatory Economics275-2953532009Gamboa200713013013017Gamboa, GonzaloMunda, GiuseppeThe problem of windfarm location: A social multi-criteria evaluation frameworkEnergy PolicyEnergy Policy1564-1583353Multi-criteria decision analysisWind energyConflict management20070301-4215http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6V2W-4K8SC7Y-4/2/d325a8727a3fc4ca167117bb24bf3a37[22, 23], HIV-safe blood products ADDIN EN.CITE Epstein1996131[24, 25]1311316Epstein, StevenImpure science: AIDS, activism, and the politics of knowledge1996Berkeley, CAUniversity of California PressTaylor200913213213217Taylor, Mark ZacharyFederalism and Technological Change in Blood ProductsJournal of Health Politics Policy and LawJournal of Health Politics Policy and Law863-8983462009December 1, 2009http://jhppl.dukejournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/34/6/86310.1215/03616878-2009-030[24, 25], and even new weapons systems ADDIN EN.CITE Sweezy2005133[26]1331336Sweezy, Jodie Austin LongFrom Concept to Combat: Tomahawk Cruise Missile Program History and Reference Guide, 1972 - 20042005Patuxent River, MdNaval Air Systems Command[26]. In each of these cases, the losing interest groups created by scientific or technological change were able to convince politicians to block, slow, or alter government support for scientific and technological progress. Therefore, in order to create a science of science policy, we also need to have an understanding of how domestic politics can affect the design, passage, and implementation of science and technology policy.
Science and technology change the power relations within a society by a variety of mechanisms, any of which can trigger political action to obstruct them. For example, sociologists and historians have focused on how new technologies can be designed to empower or disadvantage one social group over others ADDIN EN.CITE Caro1974134[27]1341346Caro, Robert A.The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York1974New York, NYVintage Press[27], or how science and technology can change the nature of human activity (in work, communications, war, etc.) and thereby fundamentally alter the roles or identities of the people performing these activities, and hence their social, economic, or political standing ADDIN EN.CITE Cowan1983202[28]2022026Cowan, Ruth SchwartzMore work for mother: the ironies of household technology from the open hearth to the microwave 1983New YorkBasic Books[28].
Perhaps the most potent form of redistribution caused by S&T is economic. Technological innovation is economically distributive in that it allows people to perform entirely new activities or to perform established activities with increased efficiency. It therefore gives its adopters a competitive advantage by increasing their productivity or through factor accumulation. Perhaps more subtly, but equally important, new technology can also completely change the factor inputs to, and resource requirements for, various economic activities. In doing so, technological change can fundamentally alter the supply and demand conditions for these inputs and resources, increasing the value of some relative to others.
For example, the advent of steam-powered railroads changed the relative values of land, coal, lumber, and various metals and drastically increased the demand for engineering skills. The subsequent appearance of the internal combustion engine increased the value of oil relative to coal, while the rise of modern fuel-cell technologies may in the future decrease the value of both commodities as well as put a premium on hydrogen production and storage ADDIN EN.CITE Beasley1988135[29]1351356Beasley, David R.The Suppression of the Automobile: Skulduggery at the Crossroads1988New York, NYGreewood Press[29]. More famously, in the now stock clich, the advent of the automobile destroyed the demand for products and services associated with the horseandbuggy industries ADDIN EN.CITE Kinney2004136[30]1361366Kinney, Thomas A. The Carriage Trade: Making Horse-Drawn Vehicles in America2004Baltimore, MD Johns Hopkins University Press[30]. Further examples of the distributive nature of technological change can be cited ad nauseam; the point is that technological innovation creates winners and losers, especially in the long run.
Exactly who are these losers? Depending on the form it takes and the economic and political environment in which it appears, technological change can threaten labor, corporations, consumers, governments, and so on. Losers can be skilled labor defending their jobs; owners of natural resources who seek to prevent their destruction or degradation; producers of competing technologies who seek to retain market share and profitability; consumers with large sunk costs in existing technologies; and even investors in stocks, bonds, or physical capital who seek to maximize their return on investment. But regardless of their individual characteristics, they are often holders of assets (skills, capital, land, resources, etc.) whose value will be hurt due to the effects of technological change on supply and demand conditions.
Moreover, these losers may seek to resist threatening scientific research or technological change by influencing or capturing government policy in order to slow or obstruct such change. Resisters can organize and use their financial or electoral clout to influence government to slow technological change via a range of mechanisms: taxes, tariffs, anti-trust litigation, licensing, standards setting and regulations, manipulation of guidelines for research, and so on.
Take, for example, the advent of modern shipping containers, which are a mixture of advanced transportation technologies and computer software. According to Marc Levinsons recent analysis, containerization drastically changed the demand for, and therefore the relative prices and incomes of, expensive inputs, especially dock labor ADDIN EN.CITE Levinson2006139[31]1391396Marc LevinsonThe Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger2006Princeton, NJPrinceton University Press[31]. Before containerization, the relatively short time that a ship spent at dock might account for three-quarters of its voyage costs ADDIN EN.CITE Levinson2006139[31]1391396Marc LevinsonThe Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger2006Princeton, NJPrinceton University Press[31]. During the 1960s, dockworkers understood this well, realizing that containers threatened demand for their labor, and organized against them. In some ports, labor opposition prevented containerization for years. Furthermore, not only were dock unions powerful but the major ports they dominated were a vital source of jobs and business for local economies and hence political support for state and citylevel politicians. Containerization at new or union-weak port facilities would eventually create competition, drawing work away from heavily unionized ports such as New York City and forcing compromises between container shippers and labor unions. However, labor resistance led to years of strikes and negotiations, eventually involving the Kennedy and Johnson administrations as well as Congress. This discouraged many shippers and ports from experimenting with containers, and bankrupting a few that did.
But labor was not alone. Fearing competition, the railroad corporations also fought containers into the 1970s, both legally, through regulatory bodies and legislative action, and illegally, through service disruptions and slowdowns for any customer using containers. Some railroads feared that containerization represented a redistribution of shipping to a technological mode in which they could not profitably compete. Other railroad interests resisted walking away from recent major investments into infrastructure for handling trucks and trailers, or expending yet more investment on container-friendly cranes and storage facilities. The costs of switching technology were just too high.
Hence the speed of innovation and diffusion of container shipping depended, in part, on political considerations. Around the world, those national and local governments able to compensate or coerce the losers saw their ports (e.g., Singapore, Shanghai, Los Angeles, Newark, Tilbury) and transportation firms (e.g., Sea-Land, Evergreen, Maersk) become leaders in modern container-based shipping, while governments unable to resolve political resistance to containers saw their ports shrink (e.g., London, Liverpool, New York) and corporations fall (e.g., Grace).
Which losers will act to resist new technology, and what determines the scope of resistance? Resistance is not simply a matter of labor groups or technophobes fighting progress but can also be a strategy pursued by corporations, scientists, or even the very interest groups an innovation is supposed to help ADDIN EN.CITE Shilts1987140[32]1401406Shilts, RandyAnd the band played on: politics, people, and the AIDS epidemic1987New York, NYSt. Martins Press[32]. One theory of resistance is based on asset specificity ADDIN EN.CITE Mokyr1990141[33]1411416Mokyr, JoelThe Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress1990New York, NYOxford University Press[33]. Those economic assets for which the costs of switching technologies (from established to new) are relatively high are said to be specific to a particular technology. Those assets for which the costs of switching technologies are relatively low are defined as mobile. Factor specificity matters because if all economic actors were perfectly mobile between existing and new technologies then there would be no distributive effects: everyone would simply switch to the new technology when its return on investment (ROI) exceeded that of the existing technology. However, all actors are not equally mobile. For example, the skills of a nuclear engineer are more specific to the technology of nuclear power than, say, an Entergy Corporation bond held by an investor. Hence, that investor might support new clean fuel innovation (such as windmills, tidal generators, solar power), since he can easily sell his bond and reinvest in the new technologies in order to receive the higher ROIs they promise. However, the engineer should be more likely to resist these new technologies, and to favor politicians and policies that support nuclear power, since her skills are tied to the fate of that technology. Thus the more mobile ones assets are relative to a particular existing technology, the less resistant and more supportive one will be to scientific and technological changes that threaten it. Conversely, the more specific ones assets are to an existing technology or scientific research program, the more resistant and less supportive one will be to changes that threaten it.
Culture, ideology, and religion also interact with economic interests to foment opposition to scientific research and technological change (e.g., computerized medical records, stem cells, genetically modified foods). As John Gero shows in Chapter 6, innovation threatens change in the value systems of both producers and adopters. For our purposes, this means that if the economic disruptions caused by technological change are linked to existing tensions between domestic identity groups (ethnic, religious, regional, etc.), then resistance to new technology can take on additional fervor due to the prior conflicts. For example, historically the economic losers created by innovations in birth control technologies over the past two centuries have generally consisted of physicians who sought to prevent nonprofessional medical providers from entering their markets. While the physicians could possibly have obstructed these innovations alone, their political resistance was considerably strengthened by alliances with religious and other groups that felt culturally threatened by contraception ADDIN EN.CITE Gordon1990142[34]1421426Gordon, LindaWoman's body, woman's right: A social history of birth control in America1990New York, NYPenguin Press[34]. Likewise, current political debates about contraceptive technologies, and the medical research to develop them, are built upon religious, racial, and generational divides and their conflicting value systems.
The politics of distribution alone does not determine national innovation rates. Such logic would suggest that national innovation rates are simply a result of cost-benefit calculation: the more losers created by technological change, and the deeper the losses, the more political resistance should occur, and the slower innovation rates should be. But this is not always the case. There are many instances of minor technological change that have been thwarted by a handful of losers and many instances of major technological revolutions that proceeded despite massive economic, political, and even cultural displacements. Therefore, political scientists have begun to incorporate security concerns into their theories of science and technology, especially when explaining S&T competitiveness in other nations. Specifically, only when policymakers need to simultaneously address external security threats and domestic political pressures, but lack easily accessible resources with which to do so, will they be forced to promote S&T policies as a means to grow the national economy out of trouble ADDIN EN.CITE Doner2005143[35]14314317Doner, Richard F.Ritchie, Bryan K.Slater, DanSystemic Vulnerability and the Origins of Developmental States: Northeast and Southeast Asia in Comparative PerspectiveInternational OrganizationInternational Organization327-3615922005Cambridge University Press on behalf of the International Organization Foundation00208183http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877907[35]. Likewise, inward-oriented leaders who resist integration into the global economy tend to put national S&T development on a heavily military, especially nuclear, trajectory. In contrast, more internationalist leaders stake their political survival on economic growth and will orient national S&T policies toward the civilian economy ADDIN EN.CITE Solingen2007144[36]1441446Solingen, EtelNuclear logics: contrasting paths in East Asia and the Middle East2007Princeton, NJPrinceton University Press [36].
Finally, although much of this section has focused on the resistance to technological change, scholarship on interest groups using politics to interfere in the science side of S&T is equally substantial, stretching back at least forty years, but it is often ignored in SOSPstyle research. Science is regularly created and customized to fit the goals of particular industries or interest groups, with scientific studies designed to confirm preselected outcomes. These studies are then presented to regulatory bodies, courts, and legislators as evidence in support of favorable actions. Meanwhile, unfavorable science is often buried, diluted, or modified, sometimes by the very government agencies tasked with producing it. The credibility of unpopular research, or even of the scientists who produce it, is frequently attacked for purely political reasons. This occurs not merely in media statements but through legislative hearings and threats of costly, timeconsuming lawsuits. One well-known tactic is for politicians to pack federal science advisory panels with experts loyal to particular economic interests or specific political ideologies. Examples of the aforementioned can be found across the scientific spectrum, in the cases of tobacco, asbestos, silicon breast implants, climate change, stem cell research, alar, genetically modified organisms, and myriad medicines and environmental contaminants ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [37-45].
Getting Beyond Opposition
:Innovation does occur. Opposition can be overcome, but the process isnt always a pretty one. Politics often involves what science must abhor, although scientists may notthe manipulation of the truth. Consider how big projects may start. Albert Hirschman reviewed a large set of overseas economic development projects, most of which failed to achieve their goals. He wondered how they were approved in the first place and discovered a persistent pattern of proponents exaggerating the likely benefits and underestimating the likely costs ADDIN EN.CITE Hirschman1967154[46]1541546Hirschman, Albert O.Development Projects Observed1967Washington, DCThe Brookings Institution[46]. Hirschman later compared economic assistance projects with research and development projects and observed the same pattern ADDIN EN.CITE Hirschman1967154[46]1541546Hirschman, Albert O.Development Projects Observed1967Washington, DCThe Brookings Institution[46]. The way to needed resources is by overpromising. This is clearly the case in major aerospace programs such as strategic bombers ADDIN EN.CITE Brown1992155[47]1551556Brown, MFlying : The Politics of the U. S. Strategic Bomber Program1992IthacaCornell University Press[47], the Shuttle ADDIN EN.CITE Mahler2009156[48]1561566Mahler, Julianne G.Learning at NASA: The Challenger & Columbia Accidents.2009Washington, DCGeorgetown University Press[48], and ballistic missiles ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1972157[49]1571576Sapolsky, HarveyPolaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government1972CampbridgeHarvard University Press[49].
The break on exaggeration is the development of knowledgeable staffs. Successful organizations, ones noted for their innovations, rarely stay innovative. As Clayton Christensen reports in his study of computer electronics, The Innovators Dilemma, innovators hire staffs that then block future innovation because they worry over its costs and effects on current business ADDIN EN.CITE Christensen1997158[50]1581586Christensen, Clayton M.The Innovators Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail1997BostonHarvard Business School Press[50]. The better the staffs, the more likely the exaggerations will be caught. In government, project overruns and schedule slippage, the constant companion of risk taking, are followed by demands for the insertion of independent evaluators, cost estimators, and testers into the governments decisionmaking process so that these errors will not be repeated.
James Q. Wilson captures well what we might call the Science Policy Planners Dilemma in his analysis of organizational innovation. You can, he argues, increase the capacity of an organization to generate innovative ideas by increasing the diversity of organization as measured in terms of the variety of different professions it employs. Different specialists have different perspectives on the organizations tasks and needs. Wilson next argues that the more diverse the organization is, the more likely proposals for innovation will be presented. Fearing disadvantage, subunits seeing others offer ideas for change will offer their own proposals for change. But diversity has the opposite effect on the ability of the organization to implement innovation. Diversity in terms of tasks and incentives increases organizational decentralization and makes decision making very slow and difficult. Wilson studied city administrations. The nondiverse Chicago machine encouraged few proposals but could make binding decisions as the powerful mayor controlled all relevant agencies and boards. In New York City the mayor is relatively weak, but the many independent agencies and departments had many suggestions about how to improve government while advantaging their own programs. Decentralization, the complement of organization task and incentive diversity, promotes the presentation of innovative ideas but frustrates the adoption of innovation. Centralization does the opposite ADDIN EN.CITE Wilson1971159[10]1591596Wilson, James Q.Thompson, James D.Notes Toward a Theory of InnovationOrganizational Design 1971PittsburghUniversity of Pittsburgh Press[10].
Science policy often increases creativity through its advocacy of research funding and the establishment of interdisciplinary centers but usually offers little encouragement to the centralization that aids implementation. Research agencies, most attached to missionfocused departments, proliferated in the United States after the Second World War, as science gained in public stature because of the wartime contributions of scientists, especially those associated with the Manhattan Project ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1990160[51]1601606Sapolsky, HarveyScience and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval Research1990PrincetonPrinceton University Press[51]. The support for science, though, was made vulnerable to the demands for greater mission accomplishments.
Comparing the experience of government research agencies, Sanford L. Weiner saw the potential for an innovation advantage, however, in the mission link. The agencies that did best in terms of both gaining resources for their grantees and producing science had what he described as constrained autonomy ADDIN EN.CITE Weiner1972161[52]16116117Weiner, Sanford L.Resource Allocation in Basic Research and Organizational DesignPublic PolicyPublic Policy227-2552021972[52]. They were under pressure from their departments for missionrelevant results but had sufficient autonomy to develop ideas to the point at which their value was obvious. Autonomy bought time but did not remove the pressure for results, the fear that unless they produced there would be reorganization or termination. The less protected had no time to produce, and the most protected succumbed to the somnolent dangers of tenure.
Still, there is a difference between producing interesting ideas and generating significant innovations. The research agencies that had constrained autonomy may be the most productive, but innovation requires paying an organizational price, the destruction of part of the organization to allow replacement by the new. A clear way of seeing the politics involved is to examine the three main theories of military innovation.
One theory argues that because innovation is so painful, it has to be imposed from outside. The leadership of military organizations is drawn from the dominant communities within the service and is committed to particular doctrinesways of employing forces built around those communities, often called platform communities because of their link to a special type of aircraft, ship, or weapon system. Their resistance to change in doctrine that would undermine the dominance of their platform community is well known if not entirely accurate, for example, the battleship admirals supposed resistance to carrier strike aviation. Civilian officials are usually uncomfortable in interfering with military priorities, but faced with waging war with what they perceive to be a faulty doctrine, they will intervene to select a better one. The specific example that Barry Posen offers is the British governments decision on the eve of the Second World War to force the Royal Air Force to build an air defense system rather than pursue its preferred strategic bombing doctrine ADDIN EN.CITE Posen1984162[4]1621626Posen, BarryThe Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain and Germany Between the World Wars1984IthacaCornell University Press[4].
A second, contrasting view comes from Stephen P. Rosen, who argues that military innovation is a long, generational process in which junior officers see the need for innovation but require patrons to survive until they reach the senior ranks of their service to bring about true doctrinal change. Civilian intervention is largely useless. The pace of change is slow as organizational opportunities and allies are won and lost in a struggle to define the services future. He finds supporting examples in the years between the First World War and Second World War, when carrier aviation and amphibious warfare were developed ADDIN EN.CITE Rosen1991163[8]1631636Rosen, Stephen P.Winning The Next War:Innovation and the Modern Military1991IthacaCornell University Press[8].
A third theoretical perspective on military innovation is offered by Owen Cote Jr., and one of us ADDIN EN.CITE SapolskySpring 2000165[53-55]16516517Sapolsky, HarveyOn the Theory of Military InnovationBreakthroughsBreakthroughsIX1Spring 2000Cote199616416416434Cote, Jr. OwenThe Politics of Innovative Military Doctrine1996Cambridge, MAMassachusetts Institute of TechnologyDissertationSapolsky199616616616617Sapolsky, HarveyThe Interservice Competition SolutionJoint Forces QuarterlyJoint Forces QuarterlySpring1996[53-55]. It argues that interservice rivalry is the driver of military innovation in the United States. The services in this view are indeed dominated by particular platform communities, but they also worry about their relative position in warfare. If a new technology appears or a major strategic threat develops, then the services will compete to gain advantage in the nations defense. This perspective is a synthetic one, because it depends in part on a willingness of civilians to encourage the competition, which can be intense, and offers service leaders a powerful incentive to accelerate the advancement of new concepts internally. Dire circumstances, such as an approaching war, certainly can force civilian leaders to accept the degree of governmental disarray that interservice competition involves and service leaders to do the same within their organizations. The cold war offers examples of the power of interservice competition in the development of ballistic missiles and strategic defenses. Despite recent attempts to limit service competition via structural changes within the Department of Defense favoring joint activities both in the field and in acquisitions, the development of unmanned aerial systems seems to have benefited from the quest of individual services to control their own combat operations in Iraq and Afghanistan.
What is evolutionary at best, the acceptance by an organization of new ideas and an accompanying realignment of power within the organization, can get accelerated only with upheaval. Outsiders must intervene in the most important parts of the organization, its doctrine and power relationships, or organizations must be pitted against one another in a struggle for budget and prominence. The ballistic missile innovation essentially killed off the air forces bomber force and brought submarine officers, accounting for less than 10 percent of naval officers, to the top rungs of the navy. Planning usually gets pushed aside by the politics. Once again, the desirability of change is not viewed equally by all those involved, and some will fight to protect their interests.
Government Patronage of R&D
A fundamental need of planners is to set priorities, to choose some goals consistently over others in allocating scarce resources. As William B. Bonvillian and David Goldston detail in Chapters 15 and 16, respectively, politics is the process of setting priorities in the allocation of public resources and rarely involves a deep concern about consistency or scarcity. Science policy planners presumably would want to consider the resources available across government in developing their research investment plans to gain the greatest societal benefits. Sector politics has Balkanized research allocations, ignored assertions of societal priorities, and has no patience with the prescriptions of planners and yet likely offers science more resources and thus better opportunities for major advances than planners fondest hopes.
The search for patrons leads to promises about the practical value of the work to be done. Public patrons, like private ones, can be convinced of the need to advance basic knowledge and of the prestige that goes with supporting the best in their fields, but mostly there is a desire to solve immediate problems or aid in the development of the local economy. Thus the first federal research grant was to help in the regulation of steam engines, which had a habit of exploding, and the earliest federal effort to aid higher education, the Land Grant Act, produced a lot of colleges and universities with technology, agriculture, mining, and industry in their names ADDIN EN.CITE DuPree195750[56, 57]50506DuPree, HScience in the Federal Government1957New York, NYHarper TorchbooksMiller19701671671676Miller, Howard S.Dollars for Research1970Seattle, WAUniversity of Washington[56, 57].
Given dramatic examples of technologybased prosperity, such as Silicon Valley, the Research Triangle, and Route 128, modern governments are easily convinced of the economic rewards of increased research investments. But the task of selecting which locations and industries to support is one that strains governments. The pressure to assist declining regions or fading industries often overwhelms the intent to be strategic with research investments. The investments then become less of a stimulus to economic growth and more of a subsidy seeking to stabilize or preserve the places and firms slated for a Schumpeterian demise.
Defense has been an even greater source of support for research investments than economic development. Much of the interest has been a steady increase in the application of science and technology to warfare that has gradually changed the nature of warfare from a professional enterprise to an industrial undertaking to its current hightechnology version. Major punctuations in this chain are the U.S. Civil War reinforced by the First World War, which demonstrated the advantages of mass armies and industrialization, the Second World War, which included on the Allied side at least a full mobilization of science for warfare, and the cold war, which centered on an arms race involving jet aircraft, nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and nuclearpowered submarines and saw in the United States the development of systems engineering capabilities in both defense contracting firms and specialized not-for-profit organizations dedicated to serve public needs ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky2003168[58]1681685Sapolsky, HarveyPrencipe, AndreaDavies, AndrewInventing Systems IntegrationThe Business of Systems Management15-342003OxfordOxford University Press[58].
The latter organizations, which include the major national laboratories of the Department of Energy and the Federally Funded Research and Development Centers (FFRDCs), for example, Lincoln Laboratory, MITRE Corporation, and Aerospace Corporation, supported by the Department of Defense, have played a crucial role in the cold war by providing the government with a source of independent advice and technical assistance in managing the development of vital strategic systems. The federal governments own defense research facilities grew during the cold war, but most of the effort to develop and produce weapons became increasingly concentrated in the hands of defense contractors who were flexible in structure and could attract better technical talent because of being able to offer higher salaries than the civil service schedule. The FFRDCs and similar organizations became the governments check on the contractors because of their higher status (many were affiliated with universities), competitive salaries, and independence ADDIN EN.CITE Gholz2003169[59]1691695Gholz, EugenePrencipe, AndreaDavies, AndrewSystems Integration in the US Defense Industry: Who Does It and Why Is It ImportantThe Business of Systems Management279-3062003OxfordOxford University Press[59].
Through agencies such as the Office of Naval Research, the Department of Defense pioneered federal support of academic science. This support helped place U.S. universities at the top of the international rankings in science and engineering. The allocations that favored a few universities on both coasts of the United States were the source of concern for congressmen and senators from other regions who thought correctly that their institutions would not share in the largesse offered by the Department of Defense ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1991205[60]2052056Sapolsky, HarveyScience and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval Research1991PrincetonPrinceton University Press[60]. Military claims about the need to use the most qualified researchers allowed for the concentration of defense agency research investments in just a handful of East Coast and West Coast elite institutions. Over time, however, the normal geographic equity pressures built into democratic politics led to the enactment of programs in the National Science Foundation and other civilian agencies to assist less endowed regions by earmarking laboratory construction and research support to develop new science and engineering capabilities. Moreover, defense contractors seeking to ensure strong congressional interest in their projects tended to favor states in these regions for the location of development and production facilities.
Even after the end of the cold war, America has maintained high levels of defense expenditures. Much more than any ally or rival, the United States emphasizes investment in advanced military technologies in its defense strategy. Consider that total U.S. defense expenditures are essentially equal that of the rest of world combined, but total U.S. defense research and development expenditures are several times larger than the rest of the worlds total. And this level of research and development investment has been near constant for more than a half century. Although the use of off-the-shelf technology, applying commercial advances, is increasingly significant in warfare, the military advantages the United States has acquired through emphasizing defense research and development are difficult to negate ADDIN EN.CITE Dombrowski2006170[61]1701706Peter DombrowskiEugene GholzBuying Military Transformation: Technological Innovationand the Defense Industry 2006New YorkColumbia University Press[61].
Continuing privatization, encouraged on a bipartisan basis since the end of the cold war, however, has created rather inflexible dependencies. The government has lost much of its technical and management capabilities for building complex systems to private contractors, which are in turn nearly totally dependent upon the government for their revenues. The checks and balances that FFRDCs and similar organizations provided weaken as public management weakens. The dependencies are most visible in the creation of Lead System Integrators, contractors managing networks of other contractors and being responsible for nearly all aspects of program design and acquisition for several major public programs, which isolates research and development planning efforts almost totally from the broad societal concerns advocated by science policy planners and intertwines it instead with private interests. Lockheed Martin or Boeing, or some partnership between them, becomes the manager of big chunks of public research and development activities ADDIN EN.CITE Ben-Ari2009171[62]17117128Ben-Ari, GuyPierre A. ChaoOrganizing for a Complex World: Developing Tomorrows Defense and Net-Centric Systems2009Washington, DCCenter for Strategic & International Studies[62].
Health care research also has a powerful draw on federal funds. We are as individuals all time limited in a fundamental sense for death will do us part. Through some combination of our genes, our bad habits and misjudgments, and/or the actions of others, we will discover the precise limit that awaits us. Our relatively affluent and increasingly democratic government responds with more and more investments in medical and related research to our obvious unwillingness to accept our fate, seeking both to extend our time and make it as pain free and unencumbered as possible. There is essentially no definable limit to these investments. Like in defense, technology promises victory in our quest, but unlike in defense, it cannot deliver. The truth notwithstanding, we cannot resist the promise.
Spending on medical research is politically buttressed in several ways. One way is through the pressure for national health insurance. Americans have been debating the structure of their national health care system for nearly a century. The debate became more intense after the Second World War, when Democrats sought to enact a national health insurance scheme as the unfinished element in a social welfare agenda that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had offered during the Great Depression. To defuse the political pressure that had been building for such a scheme, Republicans pressed for increased allocations to the budget of the National Institutes of Health based on the argument that medical research was the best insurance scheme of them all. Better knowledge of the causes and cures for disease would be better than more money for inadequate treatments ADDIN EN.CITE Strickland1972172[63]1721726Strickland, Stephen P.Politics, Science and Dread Disease: A Short History of United States Medical Research Policy1972CambridgeHarvard University Press[63]. Ever since then the major political parties have competed to provide increased resources for medical research as a demonstration of their partys better stewardship of the nations health.
Geography also works to advantage medical research. Medical schools have a large research focus not unlike the nations research universities to which many are affiliated, but unlike the research universities, highquality medical schools are spread relatively evenly with the population across the nation. Highquality medical schools are not concentrated in the Northeast or on the West Coast. Rather, they tend to closely follow the distribution of the population, because both physician training and medical research need what is euphemistically called clinical material, patients well, ill, and dying. State legislatures easily are persuaded to support local medical training in the hope of gaining quality medical care locally. Medical research is viewed as a marker for quality, thus the marketing advantage of teaching hospitals with large specialty research and training programs.
A third political impetus for medical research funding is the lobbying efforts of disease advocacy groups that seek special recognition and increased funding for work that appears focused on their affliction. Congressional appropriations for medical research are made by disease or patient category rather than by scientific discipline. The political judgment is that the crusade to conquer breast cancer or AIDS deserves more support, not the promise of immunology or endocrinology. Despite the perhaps perfunctory protest of research managers, the National Institutes of Health has dozens of institutes and centers devoted to one special cause or another, with more being continually added ADDIN EN.CITE Varmus2009173[64]1731736Varmus, HaroldThe Art and Politics of Science2009New York, NYW. W. Norton[64]. Public fears likely increase overall support for medical research by ensuring a continuing contest for preferred attention among disease and victims. The stealthy redirection of the funds for actual scientific progress becomes the prime task of medical research managers ADDIN EN.CITE Varmus2009173[64]1731736Varmus, HaroldThe Art and Politics of Science2009New York, NYW. W. Norton[64].
The politicization of science has a fourth frontwhat is often called regulatory science, the effort to ensure the safety and efficacy of products. The government that once worried about the safety of steam boilers now worries about the safety of automobiles and electrical transmissions networks. We require tests of drugs to see if they work as promised and examine workplaces to determine if hazardous materials are properly used and stored. Behind this and much more, regulation is a large research effort that is partially mandated and partially the result of legal prudence to avoid product safety suits.
Regulatory science is problematic because it is often very difficult to describe the exposures and risks involved. Substances that are toxic at high levels of exposure may require exposure beyond certain threshold levels to have health implications. It is difficult to develop accurate models. What is toxic for one species may be harmless for another. What kills laboratory mice may not kill laboratory rats. Impacts may involve long gestation periods. Individual lifetime exposure levels may be very hard to measure, especially for substances that appear in low doses. Scientists chip away at these problems but never fast enough for regulators who are required at times to make societyaffecting decisions with the limited evidence at hand.
Given the significant economic and ideological interests involved, the temptation is to claim that the science supports what are necessarily political judgments. Limited evidence means wide regulatory discretion that becomes politically palatable only through exaggeration or politicization. Consider sidestream smoking, for example. The overwhelming evidence that cigarette smoking causes high mortality and morbidity, publicized by public health officials, produced major reductions in smoking among Americans, reducing adult levels of smoking from nearly 50 percent in the 1950s to the low 30s in the 1980s. The remaining smokers were apparently undeterred. Public health officials then began promoting studies that seemed to show that nonsmokers, especially spouses and children of smokers, had adverse health effects from their exposure to sidestream smoke, creating further pressure on smokers to quit and greater regulatory opportunity to force them to do so. Nonsmokers, fearing the risks, have supported widespread bans on smoking in public. Smoking dropped to around 20 percent of the adult population and recruited fewer and fewer teenagers. It still remained difficult to measure exposure level or health effects of sidestream smoking, but few scientists dare object ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1986175[65-67]17517528Sapolsky, HarveyConsuming Fears: The Politics of Product Risks1986New YorkBasic BooksViscusi199517417417417W. Kip ViscusiSecondhand Smoke: Fact and FantasyRegulationRegulation42-4931995Angell19961761761766Angell, MarciaScience on Trial: The Clash of Medical Evidence and the Law in the Breast Implant Case1996New YorkW. W. Norton[65-67]. Parallels exist with the regulation of asbestos, lead, some food additives, and various pesticides ADDIN EN.CITE Gough1986177[68]1771776Gough, MichaelAgent Orange: The Facts1986New YorkPlenum Press[68].
Globalization, Fragmentation, and the Role of Government
Political economists argue that globalization has fundamentally altered the ways in which governments must approach S&T policy. Much like the sociological approach discussed in Chapter 2, these scholars are concerned with power and institutions; but political scientists tend to focus on institutions (and policies) with more formal structures than those considered by sociologists, such as the institutions that comprise a nations strategy for economic development. Interestingly, they tend to agree with sociologists that networks play a major role in determining S&T success. Also, contrary to the conventional wisdom that everlarger international markets are shrinking government options, they find that globalization has instead increased policy choices by fragmenting production processes (aka the supplychain or value-chain) into dozens of pieces for any given industry or even a product line. Hence, nations seeking to compete in hightechnology production must choose not only which industry but also which entry point on which to compete ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [7, 69-72]. Therefore, governments must alter their traditional top-down approach toward S&T and instead coordinate with other S&T relevant actors to customize policy with an eye toward selecting which kinds of activities their firms will compete on, not which industries.
Globalization can be defined as the increasingly freer movement of goods, services, labor, capital, [and information] across borders, towards a single market in inputs and outputs ADDIN EN.CITE Wolf2004181[73]1811816Wolf, MartinWhy Globalization Works2004New HavenYale University Press[73]. Science and technology have enabled globalization, but politics and competition drive it. During the 1990s, both proponents and critics argued that globalization severely weakened governments ability to make effective S&T, or any, policies. They hypothesized that competitive market forces would drive governments out of the business of managing their own economies, or at least narrow the policy choices available to them. Indeed, even in the governments traditional sphere of defense, civilian science and technology seemed to be taking the lead ADDIN EN.CITE Dombrowski2006170[61]1701706Peter DombrowskiEugene GholzBuying Military Transformation: Technological Innovationand the Defense Industry 2006New YorkColumbia University Press[61]. Proponents cheered these developments, arguing that economic actors were now forced to embrace innovation in order to compete. Critics decried the freer reign being taken by large Western corporations to dominate the production of new science and technology, against whom small, new, or developing innovators could never compete.
However, recent research in political economy has shown that neither scenario is occurring ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [7, 71, 74]. Globalization is changing the role of government in science and technology and is increasing, not diminishing or constraining, its choices. Nor can nations performing at the technological frontier comfortably assume away competitive threats from new innovators in developing or small countries. Globalization has radically transformed national approaches toward science and technology by fragmenting industrial production. Countries, and even subnational regions, now specialize not in particular high-tech industries but in particular stages of high-tech production ADDIN EN.CITE Research2009182[75]18218217Review of Policy Research,Special Issue on National Institutions and the Globalized Political Economy of Technological ChangeJanuary/March2009Research200918218218217Review of Policy Research,Special Issue on National Institutions and the Globalized Political Economy of Technological ChangeJanuary/March2009[75]. New product innovations are now sourced globally, allowing firms and policymakers to choose which mode of innovation will provide them with the greatest competitive advantage.
Take, for example, Apples iPhone. Its central processors and video chips are manufactured by Samsung in Singapore, where the German firm Infineon also produces the iPhones communication hardware. Meanwhile, much of the iPhone circuitry is designed and manufactured by several companies in Taiwan, where its digital camera hardware is also produced. U.S. firms domestically produce the touchscreen controllers and 802.11 wireless specific parts, while manufacturers in Japan and Germany provide further touchscreen and baseband technologies. Finally, Apples facility in Shenzhen, China, handles assembly, inventory, packing, and shipping ADDIN EN.CITE Abila2007184[76, 77]18418443Abila, PeterThe Apple iPhone Supply Chainhttp://www.shmula.com/304/the-apple-iphone-supply-chainhttp://www.shmula.com/304/the-apple-iphone-supply-chain2007Shmulahttp://www.shmula.com/304/the-apple-iphone-supply-chainAll Roads Lead to China200718318318312All Roads Lead to China,iPhone: Made In Shenzhen, Assembled by Foxconn2007http://www.allroadsleadtochina.com/2007/08/15/iphone-made-in-shenzhen/[76, 77].
The role of government has therefore changed. During the previous century, successful science and technology policy often meant one of two approaches: one for developing countries and another for lead innovators. For developing countries, it meant patriarchal technocrats picking winners in the style of Japans technological miracle. This catch-up path was fairly straightforward: first, imitation of basic Western manufacturing products and processes, followed by the use of economies of scope and scale to slowly climb up the value chain. The key policy prescriptions were heavy S&T education, subsidized finance, reverse engineering, joint ventures, technology licensing, inward FDI, and, above all, export orientation ADDIN EN.CITE Amsden2001185[78-80]1851856Amsden, Allice H.The rise of "the rest": challenges to the west from late-industrializing economies2001New YorkOxford University PressWoo-Cumings199918618618628Woo-Cumings, Meredith The Developmental StateCornell University Press1999IthacaJohnson19821871871876Johnson, Chalmers A.MITI and the Japanese miracle: the growth of industrial policy, 1925-19751982StanfordStanford University Press[78-80]. However, this policy strategy assumed an economy of vertically integrated industries producing a relatively stable set of products, preferably located in the same country, if not the same metropolitan area. Globalization has changed this dynamic.
Instead, in order to succeed at science and technology, governments in developing countries must now act more like management consultants. They must become more adaptable, acting as needed to facilitate long-term commitments to high-technology industries, not as custodians or commanders. On the one hand, this means that successful S&T policymakers in the developing world must be willing to delegate increasing degrees of decision-making power to industry as it grows and matures. On the other hand, state action is still necessary. As Breznitz puts it states . . . should not wait idly hoping that the miraculous power of the market will throw some economic growth their way ADDIN EN.CITE Breznitz2007180[7]1801806Breznitz, DanInnovation and the State: Political Choice and Strategies for Growth in Israel, Taiwan, and Ireland2007New Haven and LondonYale University Press[7]. Specifically, the state must foster national capacities in financial and human capital, not just in S&T but also among the technocrats who devise and implement policy.
For lead innovating nations, during the past century the keys to successful science and high-tech were either defense innovation or civilian national champions. In the United States, national security concerns motivated massive R&D investments, which laid the foundations for the American aircraft, digital computer, software, telecommunications, and satellite industries, to name but a few. Some technologies were driven forward for military reasons and then later realized substantial commercial applications. In other cases, the military was a useful justification to win resources for R&D that was essentially commercial or academic in focus. Meanwhile, in Europe and Japan, companies such as Airbus, Mitsubishi, and Siemens endured as high-tech competitors under the aegis of government largesse and protection ADDIN EN.CITE ADDIN EN.CITE.DATA [81-86].
But tendencies toward pork-barrel politics, technological monopolies, and national control of particular global S&T markets now threaten twentiethcentury policy strategies. Therefore, in order to maintain their nations at the technological frontier, political scientists argue that policymakers in advanced countries must foster technological modularity: the ability of different technologies to interoperate with each other (like Lego blocks), regardless of their manufacturer, internal structure, or capabilities ADDIN EN.CITE Cowhey2009208[87]2082086Cowhey, Peter F. Jonathan D. AronsonTransforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political Economy of Innovation2009CambridgeMIT Press[87]. Modularity encourages innovation in individual technologies (e.g., cell phones, computers, software) without the natural tendency toward monopoly control and the stagnation that attends it. Modularity reinforces competition, but it also demands rules that balance globalization efficiencies with legitimate domestic preferences. Hence, both domestic commercial and international trade policy should foster localism, pluralism, and diversity, as long as interoperability with national and global technical infrastructures is maintained. The emphasis here is on flexibility and allowance for hybrid solutions. Finally, a focus on promoting modularity requires that policymakers focus on strengthening technological infrastructure (e.g., computer networks, genetic libraries, electrical grids) and enhancing ubiquity of access.
A further consensus among many political economists is that for the United States to have a high-tech entrepreneurial society, policymakers need go beyond S&T policy and engineer broader political-economic conditions ADDIN EN.CITE Baumol2007195[88]1951956Baumol, William J.Litan, Robert E.Schramm, Carl J. Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity2007New HavenYale University Press[88]. First, policymakers must establish low barriers to entry and exit for firms. This requires a strong and stable financial system in order to provide investment capital to new firms. But it also requires flexible labor markets, since new hightechnology firms cannot survive long if the capital and S&T labor they need are tied up in obsolete sectors supported by political benefactors. In other words, freedom to succeed is conditional on freedom to fail. Second, institutions must reward high-tech entrepreneurial activity and discourage nonproductive entrepreneurship, or rent seeking (i.e., criminal behavior, frivolous litigation, lobbying, and political transfers). This means designing policies and institutions that will reduce the losers to technological change by either preventing, coercing, or compensating them. Third, there must be incentives for the technological winners to keep innovatinglow barriers to entry, openness to foreign competition, a competitive market system at home, and strong anti-trust laws. Otherwise, todays innovative victors merely mature to become tomorrows innovationresistant losers.
Finally, historical experience suggests that politicians and policymakers need to support an environment that blends larger firms and small entrepreneurial companies. Larger firms have consistently demonstrated their ability to replicate, refine, and mass-produce inventions, but they can be stultifying and run out of ideas over time (often due to labor resistance). Moreover, large firms have historically not excelled at producing the radical innovations that create new high-tech industries. Rather, this appears to be the competitive advantage of small entrepreneurial companies, which have a history of producing radical innovations with huge positive externalities ADDIN EN.CITE Baumol2007195[88]1951956Baumol, William J.Litan, Robert E.Schramm, Carl J. Good Capitalism, Bad Capitalism, and the Economics of Growth and Prosperity2007New HavenYale University Press[88].
Conclusions
Throughout this volume, practitioners and scholars alike look forward to the day when SOSP scholarship will aid in the design of policies by which investments in scientific research and technological development can produce broad societal advances. Ironically, the efforts to implement such S&T policies will likely be opposed by significant numbers of scientists and engineers who surely recognize that the decentralized, interest-driven, mission-based system that currently generates most of the funds for governmentsponsored research in the United States is quite generous.
To be sure, there are prices to pay for this support. Failing industries gain more attention than some might want. Defenserelated topics are especially well funded. Medical researchers link their work to specific diseases, even when links are remote. Threats of all types, from foreign challenges to the wrath of nature for our wasteful ways, are exaggerated and converted into support for more research and laboratory equipment. And the truth is not always told, especially when it contradicts positions popular with influential groups. But without the costs, the benefits likely would be smaller than they are today.
Even basic research, which feeds on our desire to learn the fundamental principles of our existence, claims the cloak of the practical. The National Science Foundation now promises national prosperity and did best in terms of budget growth in the national response to Sputnik ADDIN EN.CITE Sapolsky1991205[60]2052056Sapolsky, HarveyScience and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval Research1991PrincetonPrinceton University Press[60]. The Department of Energy supports physicists who hint about the possible path to the next bomb when they seek the funds to construct a new physics machine and climatologists who warn darkly about the need for changes in energy consumption as they attempt to build evermore accurate models of climate effects. And as we pointed out, the National Institutes of Health is cluttered with special programs for this or that cause, despite the common desire to advance basic knowledge.
Science policy specialists want also to serve national missions. The science they want to develop is intended to be more productive, offering efficient investments in the advancement of science and technology for societys benefit. With careful analysis, we can learn about ways to simulate best the pace and direction of new knowledge. We can reap collectively the results of the longterm investment in science.
But more likely scientists themselves will prefer to gain their money the oldfashioned way. The scares about Soviet nuclear weapons buildups, Japans competition, energy shortages, and the rise of China got those billions. What about the global warming crisis, the aging of America, the rise of India, and our continuing decline in manufacturing? Surely a fearful patron is a generous one. We are always on some edge ADDIN EN.CITE BonvillianJuly-August 2009209[89]20920917Bonvillian, William B. The Innovative State: Why Federal Support for Science Is Essential for American ProsperityAmerican InterestAmerican Interest67-78July-August 2009[89]. Thus while SOSP analysis may proceed briskly, the practical applications of a science of science policy may be slow to be adopted and at times stoutly opposed.
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Notes
3.1- PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 28
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Add to policing the commons the fact that the United States provides greatly disproportionate to the global research investment in defense, medical, and environmental research.
For example, Robert Moses, the designer of New Yorks expressways and state parks, deliberately used bridge, road, and even pool design to restrict usage by poor and lower-middle class families, especially African Americans. The battles over birth control technologies might also be appropriate here.
See, for example, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother Basic Books, 1983).
Or, in the language of economics, it is neither Pareto superior nor Pareto optimal.
For example, many of those interest groups most affected by the AIDS threat (blood banks, gays, hemophiliacs) ironically sought to impede the innovation and diffusion of HIV-safe blood products and HIV tests.
To be exact, mobile actors would switch to new technology that had a higher rate of return on investment than the existing technology.
Entergy Corporation is a New Orleans-based firm, involved in electric power production, which owns and operates ten U.S. nuclear power plants. It is one of the largest generators of nuclear power in the Western Hemisphere.
Barry Posen likes to call the change the Thorough Exploitation of Science and Technology (TEST).
Sapolsky,
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