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1、Chapter 3“Politics and the Science of Science Policy” written by Harvey Sapolsky Professor of Public Policy and Organization, EmeritusDepartment of Political ScienceMassachusetts Institute of Technologysapolskymit.eduandMark Zachary Taylor Assistant ProfessorSam Nunn School of International AffairsG
2、eorgia Institute of Technologymzakgatech.eduin Handbook of Science of Science Policy eds. John H. Marburger III, Kaye Husbands Fealing, Julia Lane, Bill Valdez, & Stephanie Shipp. (Stanford University Press, 2011).IntroductionPolitics is the main obstacle to the development and application of a scie
3、nce 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
4、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 gover
5、nment, that determines the rate and direction of its research and development investments 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 imp
6、osed 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
7、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 g
8、lobalization 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 progr
9、ess 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 migh
10、t 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
11、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 2. In the United States, the main governmental missions that science and technology serve are national security, health, economic prosperity, an
12、d 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 approache
13、s 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 3. Add to policing the commons the fact that the United States provides greatly disproportionate to the global research investment in de
14、fense, medical, and environmental research.The Politics Of InnovationAlthough specific definitions of “innovation” vary across scholars 4-9, most political scientists argue that innovation is not just creating something new, not just discovery or invention. Innovation requires at least the implement
15、ation 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 10. Innovation is change that has significant impact on an organizations main tasks and personnel incentives. It changes the organiz
16、ation, 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 payl
17、oad, 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 l
18、ead 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 ai
19、r 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 innovati
20、on “creative destruction,” the killing off of the old by the new 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 premi
21、um 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
22、.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 12-16. These politics are often neglected by SOSP and innovation researchers, who tend to assume widespread support for progress in sci
23、ence 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 17, 18. Recent examples in the United States include resistance to nuclear power 19, 20, stem cell research 21, al
24、ternative energy 22, 23, HIV-safe blood products 24, 25, and even new weapons systems 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 pr
25、ogress. 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 mec
26、hanisms, 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 27, For example, Robert Moses, the designer of New Yorks expressways and state pa
27、rks, 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. or how science and technology can change the nature of human activity (in wor
28、k, 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 28. See, for example, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, More Work for Mother Basic Books, 1983).Perhaps the most potent form of
29、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 prod
30、uctivity 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
31、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 inter
32、nal 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 29. More famously, in the now stock clich, the advent of the automob
33、ile destroyed the demand for products and services associated with the horseandbuggy industries 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, Or, in the language of economics, it
34、 is neither Pareto superior nor Pareto optimal. 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 c
35、an 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, b
36、onds, 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
37、.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 c
38、hange 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 comput
39、er 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 31. Before containerization, the relatively short time that a ship spent at dock might account for
40、three-quarters of its voyage costs 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 bu
41、t 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 suc
42、h 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 wi
43、th 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
44、 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
45、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 governm
46、ents 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 container
47、s 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 strate
48、gy pursued by corporations, scientists, or even the very interest groups an innovation is supposed to help 32. 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 prod
49、ucts and HIV tests. One theory of resistance is based on asset specificity 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 a
