Systems Analysis as Infrastructural Knowledge
研究系统分析在苏联如何作为一种基础设施知识，使科学家能够批评政府政策，特别是大型基础设施项目，从而推动威权体制的内生自由化。
This article explores the political effects of the development of systems analysis as a form of “infrastructural knowledge”—that is, as a form of knowledge concerned with infrastructure, and an infrastructure of knowledge—that contributed to internal dissensus among scientific experts in the Soviet Union. Systems expertise is largely missing from existing work on the history of Soviet infrastructure. The article analyzes the development of governmental, managerial, and industrial applications of systems analysis in the Soviet context, as well as the transfer of Soviet systems expertise to developing countries. It argues that systems analysis constitutes a form of infrastructural knowledge that enabled Soviet scientists to criticize governmental policies, particularly largescale, top-down infrastructure projects. This critique is interpreted as an expression of a new normativity about what constitutes good governance; it became particularly salient when Soviet scientists were facing infrastructural projects in the global South. Systems analysis, in this way, constituted an important intellectual resource for endogenous liberalization of the authoritarian regime.