Science, Technology and Public Policy:
Policy Formulation
Howard E. McCurdy
Moving from culture to policy formulation:
the popular view of science and technology
• Society faces an imminent
threat or opportunity.
• The problem has a
technical solution.
• The president (or some
national leader) declares
an emergency and
establishes a policy.
• Scientist and engineers
“ride to the rescue.”
Engagement at Prairie Dog Creek (Ralph Heinz); scientists invented radar to win the Battle of Britain.
Why do we study science policy?
Why not just study public policy?
Science and technology impose
conditions that are not so
pervasively present in other
policies.
Scientific methods presume a high
level of objectivity,
confirmability, and rationality.
Public policies are often
formulated under conditions of
bias and uncertainty.
The laws of nature do not respect
the laws of politics.
The two forces (science and
politics) often clash with
dramatic results.
When worlds collide:
science, technology, and government
The American political
system is designed to
accommodate different
points of view without
excessive efforts to
resolve them.
Public officials are willing to
live with ambiguity in
social and economic
policies.
Failures in science and
technology are much
harder to deny.
Imperfection in the Hubble Space Telescope primary mirror embarrassed NASA; futile efforts to
control the drug trade in Baltimore drew viewers to HBO’s highly acclaimed “The Wire.”
Preface: broad trends and transformations in the
history of science and technology policy
• The flowering of scientific influence: the Manhattan Project, crash
program to deploy ICBMs, Project Apollo.
• Big Science becomes Big Business: Space Transportation System
(Space Shuttle), Supersonic Transport, Superconducting Super
Collider, International Space Station, SDI (“Star Wars”), International
Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor: every one a “policy failure.”
• Innovation returns: the Internet, Robots in Space and National Defense
(Mars Pathfinder), Human Genome Project.
The flowering of scientific influence:
The Manhattan Project (three cases)
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J. Robert Oppenheimer and Gen. Leslie Groves at Trinity Site.
Roosevelt established “uranium
committee” in response to the EinsteinSzilard letter warning of German
competition (1939).
Supported by a coalition of presidential
advisers (Vannevar Bush) and
university physicists (Robert
Oppenheimer).
Secretly approved by FDR; General
Leslie Groves selected as project
manager (1942).
Clearly specified objectives; urgent
deadline; single project manager;
projects within projects; parallel lines
of research and development;
redundancy; sufficient resources; small
headquarters staff; reliance upon
experts mobilized into the project
organization; deference to experts; total
organization.
Extreme secrecy.
Finite operation – July 16, 1945 test;
abolished 1946 (became AEC)
Big Science Becomes Big Business:
Superconducting Super Collider
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Driven onto policy agenda by
competition from Europe to
discover the W boson.
Proposed by DOE and approved by
President Reagan (1983-84).
Supported by a coalition of DOE
bureaucrats, physicists, NSF, and
legislators from potential states.
Congressional support evaporated
when Texas chosen (1988).
Efforts to secure international
partners (and $2 billion)
undertaken after technical design
and site settled.
Required conventional
appropriations.
Cost rose from $4.4 to $8.3 billion.
Terminated by Congress in 1993.
Innovation Returns:
Human Genome Project
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Francis Collins, Director of the Human Genome
Project (1993-2008)
Placed on the policy agenda at scientific
meetings encouraged by the National
Research Council, an arm of the
National Academy of Sciences (1986).
Supported by DOE, NIH, NRC, OTA,
scientists in several fields, and the
biomedical industry.
Encountered strong “push back” from
advocates of “little science.”
Approved through a series of
congressional appropriations and
earmarks (1987-1990)
Specific goals: map the human genome
in fifteen years (1990)
Competition from the private sector
(Celera Genomics)
Clear medical benefits
No single site (five sequencing centers)
No large engineering contracts
Completed ahead of schedule in 2003
for 2.7 billion (less than original $3
billion estimate)
Making sense of these trends
Flowering:
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Deference to scientists
Rational policy making
Adequate resources
Faith in science
Big Science:
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Incremental policy making
Interest group liberalism
Conventional financing
Inadequate resources
Distrust of science
In his Farewell Address, President Eisenhower
warned of the dangers of “unwarrented influence.”
Innovation:
-- End to “big government”
-- Skeptical of “big science”
-- Reliance on markets
Studying science policy:
a framework for analysis
• How did the issue get on the policy agenda? Was there some
punctuating event?
• What type of coalition did policy advocates form? (Include your
policy “map.”) Did it affect the design or concept of the program?
• How was the policy announced? How much technical discretion was
allowed the scientists and engineers called in to run the program?
• Was an attempt made to separate facts from values?
• Was the policy incremental or “rational?”
• What “tools” of government were used to implement the policy?
• Ultimately, let the story tell itself.
Pick a policy and describe its history
Clockwise, from upper left: Three Mile Island, Project Constellation, Swine Flu, military drone aircraft.
1. How did the issue get on the public policy
agenda?
• The study of agendasetting provides a bridge
between culture and
policy.
• Was the policy preceded
by a culture shift or a
period of cultural
anticipation?
• Did a precipitating event
occur?
• How much technical
discretion did this
provide?
The Myth of Presidential Leadership:
how was the policy announced?
• The sense of emergency
associated with
precipitating events favors
executive power.
• The myth: that politics
ends when the president’s
lips move.
• NASA Administrator
James Webb had to
overcome substantial
White House efforts to
delay Project Apollo.
President Kennedy announces Project Apollo;
President George H. W. Bush announces the
Space Exploration Initiative.
2. What was the nature of the supporting coalition?
(American politics is coalition politics)
• Interest group liberalism (once
“iron triangles” form, they are
very hard to disturb).
• “Winners” in American politics
attempt to control the policy
agenda by forming stable
coalitions.
• “Losers” in American politics
seek to redefine the scope of
conflict.
• Coalitions become unstable as
new participants enter the issue
arena and redefine the policy.
E. E. Schattschneider, The Semisovereign People
(1960); Theodore Lowi, The End of
Liberalism (1969).
The framers of the U.S. constitution designed the
government to work this way.
• Traditional government:
preserve order through
social regulation.
• Pluralism: let “factions”
check each other.
• Federalist #10.
• A government of
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Separation of powers
Open access
No final decision points
Constant appeal
Strong legislature
James Madison (1751-1836) presented the basic
draft of the constitution at the 1787 convention,
seeking a means to promote stable government
without suppressing liberty.
In the modern state, pluralism can turn into
interest group liberalism.
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Interest group liberalism is the use
of governmental power to provide
benefits that institutions in the
private or non-profit sector could
not obtain through an open market.
A government run by legislative
committees will produce more
public policy than preferred by the
median voter.
Lobbying is cheaper than
investment.
Large voluntary organizations face
substantial “free rider” problems.
Interest group liberalism retards
change.
Different rules (e.g.
supermajorities) produce different
outcomes.
James Buchanan, winner of the 1986
Nobel Prize in economics
3. How do public officials judge policies?
the fact-value divide
• Social scientists hold that
facts can be separated
from values.
– Facts can be discovered
scientifically
– Values are subject to debate
• Others hold that the two
are inseparable.
Oxfordians hold that only an educated nobleman with
a knowledge of court customs and not a commoner
could have written the plays attributed to William
Shakespeare, a glover’s son and actor in the Globe
Company. In a class conscious society, they ascribe
authorship to the 17th earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere.
– Douglas & Wildavsky
– Facts have value
consequences
– People have special
interests
– “Efficiency for what?”
Lacking a widely-agreed upon method for discerning
facts, public officials in a pluralistic system substitute
advocacy for the scientific method.
• Science establishes truth
through objective methods
– Systematic experimentation
– Ends-means analysis
– Cost-benefit analysis
• American government
seeks truth through an
advocacy system
Sam Ervin, a lawyer and state judge, served as U.S.
Senator from North Carolina from 1954 to 1974 and
chaired the investigating committee that uncovered
the evidence leading to the resignation of President
Richard Nixon.
– Bias is accepted
– Pluralism and open
participation
– Role-playing and appeal
4. Incremental versus “rational” decision making:
lessons from the U.S. Space program
Project Apollo: the quintessential
“rational” policy
• Advanced by a coalition of
NASA and DOD officials
• Placed on the presidential
agenda by a succession of
external events (Gagarin flight;
Bay of Pigs)
• Announced by President
Kennedy (May 25, 1961)
• Delegated to NASA.
• Clear goal, means to an end,
adequate resources.
• Achieved July, 1969.
From rational to incremental politics:
The Space Transportation System
• NASA (an administrative
agency) led the fight for the
space shuttle.
• Officials in the president’s
budget bureau doubted that the
shuttle would be cost-effective.
• NASA officials used advocacy
politics to construct a broad
coalition:
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Scientists
Military officials
Large aerospace companies
International partners
Presidential advisers
NASA field centers
Affected members of congress
Coalition politics affects program design.
• In an incremental system,
the presence of conflicting
objectives leads policy
makers (often nonscientists or engineers) to
make design decisions.
• In an ends-means system,
analysis of the objective
should lead to one design.
• “Everyone a shuttle
designer.”
Why doesn’t the space shuttle have
airplane-like wings?
Nixon’s shuttle decision inaugurated thirty years
of space policy incrementalism
“We must think of (space
activities) as part of a
continuing process…and not
as a series of separate
leaps, each requiring a
massive concentration of
energy. ….Space
expenditures must take their
proper place within a
rigorous system of national
priorities.
Richard M. Nixon
March 7, 1970
Nature of incremental policy-making
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No long range plan.
No agreement on objectives.
Small, gradual changes in an established base (one step at a time).
Officials pursue similar goals for different reasons.
Leads to the creation of programs designed to satisfy multiple
constituencies with unresolved interests.
• Which leads to programs with conflicting and often forgotten
objectives, funded with insufficient resources.
• Which in the area of science policy tends to defy the known laws of
physics.
Charles Lindbloom, “The Science of Muddling Through,” Public Administration Review (1959).
To win approval for the space shuttle, NASA
officials promised more than they could deliver
The Space Shuttle (1972)
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Ferry astronauts to a large earth orbiting space station (original purpose)
Provide a “space truck” for commercial payloads, some bound for
geosynchronous orbit
Deliver military reconnaissance satellites
Transport space station modules
Provide an orbital laboratory for science experiments
Repair and return satellites
Transport civilians (“anyone can fly”)
Increase reliability
Cut the cost of space flight by a “factor of ten”
Be reusable
Fly 24 to 50 times per year
The Absence of Focus and Discipline in the Space
Shuttle Flight Program Led to a Policy Failure
“The increased complexity of a
Shuttle designed to be all
things to all people created
inherently greater risks than
if more realistic technical
goals had been set at the
start….The greatest
compromise NASA made
was…with the premise of the
vehicle itself.”
Columbia Accident Investigation Board, 2003
Having Made the Error with the Space Shuttle,
Government Officials Repeated It Again
“The Space Station could be
operational as soon as
1991….Based on our planning
efforts, we estimate that, in
FY84 dollars, a 1991 IOC would
require approximately $8
billion….Because of our
extensive planning efforts to
date, we believe this program is
as well estimated as any similar
program at this stage of
development. ”
P. Finarelli, NASA, to B. Borrasca, OMB
September 8, 1983
Incremental policy: broad political coalitions are
easier to construct than human space facilities.
Space Station Freedom (1982-1987) was not feasible and could not be
built for the estimated cost.
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Satellite servicing and repair station
Checkout point for geosynchronous satellites (Space Operations
Center)
Observation facility
Assembly point for deep space missions
Laboratory for military R & D
Space manufacturing faculty
Node for European, Japanese, and Russian modules
Technology development facility
Pallet for scientific experiments (co-orbiting power modules)
Life science research laboratory
Materials processing research center
$8 billion (1984 dollars)
Actual cost of ISS: at least $61 billion (2003) – redesign,
technology, fabrication, transportation and operation to 2008
Policy advocates believe that science policy works
best when objectives are “rationally” approved.
• A guiding long-range objective.
• A set of alternatives.
• Agreement on the criteria by which the respective
advantages of the alternatives will be judged.
• Weighing and selection of the best alternative (“biggest
bang for the buck”).
• Establishment of management and evaluation systems for
keeping the policy on track.
Policy Approaches Compared
Rational approach:
• Produces science policies
that work.
• Provides for a separation
of policy-making and
administration.
– Generates much higher
levels of technical
discretion (“everyone a
shuttle designer”).
Incremental approach:
• Bias is omnipresent (facts
cannot be separated from
values).
• Public officials do not
have the information,
time, or authority to use
the rational method.
• Leads to a myth of
presidential leadership.
– The idea that the president
can and will protect the
program once approved.
Constellation is the project designed to return longterm objectives to the civil space program.
Project
Constellation
consists of the Ares
V and Ares I launch
vehicles, Orion
crew capsule, and
Altair lunar lander.
The U.S. Vision for Space Exploration (2004)
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Use the NASA space shuttle to
complete the International Space
Station
Retire the shuttle
Build a new generation of spacecraft
and launch systems (Project
Constellation)
Return humans to the moon and
venture to Mars, preceded by robots
Maintain space science spending at
current levels. Study the earth, sun,
solar system, and universe; search
for Earth-like planets; advance
knowledge of aeronautics and the
effects of space on human beings;
repair the Hubble.
Encourage commercial and
international partnerships
Do all of this within what is
essentially a flat NASA budget.
Political pressures to maintain the shuttle work force are
clashing with the vision of restoring rationality in U.S.
space policy.
The iron triangle of civil space
policy
NAS
A
Congress:
Space
committees
Aerospace
contractors
“Politics is harder than physics.”
Albert Einstein
Next: “tools of government:”
How the manner in which the government organizes and
finances science and technology policies affects their
performance.
Summary: does the U.S. policy system work well for
science and technology?
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How did the issue get on the policy agenda? (Precipitating event versus “next
logical step”)
What sort of coalition did advocates construct to win support for the policy?
Did it affect the program design? (Superconducting Super Collider)
How was the policy announced? What level of technical deference was given
to scientists and engineers once the policy was underway? (Manhattan
Project, Project Apollo, Swine flu)
Were “facts” resolved in a scientific manner or through an advocacy system?
(Global warming)
Were the methods of decision-making incremental or “rational”? (Space
Shuttle, International Space Station)
What “tools of government” were used to implement the policy? (Human
Genome Project, Wind Power)
Were ethical issues involved? (Stem cell research)
How well did scientists understand the economic and social consequences of
the policy, especially unintended consequences? (Ethanol)
A postscript: the U.S. system does not appear to
work too well in other countries.
• U.S. pluralism combined with
“presidentialism” produces
divided government.
• System has failed in all but one
of the countries that has tried it.
– South Korea: military coup
d'état (1961); assassination of
president Park Chung-hee
(who led the coup) by Korean
CIA (1979).
– Mexico: one-party PRI rule for
71 years (until Vicente Fox
elected president in 2000).
– Philippines: Ferdinand Marcos
overthrown after 21 years as
president (1965-1986).
The British parliamentary system of unified
executive and legislative powers has proven to be
far more stable and exportable than the U.S. system
of divided powers.
Summary of Concepts
(How many can you apply to your policy?)
Subgovernments and issue
networks
Bias and ideology
Stable and unstable coalitions
Punctuated equilibrium
Pluralism
Interest group liberalism
Advocacy system
Incrementalism
Rational decision-making or endsmeans analysis
Myth of presidential leadership
Levels of technical discretion
Presidentialism
Frist single frame photograph of the Earth and
Moon, taken from Voyager 1 on September 18, 1977