Policy learning in Iran's technology and innovation development policies of third, fourth and fifth development plans

Over the time, policy change and learning play a significant role in national decision making and improving transparency of policy situations. On this basis, current paper has concentrated on Iran's national development plans, as the major national mid-term developmental policies, to investigate policy learning and its mechanisms in the most crucial policy attempts to develop technology and innovation (T&I). Analyzing five past development plans led to selection of third to fifth plans as suitable case studies for this paper. After content analysis of relevant policy documents in addition to conducting seventeen interviews with key policy actors of development planning process related to T&I articles, sixteen major policy issues were extracted in which direct implications are apparent in at least two investigated plans. Dominant share of policy learning belongs to political and technical learning with eight and seven frequencies respectively. Dominancy of political learning, as the most irrelevant type of policy learning, reflects low maturity of learning in T&I policy actors in Iran. Technical and conceptual learning (with seven and five occurrences) refer to relatively successful policy endeavors that are being tried to be improved or continued, usually by low- and mid-level policy actors. Two key cases of identified social learning unveil effective role of public media and policy experts to widen and strengthen the discourse on innovation- and knowledge-based development.