Damon Coletta’s review of my book is weighty, eclectic, and seasoned with magnificent prose. Indeed, it is so packed with assorted insights, that I admit difficulty in responding. First, Coletta never quite summarizes The Politics of Innovation, so let me do so here. My book brings together the current political and economic wisdom, and the latest findings, about how nations become leaders in science and technology (S&T). It uses a combination of statistical analysis and qualitative case studies to question the conventional view and to offer new theory. Many experts mistakenly believe that domestic institutions and policies determine national innovation rates. However, after decades of research, there is still no agreement on precisely how this happens. Nor do scholars agree upon exactly which institutions or policies matter. And little aggregate evidence has been presented to support any particular institutional or policy explanation. Instead, The Politics of Innovation offers a new theory that rightly identifies institutions and policies as tools, not causal forces. It presents extensive evidence to show that domestic institutions and policies do not determine innovation rates. It also argues that social networks are as important as institutions in determining national innovation rates. Finally, The Politics of Innovation introduces a new theory of “creative insecurity” which explains how institutions, policies, and networks are all subservient to politics. It contends that, ultimately, each country’s balance of domestic rivalries versus external threats and the ensuing political fight, are what drive S&T competitiveness. In other words, politics determine how a nation’s S&T institutions and policies will be used. Also, these politics involve both domestic and international concerns. Therefore national success at S&T is not just a domestic story, it is also an international one.

Second, I intended the book as a comprehensive introduction to the debates over national S&T competitiveness. It faithfully recounts the major theories. It explores different sources of data and explains competing approaches to measurement. It has sections on definitions and intellectual history. All told, it synthesizes over fifty years of research on national innovation rates. But it spends little time on Robert Gilpin, Donald Cardwell, Francis Bacon, or the transistor. In fact, my primary dispute with Coletta’s review is that it only occasionally engages what I actually wrote.

Finally, Coletta questions the use of patents as a “high fidelity” measure of innovation. So do I! That’s why I present a thorough discussion of innovation measures in the book. Patent data do appear frequently in my graphs and figures. But the book’s arguments do not depend upon them. In making its case, The Politics of Innovation draws upon statistical analysis of various types of data, of which patents are just one. And for those who distrust statistics altogether, the book also presents comparative case studies drawn from the United States, Japan, Korea, China, Taiwan, Thailand, the Philippines, Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, Canada, Turkey, Israel, Russia and a dozen countries across Western Europe. For it is only when multiple, independent data sources provide the same answer that I am truly convinced.