THE EMERGENCE OF A COMPETITIVENESS RESEARCH-AND-DEVELOPMENT POLICY COALITION AND THE COMMERCIALIZATION OF ACADEMIC SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

This article describes the emerging bipartisan political coalition sup porting commercial competitiveness as a rationale for research and dev elopment(R&D), points to selected changes in legal and funding structu res in the 1980s that stem from the success of the new political coali tion and suggests some of the connections between these changes and ac ademic science and technology and examines the consequences of these c hanges for universities. The study uses longitudinal secondary data on changes in business strategies and corporate structures that made bus iness elites in the defense and health industries consider supporting competitiveness R&D policies. The article identifies and assesses an a rray of national R&D legislation concerned with competitiveness that w as parsed in the 1980s and 1990s and that has implications for academi c R&D. The effects of competitiveness R&D policies on universities and academic science and technology are appraised by analyzing changes in time-series data (1983-1993) on science and technology indicators com piled by the National Science Foundation.