This is the first volume in a series of five books bringing together the results of intensive research on the national systems of innovation in the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. The Role of the State analyzes the relationship between the state and the development of the national system of innovation. Combining original data and expert analysis, the book presents experience and knowledge that may impact how we understand the theory of innovation systems, and implement policies and strategies for their development.

The book also shows beyond any doubt that the state has a crucial role in sponsoring innovation, directly and indirectly, thereby leading a process that is often well-supported by the private sector. An essential foundation for innovation is obviously strong mathematics and science in schools and universities. However, state institutions are also vital for providing leadership, setting the pace, providing incentives, and in many other ways.

The central focus of this book series is the National System of Innovation (NSI) of the five BRICS countries. Each book deals with a key component of the innovation system, providing the reader with access to analyses on the role played by the state, the financing, direct investment and the small and medium enterprises, besides approaching a particularly relevant — though still not extensively studied — aspect of the BRICS economies: the challenge of inequality and its interrelations with the NSIs of these countries.

This book provides a comparative analysis of the relationship between the state and the National Systems of Innovation (NSI) of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) and this chapter seeks to address four issues which we see as germane to this study. The first, and conceptually the most challenging, deals with the very rationale for placing the role of the state in the development of the NSI as a legitimate object of analysis. In the process of arguing for this rationale, we hope to show that the whole discussion of the location of the state in systems of innovation discourse is quite complex and analytically rich. The second issue concerns the particular varieties of the NSI concept which have been adopted in the individual chapters. Although these five studies in this book generally fall within a broad definition of systems of innovation which goes considerably beyond the sphere of science and technology, there are nonetheless differences of emphasis in the application of this concept to individual cases. The third section provides a succinct comparative treatment of the five country cases. Finally, we outline the basis of future research in the area, arguing that the emergence of the BRICS grouping may have possibly laid the foundation for a new discursive formation in studies on the NSI.

The adoption of the broad concept of a national system of innovation leads to the discussion on the connection between innovation policy and development policy. Once the politicalinstitutional and geopolitical sub-systems, the sub-systems of policies and representations and the sub-systems of social and economic demand are all comprised in the definition of the national innovation system, it becomes essential to consider the social disparities and heterogeneities in the analyses of innovation policy, in addition to the productive/innovative sub-system.

Russian history is full of contradictions in the evolution of its innovation system, its state policy and its position in the world. Russia as a successor of the USSR is known for its contribution to global science and technology (S&T). During its long history the basic elements of science and an innovation system were put in place under political and economic objectives which led to the acceleration of S&T to serve military requirements and industrialisation. Intensive investment was made in R&D facilities and equipment, and it became possible to carry out research in the most important scientific areas. As a result, the very specific — but at the global cutting edge — S&T sector and national system of innovation (NSI) were created.

India is now counted among the leading emerging economies of the world with a vast network of science and technology (S&T) and research and development (R&D) institutional structure. It is among the top ten nations of the world for Science Citation Index (SCI)–based scientific publications for the decade 1996–2006 and second among BRICS countries. The total number of papers almost doubled from 20,514 in 1996 to 40,062 in 2006. India spent around 1.13 per cent of GDP for R&D as a whole in 2007. India’s national aggregate gross expenditure on research and development (GERD) was about INR 413 billion (US$ 29.5 billion) in 2007–2008. A dominant proportion of GERD, around 68 per cent, is met by the government sources and 30 per cent from the business enterprise sector. In purchasing power parity (PPP) terms it works out to be about INR 1,660 billion. India ranks higher as compared to countries such as Brazil, Mexico and South Africa but is behind China which spent US$ 110 billion in R&D in PPP terms in 2006, and the United States at almost US$ 291 billion in 2006.

The national system of innovation (NSI) conceptual framework has been playing a key role in enabling China to catch up and move forward to become an innovative country, as well as to build a prosperous society according to the ‘Outline of National Medium and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan (2006–2020)’ (State Council 1996). The idea of the NSI looks at the innovation process as an integrated and systemic (not linear) process. Hence, not only the enterprise, institutions and organisations, but also how they interact, is an important element of the NSI. Furthermore, history and context would affect the dynamics of the NSI, which requires us to investigate the relationship between the state and the NSI within a dynamic historical context.

This chapter deals with the current role of the state in the evolution of the South African system of innovation. However, a ‘snapshot’ would not be adequate since we are dealing with dynamic systems in a constant state of flux. Hence there is a need to place the current relationship between state and innovation system within a historical context. In this chapter, the history covered starts with the 1996 White Paper on Science and Technology policy (hereafter referred to as the ‘White Paper’) as the focus of this analysis. This is done in full cognisance of the fact that the context for state policy and the forming of the post-apartheid system of innovation was strongly affected by the prior evolution of the South African national system of innovation (NSI) during the preceding periods of segregation and apartheid.