The Anomaly Of S&T Policy And Its Peripheral Atypical Development

Abstract

The characteristics of science and technology policies (STP) of countries located on the margins of capitalism, such as Latin American countries, result from the composition of two dynamics: one inherent to STP as a public policy and another that derives from its marginal condition. The first has a generic nature and can be found in “pure state”; it is exploited in advanced countries and it is responsible for the anomaly (abnormal, irregular) of its STP. This dynamic causes the STP to present a marked deviation from the normal standards of public policy, which originate in a decision-making process in which the players involved materialize their political projects in the specific agendas with which they participate. The anomaly comes from the fact that many players who participate in other policies defending agendas that are often antagonistic, given that they result from (or are conditioned by) irreconcilable political projects, systematically agree on the direction given to the STP. Consequently, since that decision-making agenda is biased by the conception of neutrality and determinism of techno-science, which understands techno-science (produced by and for companies) as something plausible to be “used” to materialize any political project, the STP, even when produced by left-wing governments, tend to be at the service of the capital’s values and interests. The second dynamic is specific of countries that present a peripheral condition, such as Brazil. In this case, the STP has an additional way, an atypical characteristic (particular, singular, infrequent). Players involved in its implementation, depending on the socioeconomic and peripheral political contexts that surround them, exhibit behaviors that systematically diverge from those observed in (and modeled by) advanced countries. Due to this, their behavior differs from the expected one when developing said policies.