THE POLICY RESEARCH PERSPECTIVE

The Science Policy and Research Unit (SPRU) of University of Sussex is a leading university for ICT policy research. Reflecting on SPRU’s 40^th annual conference in 2006, Morlacchi and Martin²²²

221 Warren Pearce and Sujatha Raman, “The New Randomised Controlled Trials (RCT) Movement in Public Policy: Challenges of Epistemic Governance,” Policy Sciences 47, no. 4 (December 1, 2014): 387–402, doi:10.1007/s11077-014-9208-3.

222 Morlacchi, Piera, Martin, Ben R. Emerging challenges for science, technology and innovation policy research: A reflexive overview Research policy, Vol. 38, Issue. 4, 2009-5, p. 571–582,

To be sure, the central goal of activities is “helping to construct more effective policies for science, technology and innovation, which in turn will yield greater benefits for society.” The authors suggest that innovation policy researchers should be concerned with the means and ends for society. They note a trend to instrumental and entrepreneurial activities at the individual and organizational level which need to be balanced with critical and independent scholarship as well as

“reflexivity.” Importantly they define innovation policy research as the application of social science to the study of innovation policy. It is not theory or paradigm driven, but rather problem-oriented by focusing on practical issues with specific policies and the taking account of the central role of firms in the evolution of technology and innovation.

They note that the policy research field has a multidisciplinary, empirical orientation and motivation, and when there is theory, it is generally inductive. This contrasts to the traditional social science approach in which theory comes first followed by the empirical work.

Innovation policy research comes out primarily of the field of economics with a preference for the study at the firm industrial and national levels of analysis, viewing the Market and the State at its role to regulate or facilitate market interactions. Sociology, on the other hand, comes from the history and philosophy of science. The research function grew out of discussion of a variety of intellectual actors, with governments, international institutions, and research institutions starting to produce data about innovation (patent statistics, R&D expenditures etc). They summarize Ball²²³ in describing the four roles of policy researchers.

The policy engineer who uses a set of procedures to determine best course of action to achieve a goal; the policy scientist who seeks the technically correct answer to the political problem with the available scientific knowledge; the policy entrepreneur who provides technical solutions or organizations and contexts and searches for opportunities to apply his or her favored solutions. The policy scholar seeks to

223 Ball, Stephen J. Intellectuals or technicians? The urgent role of theory in educational studies. 1995

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00071005.1995.9974036

shape the way we think about society’s problems. The roles may have blended or take one part of the approach or another, and there is debate to what degree the roles are influenced by politics or vice versa. Critical policy research should reflect upon these various roles and seek to find the optimal balance of the various approaches.

They use the 1970s Limits to Growth²²⁴ debate to describe how the application of the assumptions of each of the roles can help produce more effective polices. The Limits to Growth view was evidenced through a set of computer models for population growth, resource depletion, food supply, capital investment and pollution. In particular, they examined the effects of continued economic and demographic growth in a world of finite resources, and derived various policy implications, such as the need for birth control to limit population growth. SPRU’s response, called “technological optimism” was not necessarily to reject the empirical findings of the model but to highlight that the model did not account for social change and technological advances which could change the expected outcomes.

For example population growth, is desired, not deterred and now expected to reach 10 billion by 2050.²²⁵ Crucial resources have not depleted; innovative technologies have found substitutes and new and better means of extraction; food is so plentiful that one-third of it goes to waste globally; capital investment has seen unprecedented heights;

and pollution, while not totally eliminated, has much better management. Moreover mobility and internet has benefitted the people of the world tremendously. This is not to say that progress will always proceed in a linear fashion. Growth and sustainability are still key issues in the policy research field. Failing to incorporate the views of the different actors (engineer, scientist, entrepreneur, ands scholar), predictions can fall short. Indeed relying on data alone can lead to false conclusions.

224 The Limits to Growth, 1972, http://www.clubofrome.org/report/the-limits-to-growth/

225 “World Population Projected to Reach 9.7 Billion by 2050.” United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2015.

http://www.un.org/en/development/desa/news/population/2015-report.html.

The Limits to Growth allegory is instructive for today’s net neutrality debate in which on the side, proponents suggest that the internet will essentially come to an end without net neutrality and must therefore be “preserved” versus a more holistic view that does not reject concerns but sees change and advancement as a net positive development that can address concerns and solve problems, though maybe in different way that is not yet known.

Flanagan, Uyarra and Laranja²²⁶ attempt to foster the needed “critical reflexivity” by devising an approach that helps policy researchers conceptualize the innovation policy complexity and its various actors, levels and dynamics. Their problematization consists of policy agendas, rationales, actors, processes, instruments, and interactions.

The literature on agenda setting and advocacy critiques the view that policymaking proceeds in a linear fashion, as if there is a scientific identification of the problem followed by the proper intellectual exchange of ideas and rationales to remedy the problem, the evaluation of various options with appropriate cost benefit analysis, and selection of instrument followed by measurement and optimization. Instead agenda setting²²⁷ is the process of creating awareness and concern on selected issues. This is achieved by leveraging the press and media (which does not reflect reality but rather shapes and filters the news) as well as the media concentration on a few issues which leads the public to believe that some issues are more important than others.

Kingdon²²⁸ described the “policy primeval soup” as the policy process as an evolutionary one that favors “policy entrepreneurs” which can

226 Kieron Flanagan, Elvira Uyarra, and Manuel Laranja, “Reconceptualising the

‘policy Mix’ for Innovation,” Research Policy 40, no. 5 (June 2011): 702–13, doi:10.1016/j.respol.2011.02.005.

227 Maxwell E. McCombs and Donald L. Shaw, “The Agenda-Setting Function of Mass Media,” Public Opinion. Quarterly 36, no. 2 (June 20, 1972): 176–87, doi:10.1086/267990.

228 John Kingdon, “How do issues get on public policy agendas? Ch. 3Sociology and the Public Agenda, William Julius Wilson, ed. Sage Publications, 1993.

exploit “windows of opportunity.” Majone²²⁹ describes how policymakers use theory selectively after the fact to justify favored policies; he rejects the difference between policy analysis and advocacy, simply calling the combined a “policy innovation”, as all policies are a mix of objective analysis, advocacy, and persuasion.

Borras and Edquist²³⁰ explore the selection of innovation policy instruments across three dimensions including (1) selection of the suitable instruments; (2) design and customization of the instrument;

and (3) the design or mix in which the instrument is to work. They observe that while countries may have the same innovation goals, the micro-level policies may differ significantly. They cite how ICT policy in Ireland, Israel, and Taiwan manifested itself in different ways in the 1990s. Ireland focused on foreign direct investment; Israel supported R&D through government grants; and Taiwan instructed the a national institution to lead R&D efforts and diffuse them through the country. They define the key instruments as (1) regulatory; (2) economic and financial; (3) soft which are collectively the “sticks, carrots, and sermons” of public policy.

With regard to this analysis, the identification of hard and soft rules conforms to this typology in that hard rules such as bans, prohibition, and legislation such belong the the regulatory category (1) and soft rules (voluntary agreements, code of conduct, multistakeholder etc) belong to the soft instruments category (3). Using the Borras and Edquist formulation, it may be possible to see net neutrality both as regulation on one set of actors (telecom operators) and an economic transfer in the form of an “artificial subsidy” to another (internet companies or “edge providers”).

The authors stress that policy instruments are not “neutral” and hence it is important to select and customize the instrument which is appropriate to address the actual problem. The highlight this as a means to identify which activity of the innovation system that the instrument is supposed to address. The key activities include (1)

229 Giandomenico Majone, Evidence, Argument, and Persuasion in the Policy Process (Yale University Press, 1989).

230 The choice of innovation policy instruments

provision of knowledge inputs to the innovation process; (2) demand-side activities; (3) provision of constituents; and (4) support services for innovating firms.

They note that it is common for actors to disagree on the type of policy instrument and how it should be designed. They note that when contestation is fierce and widespread, that public governments and agencies should reconsider the specific contents of the instrument or even the entire instrument. They describe that instruments are frequently used to address a problem of low performance in the innovation system. This conclusion could be important for the selection of hard instruments for net neutrality, which are highly contested and litigated.