In the mid-1980s, as a result of pressure from the national scientific community and the influence of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's 1984 science and technology policy review, science was introduced into the Portuguese political agenda. A Framework Law and a series of institutional reforms were the most visible signs of change. Admission to the EC in 1986, however, provided an excuse for reducing the public R&D budget. While science policy remains, in the 1990s, a priority in the political discourse, there is a lack of correspondence between this discourse and policy practice. A survey of members of the Portuguese Parliament undertaken in 1995 was designed to shed some light on their perceptions and opinions concerning the value of science and the role of the Parliament in science policy, and, therefore, on the reasons for the gap between the discourse and practical behaviour of policy-makers in this field.
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This review was requested by the Portuguese delegate to the OECD Committee on Science and Technology Policy who was the President of JNICT at the time. The review, carried out during 1983 and 1984, produced a report, published in 1986.
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Those influences were multiple: on the philosophy of action of the new department—science and technology at the service of development, the decision to launch an integrated science budget, the intention of instituting a centre for research in science policy, etc. See Secretaria de Estado da Investigação Científica, undated, Ciência e Tecnologia em 1986 (Lisbon: Ministério do Planeamento e da Administração do Território).
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A somewhat similar situation appears to have happened in Spain, as reported by Sans-Menendez, L., 1995, Policy choices, institutional constraints and policy learning: the Spanish science and technology policy in the eighties. International Journal of Technology Management, (4.5.6), 630.
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A somewhat similar situation occurred in the United States during the Reagan Administration. See Bimber, B., and Guston, D. H., 1995, Politics by the same means: government and science in the United States. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by S. Jasanoffet al. (Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage), pp. 562ff.
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The research was initiated by FEPASC in collaboration with CIES/ISCTE, involving the participation of Lígia Amâncio, Patrícia Ávila, Graça Carapinheiro, António Firminio da Costa, Maria Eduarda Gonçalves, Jorge Correia Jesuíno, and Maria Teresa Patrício.
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Elzinga, A. , and Jamison, A., 1995, Changing policy agendas in science and technology. Handbook of Science and Technology Studies, edited by S. Jasanoffet al. (Thousand Oaks, London, New Delhi: Sage), p. 573.
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In a recently published work on the Portuguese scientific community, utilizing an extensive questionnaire applied to a representative sample of Portuguese researchers (1086 scientists were interviewed), a similar question obtained predominantly negative responses. Only 5.5 per cent of the researchers thought that the science policy was correct, 17.1 per cent thought it incorrect, and 66.3 per cent thought there was no science policy in the country. The remaining 11 per cent had no opinion. Jesuíno, J. C., et al., 1995, A Comunidade Cientifica Portuguesa—nos Finais do Século XX (Oeiras: Celta).
