Fifty-five years of failure: The political economy of Canadian industrial research and development policy in historical perspective.

摘要

The thesis reviews state-business relations in Canada in the area of federal industrial research and development (R&D) policy over a fifty-five year period from the end of the Second World War to the turn of the twenty-first century. There are two central questions that are addressed in the thesis.;First, the thesis investigates why Canadian industry remained at the bottom among advanced capitalist economies in the level of its commitment to R&D and domestic innovation throughout this period. It is argued that Canadian industry followed a dependent model of technological development in which it relied heavily on imported technology through transfers of technology from parent companies to their Canadian subsidiaries and through a high level of imports of machinery and equipment.;Secondly, drawing on political economy theory, the thesis investigates why the federal state failed to alter this situation. There was a long-term effort by a succession of governments at the federal level to alter the low level of domestic technological capabilities in Canadian industry. This preoccupation on the part of the federal state was based on the view that low indigenous R&D was a key source of competitive weakness---a view that gathered strength with the movement to a more globalized world economy over the last three decades of the twentieth century. However, even though the federal state implemented a plethora of federal policies and programs to promote a higher level of R&D in Canadian industry, very little was accomplished in terms of altering the relative standing of Canadian industry within the advanced capitalist economies.;It is argued in the thesis that the ineffectiveness of the federal state in this area stemmed from a context of social forces, particularly the forces of private capital, which defeated specific transformative projects attempted by left-Liberals in the federal state. Federal policy continued to be defined by a focus on promoting "market-driven" innovation, identified in the thesis as the "Glassco model", and thus did not address the fundamental sources of low R&D and domestic innovation that existed in the private sector itself.;The thesis also provides a critical commentary on the work of National Systems of Innovation theorists, institutionalist theorists and "developmental state" theorists who have emphasized the role of knowledgeable state elites in organizing and leading transformative projects. The thesis argues that this emphasis neglects the crucial role of the context of social forces in determining the feasibility of state-led industrial restructuring.