Part 1: Science, technology, and development

Part 1 sets the scene. Jean-Jacques Salomon first reviews the emergence of modern science: its successive institutionalization, professionalization, and industrialization. The fact that this process tended to happen in a different order in developing countries raises particular problems for them. In recent years, in industrialized countries the expansion of modern science and technology has gone hand in hand with the rise of science policy - that is policy for science and policy through science - as a result of increasing concern about the impact of advances in science and technology on society. Science is linked to the state, and in the context of the Cold War, there was a full-scale mobilization of scientific research. It is impossible to underestimate the importance of the innumerable innovations generated by economic competition and by defence-related R&D during this period, and especially the role they played in the conception and development of the new technologies that characterize the "new technical system" now flourishing. In an era of increasing international competitiveness, innovation rests on a much wider range of actors, institutions, and issues, raising a lively debate on the role of the state: how far should it intervene, under what circumstances, and on what criteria? The chapter ends with a discussion of the universality of science and the coexistence and complementarily of rationalities, which may challenge Western science as a unique model, but not its operational effectiveness.

What is development? Nasser Pakdaman traces the evolution since the Second World War of the ideas, theories, and practices that have lain behind the efforts of the third world countries to emerge from "underdevelopment." The patchiness of their success - indeed, the frequent failures - has led some commentators to refer to the rise and fall of development economics, as if the subject were bound to disappear so that others could rise, like a phoenix, from its ashes, relying increasingly on an ever wider range of social sciences (sociology, anthropology, history, etc.). There is now a better understanding of the factors leading to economic growth, but there is still no clear definition of what constitutes economic development, beyond the fact that it involves a process of gradual transformation over the long term, and the ingredients are never exclusively economic. The current preference for "sustainable development" arises out of an awareness that the pure "economic paradigm" has its limits, whether inspired by the Left or the Right, and that economic theory and practice must abandon the illusions of rapid "take-off" or "catching up" and instead fit in with the historical realities that shape the specific characteristics - and constraints - of each country.

Though it is difficult to achieve international comparability using existing R&D and innovation indicators, Jan Annerstedt attempts to provide from the existing statistics a comprehensive picture of measurements of science, technology, and innovation, stressing the uneven relationship in R&D spending: in 1988-1989, the third world had a little more than 4.5 per cent of total R&D funds, with considerable differences among developing countries. A proposed worldwide science and technology-related typology identifies countries (a) with no science and technology base, (b) with the fundamental elements of a science and technology base, (c) with a science and technology base well established, and (d) with an economically effective science and technology base, notably in relation to industry. Finally, the author argues that to develop policies that could avoid further marginalization in foreign investment and technology transfer, the developing countries need much more detailed and statistically grounded analyses of the role of science and technology in the globalization process, and he reviews the innovation indicators in the making.