Science and Technology Policy for Development: Dialogues at the Interface (Anthem Studies in Development and Globalization) - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1843312271 ISBN 13: 9781843312277

Verlag: Anthem Press, 2006

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An inquiry into how social relations make for successful science and technology policies.

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Edited by Louk de la Rive Box and Rutger Engelhard

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'Box and Engelhard have pulled off a feat in their introduction in bringing the lessons of a very diverse set of papers written from very different standpoints into an unusually coherent intellectual framework.'
"Richard Manning
(writing in a personal capacity)
Chair of the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD"
'This book is a must for practitioners in science and technology policy in developing countries, with a rich array of case studies in the continuing search for demand driven policies which can well tap into globalized knowledge production.'
"Jozef Ritzen
President of the Universiteit Maastricht and former Vice President of the World Bank's Development Economics Department"
This book is about changing social relationships. The authors focus on the question of what social relations make for successful science and technology policies. In particular, the various chapters illustrate what happens at different social interfaces, such as between policy makers and researchers, and between the users and producers of knowledge. In other words, they are interested in the knowledge networks that are emerging between the many different actors involved in the development of science and technology.
"Science and Technology Policy for Development" is the outcome of a workshop that brought together scholars and policy makers from the global South and the North, from private and public organizations, to review their experiences. What unites the authors is a common concern for research-policy linkages. In this context, research was taken to mean any systematic effort to increase the stock of knowledge, and 'policy' as any purposive course of action followed by an actor or set of actors. Linkages are seen as the communication and patterns of interaction among the actors involved. Such patterns may consolidate into knowledge networks in which information is evaluated or prioritized. A number of authors stress the communication aspect of such patterns, especially in the form of dialogue between actors or, through them, between institutions like ministries, universities or companies.
The subtitle of this book reflects this orientation: Dialogues at the Interface refers to communication between these different institutions. A must read for students of development economics, professionals in the sector and policy-makers alike.

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Science and Technology Policy for Development

Dialogues at the Interface

By Louk Box, Rutger Engelhard

Wimbledon Publishing Company

Copyright © 2006 Louk Box
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-84331-227-7

Contents

Acknowledgements, xi, 
Acronyms, xiii, 
Preface Caroline Wiedenhof, xvii, 
Foreword Callestous Junta, xix, 
Dialogues at the interface: an introduction Louk Box, 1, 
VISIONS FROM THE SOUTH, 23, 
Knowledge dependence and its discontents: the demand for policy research in Africa in the era of globalization Osita Ogbu, 25, 
Regionalism and science and technology development in Africa John Mugabe, 37, 
Building a critical mass of researchers in the least developed countries: new challenges Léa Velho, 55, 
Epistemic communities and informed policy making for promoting innovations: the case of Singapore Sunil Mani, 73, 
Science for transformation: research agendas and priorities in South Africa Johann Mouton, 89, 
NETWORKING KNOWLEDGE, 107, 
Science and technology policies through policy dialogue Wiebe E. Bijker, 109, 
From development research to pro-poor policy: evidence and the change process Julius Court and John Young, 127, 
Priority setting in research for development: a donor's perspective Theo van de Sande, 149, 
International collaboration in science and technology: promises and pitfalls Caroline S. Wagner, 165, 
Priority setting in technical cooperation: expanding the demand for knowledge-based development Jacques Gaillard, Royal Kastens and Ana María Cetto, 177, 
The use of foresight in setting agricultural research priorities Marie de Lattre-Gasquet, 191, 
Development of sustainable control of diamondback moth in cabbage and cauliflower by public-private partnership Bert Uijtewaal, 215, 
CODA, 225, 
The emerging contextual space for priority setting in development research Paul Dufour, 227, 
Workshop participants, 247, 

CHAPTER 1

KNOWLEDGE DEPENDENCE AND ITS DISCONTENTS: THE DEMAND FOR POLICY RESEARCH IN AFRICA IN THE ERA OF GLOBALIZATION

OSITA OGBU

In the early days of independence there was a congruency between the intellectual ideology of the time and the development policy focus of many African states, with strong demand for domestic policy research. In contrast, the era of structural adjustment and current globalization fostered knowledge dependence, through un-negotiated policy options that tied development aid to the acceptance of 'external' knowledge. Today, there are new opportunities due to new leadership in the continent and the various new economic development plans that could provide the basis for a stronger domestic research–policy interface. The development of the continent will require a political leadership that appreciates the intellectual capacity of Africans, a core of confident, liberated intellectual freedom fighters who are ready to use their knowledge to liberate the continent from poverty, and the emergence of new institutions such as the African Technology Policy Studies Network (ATPS) that would provide the platform.

1. Introduction

There is a great deal of interest in understanding policy-making processes in Africa, and the role of research in informing policy decisions and actions. Ideally, equal emphasis should be placed on both. It is only when we understand the political economy of decision making that can construct the form and content of policy advice based on new knowledge, and direct such advice to appropriate decision centres.

In spite of the urgency of the need to understand the role of research in informing policy decisions and actions, very little intellectual capital has been spent on such inquiries. Yet, donor agencies and some African governments continue to spend a great deal of resources on policy research. The research-policy nexus is not linear, even in advanced countries, and even when governments of those countries are funding the research. Carol Weiss noted the haphazard connection between social science research and policy making in the United States, and the misguided belief by many social scientists involved in policy research that the results of their work would be used by the government. Weiss observed that they 'tend to believe that if officials ignore relevant research, they are either ignorant, uncaring, or overtly "political" in the pejorative sense of the word'. This means that in assessing the research-policy interface, a fair amount of value must be assigned to serendipity and knowledge externalities that may not be readily captured and quantified.

In Africa the situation is even more complicated. The policy terrain is murkier, due largely to domestic pressures and the heavy external influence from decision centres located outside the official bureaucracies. Borrowing from work on the politics of trade policy making in Africa, it has been noted that '... the underlying forces behind policy epochs and episodes vary from country to country and from regime to regime weaved around ethnic, military or other ruling and bureaucratic interests in a manner that suggests a forced consensus ... the loss of policy autonomy in most countries and the absence of the organized private sector as key players in the policy process compound the picture'.

In addition, a tradition of contesting ideas has not been firmly established in Africa, due to the lack of a home-grown vision by the leadership, inadequate knowledge-generating infrastructures and weak intellectual censorship, especially in the 1980s and 1990s. Such contests would have forced the competing constituencies to rely on research to support and advance their positions on how to attain a given vision. In the United States in the 1930s, such contests were sometimes played out in the arena of science and technology (S&T) policy making. Between 1933 and 1935, for instance, Karl Compton, then President of MIT, proposed that greater funding be directed to university-based scientific research in order to generate innovation that firms could use to create new industries that would in turn create jobs. Unemployment was a major issue at that time, and Compton lobbied President Roosevelt and the public with a campaign, 'science makes jobs', stating that 'federal funding could make jobs by making science'. His views were hotly contested by those who held that technological innovation caused unemployment by raising productivity without providing other avenues for taking care of the resulting redundancies. They therefore urged the President not to heed the Compton campaign but rather to regulate the pace of technological change in order not to exacerbate the unemployment problem.

Three important points emerge from this example with respect to the research-policy interface. First, it is useful to have a market for contestation of policy ideas. Second, policy entrepreneurship is critical in bridging the research–policy gap. Third, policy research priority setting involves many players and can be demand or supply driven, depending on the coalition for policy change and the institutional arrangements on the ground. In Africa, all of these conditions have, for the most part, been either weak or absent.

2. The legacy of dependence

Without labouring the point, colonialism was anti-indigenous knowledge and technology. It created a legacy of knowledge and technology dependency that is still very much in evidence. The cultural emasculation of the colonial era denied Africa both the capacity to generate,...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Anthem Press
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2006
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 1843312271
• ISBN 13: 9781843312277
• Einband: Gebundene Ausgabe
• Anzahl der Seiten: 272
• Herausgeber: De La Rive Box Louk, Engelhard Rutger
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: preigu GmbH & Co. KG; mail@preigu.de; ; Lengericher Landstr. 19; Osnabrück; Niedersachsen; 49078; Deutschland