Network Governance of Scientific and Technological Development Based on S&t Foresight: Japan`s Experience

Science and technology became key drivers of Japan's post-war recovery and national development. Japan was the first country to regularly conduct Science & Technology (S&T) Foresight and apply the results to national policy design. This article assesses the role of S&T Foresight in the governance of scientific and technological development. In the context of changing socio-economic, technological and geopolitical trends, the emergence of new challenges, and the realisation of low-probability, high-impact events, the government sought a tool for managing science and technology that would enable long-term strategic forecasting and the determination of development priorities. S&T Foresight has become such a tool. Administrative reforms in the 1990s and early 2000s established a system that brought together executive bodies, organisations representing business interests and research centres, including the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy. This structure ensured that the results of long-term forecasting studies were communicated directly to decision-makers and applied in the development of five-year basic plans for science, technology, and innovation — fundamental documents in the governance of scientific development. The article provides a brief overview of the main stages of the country's development to present the context in which the state requested S&T Foresight, and examines the factors that contributed to its integration into governance. The article demonstrates the role of Foresight in facilitating network interactions between science, government, and business. In the network system a gradual increase in the importance of S&T Foresight's inclusion in decision-making processes ensured continuity, consistency, and systematicity in interaction, participation, and broad horizontal links.