Paper Sheds
Light on Policy and Politics
In
1995, the office of newly-elected Virginia
Gov. George Allen wanted to assess the economic
effects
of Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology
(CIT), a nonprofit organization originally
created by the General Assembly of Virginia
in 1984 to
enhance the research and development capability
of the state's major research universities.
By that time, the center was increasingly being
focused on technology and commercialization.
CIT President Bob Templin asked SPP Professor
Roger Stough, the Northern Virginia Endowed
Chair
who was already engaged in research about how
technology sectors of industry develop, to
do the assessment. He complied and completed
the
project with the help of SPP Professor James
Riggle, a then Ph.D. student who was assisting
Stough at the time. Ten
years after undertaking that project for the
state, the research led Riggle (now a Research
Associate Professor at SPP) and Stough to publish
a paper in the spring 2004 issue of the journal
Technological Forecasting & Social Change
that sheds light on the relationship between
public policy and politics. |
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Dr. Roger Stough
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“The main thesis is that
different kinds of public policies result in different
kinds of politics and political demands,” Riggle
said in an interview about the paper, “Evaluating
state cooperative technology programs: With a Virginia
case study, and comparative data from Illinois.”
Riggle, who began
his research as an SPP student, is now a
professor.
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It
is a comparative analysis that focuses on
the differences between how Illinois and Virginia
ran their technology programs during the
1990s,
a time when these programs had sprouted in
many states. “Illinois officials chose
to concentrate their program on a few firms
and industries in the Chicago area. Downstate
politicians got angry and killed the program.
Virginia officials chose to spread their program
around the entire state. It survived for several
more years, even gaining funds from the state.
However, by spreading resources so thinly,
the Virginia program watered down potential
economic benefits,” Riggle said.
Although
focused on technology programs, the paper could
provide a valuable case study to all public
policy practitioners and students, Riggle said. “It
provides them with evidence about how public
policies actually work in practice,” he
said, adding, “It also shows that too
much concentration of resources, or too little,
can result in ineffective programs." |
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