Scientists’ Impact on Decision-making: A Case Study of the China Hi-Tech Research and Development Program

With the increasing influence of science and technology (S&T) on socioeconomic life and public affairs, there has been a growing demand for S&T expertise in today’s public decision-making.

The National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program), involving hundreds of S&T experts, marked the beginning of a new journey for China’s high-tech development. This book discusses China’s S&T decision-making mechanism, with the 863 Program as the central case and scientist’ influence on public decision-making as the focus. More importantly, it extracts three key elements to analyze the determinative factors behind that influence - knowledge, value and institutions, and proposed a KIV framework of macro-analysis.

The KIV, being the first framework to generalize factors that could affect scientists’ influence on public decision-making, is of both theoretical significance and innovative value. In addition, by finding out those factors, this book attempts to create a decision-making environment conducive to scientists’ contribution of their knowledge.