“Science Policy” and “Policy for Science” in the Second Half of the 20th Century

Abstract

The article discusses various aspects of the formation of science policy and shows the difference between “science policy” and “policy for science”. If the first includes the procedure for making a “political decision” by the subjects of the political process, then the second during the second half of the twentieth century. aimed at incorporating science into politics. It was found that science is a complex object of a “political decision”, since, on the one hand, by its nature, in the process of creating scientific knowledge, it is “loaded with decisions”, and on the other hand, “scientific practices” within the scientific community are not exclusive, but inclusive. Science is integrated into social processes, therefore, in the second half of the 20th century not only power relations in society are characterized by “pluralism”, but the decisions themselves in “scientific policy” are made, so to speak, “polycentrically”, not being the exclusive prerogative of the state or political authorities. The second part of the article examines various aspects of “politics for science” in the era of “neoliberal” and “neoconservative” governments in power in a number of foreign countries. During the neoliberal era of the 1960s and 1970s belief in the perfection of scientific instruments in modeling processes in nature and in society in order to ensure “general welfare” determined the vector of “policy for science”. However, this instruments itselfs turned out to be far from perfection. Starting with a call to “liberate private initiative”, optimize public spending on science, and “attract funding” from the business, the neoconservatives came to the “privatization of science” and to setting purely applied tasks for it, abandoning the previous “global policy for science”. The politics of neo-conservative governments eventually led to the devaluation of the “policy for science” and “policy for science” as such disappeared as it was replaced by “metrics management”. Taking into account the involvement of science in the political, social and cultural processes of modern society, it is proposed to return both “politics for science” and “scientific policy”, making it a full-fledged subject of making a “political decision”.