The Government of Science: a Comparative Approach

Abstract

Interest in public policy involving science and technology has been growing rapidly in the United States, Canada and Western Europe. Special bibliographies have appeared1 and one periodical is devoted exclusively to keeping up with -the literature.2 Four journals deal with this aspect of public affairs3 and an organization for internal communication, involving participants in business, government and academic worlds, has recently come into existence (the Science and Public Policy Studies Group). A member of this new sub-community who surveyed it a few years ago concluded that it was ripe for more precise intellectual formulation.4 A prominent aspect of the burgeoning literature in this field, as it relates to Europe and North America generally but especially to Great Britain and the United States, is the assumption that science and technology policy, and the institutions that promulgate it, are a consequence of historical trends manifested in all industrial nations. The assumption is extended to developing nations as well-though at a somewhat different level of complexity-to explain and appraise the transfer of industrialization.