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This article offers a new framework for understanding the beliefs behind science, technology and innovation (STI) policy. Building on recent research that has identified several distinct 'policy paradigms' in STI policy, it explains how these paradigms may be understood as hierarchical belief systems, and it identifies different variants within each paradigm. The article then illuminates one means through which countries may transition from one paradigm to another in this domain, focusing on the international diffusion of the 'innovation systems policy' paradigm after the 1980s. The article emphasizes how local ideology regarding state intervention in the economy shapes how the new paradigm is localized in the receiving state. To probe the plausibility of this theory, the article presents an in-depth case study focused on China's reception and localization of the innovation systems policy paradigm in recent decades. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Technological innovation has emerged as an important site of globalization in recent decades. Yet it is unclear what the future holds for this new form of collaboration, given the spectre of high-tech "decoupling" between the United States and China. This article explores the role that China has come to play in transnational innovation linkages, in an effort to ascertain what is at stake. We find that China has become a key player in some respects, while in others it remains relatively marginal. Moreover, we find that in the arenas where China is most prominent – as a player in brain circulation and as a partner in basic science – China's participation has had important benefits for other countries, particularly the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

International Relations scholars have long recognized that technology plays a critical role in power transitions, but the field lacks a framework to understand how technology and innovation strategies generate rivalry between dominant and rising states. With an empirical focus on contemporary United States-China relations, this paper addresses that gap. We identify the 'innovation imperative' that drives rising states to pursue technological modernity, and highlight two ways in which this pursuit can challenge the strategic interests of the dominant state. First, the dominant state experiences a significant impairment of its security environment: negative security externalities. Second, the dominant state experiences a threat to its preferred international order: negative order externalities. We further explain how the dominant state responds to the negative externalities generated by the rising state's pursuit of innovation. By theorizing the technological rivalry between rising and dominant states, we move beyond the traditional focus on military conflict in power transitions and offer new insight into the current dynamics in US-China relations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in the phenomenon of ‘latecomer innovation,’ the nature of this challenge – and its relationship to globalization – remain poorly understood. This article develops a theoretical framework that outlines the central policy challenges facing late innovators. It maintains that globalization has not fundamentally altered these challenges, but rather underlined the importance of surmounting them successfully. The article then employs this framework to compare China and India's progress in this regard. It finds that China has confronted the basic reform challenges more successfully, has more impressive innovation outputs, and has integrated into global networks more successfully. Yet it also notes the weaknesses of China's approach and the potential for these to constrain its development in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Are China and India emerging as innovative technological powerhouses in the twenty-first century? This essay reviews the interdisciplinary debate that has been inspired by this question in recent years. It begins by considering recent studies that are relatively impressed with China's and India's recent accomplishments and potential in this regard. Next, it reviews works that are less impressed with their track records and prospects. It then considers a series of more equivocal studies that remain more or less undecided about China's and India's technological trajectories. The final section evaluates the debate as a whole and proposes new directions for scholarship in this field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]