Return to search

Coordinating science : White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) influence in federal R&D budgets / White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) influence in federal R&D budgets / White House OSTP influence in federal R&D budgets

Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Political Science, 2015. / Cataloged from PDF version of thesis. / Includes bibliographical references (pages 102-105). / This thesis examines the role of the White House OSTP in the nation's budgeting for science and technology activities. Interviews conducted by the researcher with members of the White House staff as well as federal agency officials are the primary empirical support, with analysis of annual priority memoranda and presidential budget requests reinforcing the findings. The original contribution of this research is to highlight limitations of responsive competence despite presidential attempts to coordinate the R&D bureaucracy. In science policy, presidents obtain responsive competence by hiring entrepreneurial OSTP staff members in the areas that most align with their priorities. The centralized R&D coordination that OSTP does actually perform in budgets is highly constrained by legal authority, bureaucratic resistance, and the epistemic norms of the science policy community itself. The relationship of the President's Science Advisor with the Administration is an important confounder across presidencies / by John W. Halloran, Jr. / S.M.

Identiferoai:union.ndltd.org:MIT/oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/101807
Date January 2015
CreatorsHalloran, John W., Jr
ContributorsJ. Chappell H. Lawson., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science., Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Political Science.
PublisherMassachusetts Institute of Technology
Source SetsM.I.T. Theses and Dissertation
LanguageEnglish
Detected LanguageEnglish
TypeThesis
Format105 pages, application/pdf
RightsM.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission., http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Page generated in 0.0017 seconds