Abstract
We present an analysis of the institutional and political trajectory of the Brazilian state initiatives in science, technology and innovation, from the creation of the CNPq, emphasizing the internal dynamics of the state. We describe the context and the institutionalization process packed by desenvolvimentist diagnoses and the renewed prestige of “science” typical of those years. The analysis aims to determine known results of the literature on state institutions and actors in Brazil and support empirical research on the executive studies in this policy field. The research used results of historiographical works on institutions and science and technology development agencies as a source of secondary data, personal accounts and documents as a source of primary data. Interpretation of the data has always been oriented to main research objectives that were to analyze the trajectory of the sector with a focus on internal dynamics of the decision-making process and their political constraints. The results confirm theoretical generalizations of the literature on executive studies in Brazil as the centrality of personal networks contacts to the effectiveness of implementation of policies in the 1960s and 1970s. We also show how insulation took place in this sector, considered highly strategic for the desenvolvimentist project. These results lead to the center of discussions on the actors, state and institutions and executive studies the research agenda on science, technology and innovation policy, its agencies, its bureaucracy and the interests that permeate it. For the Brazilian needs, close research agenda on science, technology and innovation policy to the political science and political sociology ones could contribute to the consolidation of a new methodological bias in this area. Conventional analyses of this sector were often supported by the procedures and the very focus of the sociology of scientific knowledge. New methodological possibilities imply innovative analytical agendas that may contribute readings that help the dynamism and update S&T policy analysis in Brazil.
KEYWORDS:
executive studies; actors and institutions; bureaucracy and politics; science, technology and innovation policy; CNPq