A Study Of The Central-Local Intergovernmental Science And Technology Governance In China

With the advent of globalization and big science era, science and technology has become a collective cooperative action, which requires multiple actors with different knowledge background and diverse resource to interact and complement.In other words, science and technology has become a trans-discipline and multiple-actor governance activity.Hence, to introduce the idea of cooperative governance to the field of science and technology is what we called "science and technology governance".The subject of science and technology governance is government, or more particularly, the central and local governments.The former is the leader of establishing the national innovational system, while the later is the leader of establishing the regional innovational system.In this way, the central-local intergovernmental science and technology governance—which is built at level of "national—regional"—is an institutional design aimed to deal with the cross-boundary and multiple-field problems.The main spindle of this institutional design is the vertical cooperation between central and local governments, and the branches are the horizontal cooperation among the regional governments and the public-privation cooperation in and extra governments.This kind of cooperation means the central and local governments are now ready to establish a new strategic partnership, and symbolize a new round science and technology reform is about to start, and also indicates a significant change in Chinese national science and technology system.In theory, the "central-local intergovernmental science and technology governance" is composed of multiple-governance, intergovernmental relation and governance theory.In practice, the central and local Chinese governments have co-initiated science and technology projects, consulting, and industry-academic-research partnership since 2000, including 11 central ministries and 31 provinces. Since 1970th, the American governments have started federal-state science and technology cooperation, which included technology development, industrial problem solving, technology financing, start-up assistance and teaming.All the 50 state governments and 10 federal governments have participated in this cooperation.Based on the ontology of cognitive, this paper suggests that intergovernmental science and technology governance has the general attributes of governance, as well as the special attributes of science and technology.The subjects of intergovernmental science and technology governance are multiple, which include government is the main actor, academic and research institution are the important actors, enterprise is the participatory actor, and general public and NGO are the emerging actors.The object of intergovernmental science and technology governance has the characteristics of boundary-spanning—which is determined by the attribute of governance—and application technology—which is determined by the attribute of science and technology.From the perspective of structure, the modes of central-local intergovernmental science and technology governance are highly related to the modes of central-local intergovernmental relation.Because intergovernmental relation is not only the logic starting point of science and technology governance, but also the logic goal of science and technology governance. From this perspective, we can divide central-local intergovernmental science and technology governance mode into three types:the central lead while the local participate mode based on the unitary theory, the central and the local cooperate mode based on the equal right theory, the local lead while the central participate mode based on the autonomy theory.From the perspective of policy instrument, the tools of central-local intergovernmental science and technology governance encompass the institutional control tools, such as regulation, law and public sector; contract introduce tools, such as public purchase, government fund, outsourcing and tax waiver or reduce; and interactional influence tools, such as public advertisement, mobilization, propagation, forum and symposium.This paper constructs science and technology governance policy matrix with science and technology governance modes and tools, which are used as longitudinal axis and lateral axis respectively.This paper puts forward that the central and local governance have their own preference when implementing the tools and modes.Meanwhile, there is equilibrium existing among different tool and different modes.This paper also indicates that the evolution of tools and modes is the process of interacting and promoting each other.On one hand, the trend of less administrative tools and more lawful and economic tools shows the direction of science and technology reform.On the other hand, the modes of science and technology governance have changed a lot with the evolution the tools of science and technology governance.All in all, the change of tools and modes reflect the characteristics of market-oriented, institutionalization, and participation.In the end, this paper tests impact factors and performance of central local intergovernmental science and technology governance according to the technology attributes and regional attributes.The results show that the market-oriented projects should be given preferential financing, and the selection criterion of cooperative partner should suit the local conditions.