growth rates of agricultural output (Palmer-Jones and Sen, 2006).
         Additional important issues to be considered in terms of effects of AKST on poverty reduction include (1) how researchers are evaluated (Gunasena, 2003); (2) poverty alleviation as specific target in agricultural policy (Guna­sena, 2003); (3) relationship of increased productivity to re­duced food prices, and evidence that rural poverty is linked to international world prices (Minota and Daniels, 2005; Yavapolku et al., 2006). In addition, indebted countries may have economic growth but not poverty reduction as they must pay a substantial part of GDP to external debt.
          The future is not just about the need for more scien­tific effort and technical breakthroughs generated by both more public funding and private sector interventions, but about the political economy of agriculture and food in the developing world (Scoones, 2003). Two basic components of well-being are having a secure livelihood to meet one's basic needs, and realizing and expanding one's capabilities in order to achieve fulfillment. For that reason measuring the link between poverty and agricultural growth by using the human development index or developing new indexes may be necessary.

8.3 Governance of AKST Investments:Towards a Conceptual Framework

8.3.1 Demand for improved governance
Particularly since the mid-1980s, there has been increas­ing demand for AKST systems to be accountable to various stakeholders. These demands have been prompted by the high transaction costs of conventional agricultural research systems in knowledge generation and transfer as well as in­efficiency in resource allocation and utilization (Von Oppen et al., 2000). Other reasons for recent demands include lack of transparency, exclusion of other stakeholders from the process of setting research agendas, unequal access to tech­nologies emanating from research and fear of private sector monopoly over technologies, particularly in biotechnology (McMahon, 1992; Reisfschneider et al., 1997; Echeverria, 1998; Von Oppen et al., 2000).
        The pressure for accountability is varied across coun­tries and regions. For example, in industrialized countries issues of efficiency and pluralism in the research process are becoming more important (Heemskerk and Wennink, 2005). In most Asian and Latin American countries, the pressure for more accountability seems to be driven by lo­cal stakeholders (Byerlee and Alex, 1998; Von Oppen et al., 2000; Hartwich and Von Oppen, 2000). In the case of sub-Saharan Africa, it is the donors, who provide more than one-half of the funding for agricultural research in some countries (see 8.1), who pressure for accountability (Herz, 1996). These demands for accountability have resulted in changes in both the sources and the mechanisms for funding AKST (8.1.4) and hence the rules and modalities which gov­ern the mobilization and utilization of AKST investments.

8.3.2 Defining and judging governance in relation to AKST investments
The changes in governance of AKST can be viewed as part of an "induced institutional innovation" (Ruttan, 2003),

which sees changes in institutions or governance driven by factors of demand and supply. On the demand side, the contemporary economic and social realities (including de­velopments of new technologies) are pushing for changes in governance and institutions mediating AKST investments globally, nationally and at lower levels within nations. On the supply side, advances in social science knowledge are in­creasingly an important source of shifts in the supply of in­stitutional solutions (Ruttan, 2003). Thus the accumulated knowledge (both theoretical and empirical) on the function­ing of institutions can be viewed as facilitating the supply of new institutional solutions.
          The discussion of governance and the criteria to judge good governance can be approached in several ways. These criteria can be based on certain outcomes such as how effi­cient or effective is the governance in meeting predetermined objectives (Box 8-2).