The Political Economy Of Science

The political economy of research and innovation (R&I) is one of the central issues of the early twenty-first century. ‘Science’ and ‘innovation’ are increasingly tasked with driving and reshaping a troubled global economy while also tackling multiple, overlapping global challenges, such as climate change or food security, global pandemics or energy security. But responding to these demands is made more complicated because R&I themselves are changing. Today, new global patterns of R&I are transforming the very structures, institutions and processes of science and innovation, and with it their claims about desirable futures. Our understanding of R&I needs to change accordingly. Responding to this new urgency and uncertainty, this handbook presents a pioneering selection of the growing body of literature that has emerged in recent years at the intersection of science and technology studies and political economy. The central task for this research has been to expose important but consequential misconceptions about the political economy of R&I and to build more insightful approaches. This volume therefore explores the complex interrelations between R&I (both in general and in specific fields) and political economies across a number of key dimensions from health to environment, and universities to the military. The Routledge Handbook of the Political Economy of Science offers a unique collection of texts across a range of issues in this burgeoning and important field from a global selection of top scholars. The handbook is essential reading for students interested in the political economy of science, technology and innovation. It also presents succinct and insightful summaries of the state of the art for more advanced scholars.

Reviews the epistemological ideas that inspired the classical economists: the methodological principles of Bacon, Descartes, Hobbes, Newton, Locke, Hume, Stewart, Herschel, and Whewell.

This book provides answers to the questions of why human-kind should go into space, and on the relative roles of governments and markets in the evolution of the space economy. It adopts an interdisciplinary approach to answer those questions. Science and technology define the boundaries of what is possible. The realization of the possible depends on economic, institutional, and political factors. The book thus draws from many different academic areas such as physical science, astronomy, astronautics, political science, economics, sociology, cultural studies, and history. In the literature, the space economy has been analyzed using different approaches from science and technology to the effects of public expenditures on economic growth and to medium term effects on productivity and growth. This book brings all these aspects together following the evolutionary theory of economic change. It studies processes that transform the economy through the interactions among diverse economic agents, governments, and the extra-systemic environment in which governments operate. Its historical part helps to better understand motivations and constraints - technical, political, and economical - that shaped the growth of the space economy. In the medium term, global issues - such as population changes, critical or limited natural resources, and environmental damages – and technological innovations are the main drivers for the evolution of the space economy beyond Earth orbit. In universities, this book can be used: as a reference by historians of astronautics; for researchers in the field of astronautics, international political economy, and legal issues related to the space economy. In think tanks and public institutions, both national and international, this book provides an input to the ongoing debate on the collaboration among space agencies and the role of private companies in the development of the space economy. Finally, this book will help the educated general public to orient himself in the forest of stimuli, news, and solicitations to which he is daily subjected by the media, television and radio, and to react in less passive ways to those stimuli.

This re-incorporation of economics into political economy is one (small, but not insignificant) element in a larger project: to place all of the resources of present-day social-scientific research at the service of increasing democracy, in an ultimate direction toward socialism in the classic sense. An economics-enriched political economy is, above all, empowering: working people in general can calculate, build models, think theoretically, and contribute to a human-worthy future, rather than leaving all this to their "betters."