The EU has become one of the most prominent promoters of lifelong learning policies. Inside the European single market, EU member states have strong incentives to adopt similar approaches to lifelong learning and recognition of educational attainments in order to foster labour mobility. More surprisingly, countries neighbouring the EU also develop costly and radical reforms of their lifelong learning policies similar to those of EU member states. They do this despite the uncertain outcome of these policies on their specific labour markets and even though they are not likely to benefit from the potential gains of labour mobility. For making sense of this puzzle, this article conceptualises the underpinning mechanisms that led to these similar approaches to lifelong learning. The European Commission has created a specific script for lifelong learning that became an accepted norm inside the EU and was then diffused to neighbouring countries. Policy change according to this norm may be driven by competitive pressure, coercion, the pursuit of legitimacy or learning. While the EU seeks to diffuse its norm to neighbouring countries, these efforts initiated quite different processes in recipient countries. An illustration from neighbouring countries highlights two of these mechanisms. Remarkably, those countries that are potential candidate countries of the EU rather unreflectively emulated the norm because they strive for more legitimacy on their way to EU membership. In contrast, most neighbouring countries without any prospect of becoming EU members engaged in a process of bounded learning in which they adopt single aspects of the EU norm that fit their context and capacities.
In the current programming period, European Union (EU) regions and member states that want to use European Regional Development Funds (ERDF) are required to develop innovation strategies for smart specialization (RIS3) based on the idea of rational strategic management. In order to explore the relationship between strategic policy design and policy performance, this article maps regional strategies for information and communication technologies (ICT) and their effects in the period 2008-2012. Furthermore, it generates suggestions for relevant case studies. We first conduct a quantitative analysis of the effects of ICT strategies and ERDF expenditure on regional ICT performance in Western European regions. ICT is a relevant priority for many regions, and it reflects EU priorities fostering ICT activities through regional development funds. Second, we propose a framework to categorize EU regions in the context of ICT policy based on the expected distribution of regional ICT performance. Our analysis covers 97 regions in 9 EU member states, out of which 29 have had a dedicated ICT strategy. In line with ideas of rational strategic management, our working hypothesis states that regions with a dedicated strategy should display better performance. However, our findings suggest that having a dedicated ICT strategy has not had a clear effect on performance in terms of Internet and broadband access, while allocating dedicated ERDF and other expenditure to Internet infrastructure has had a positive effect. At first sight, this questions the effectiveness of rational strategic management. Yet, more research is needed to assess the quality of ICT strategies and their fit with broader innovation agendas. It is indeed the degree of embeddedness of ICT in the regional innovation ecosystem that is likely to condition the effect of strategies on performance. To this end, our mapping indicates interesting case studies, and we suggest additional factors to be taken into account in future analyses. New insights into strategy design and performance will also be important to inform the implementation of the new generation of innovation strategies for smart specialization.J Knowl Econ (2015) 6:320-333 DOI 10.1007/s13132-015-0240-
In the European Union (EU) multiple levels of governance interact in the design of public policies. Multi-level policies require a variety of evidence to define problems appropriately, set the right objectives and create suitable instruments to achieve them. How such a variety of evidence is used in practice, however, remains largely elusive. In 2013, the reformed EU Cohesion Policy brought about a sea change in the way governments must justify their investment priorities to support innovation and economic development. One of many new 'ex-ante conditionalities' sought to improve the design of regional innovation policies by putting strong emphasis on the underlying evidence base of policy strategies. A multitude of data sources had to be combined to meet this novel requirement in 120 regional and national strategy documents. Combining various data sources meaningfully was a necessary first step to engage with stakeholders from relevant business and research communities to jointly develop and decide on priorities for public investments. Stakeholder organisations had the opportunity to contest insights coming from official statistics. But how do governments reconcile insights from socioeconomic analyses with differing views from stakeholders? We illustrate how such contestation of evidence has unfolded in the Basque Country. In this region, socioeconomic analysis and broader stakeholder consultation rapidly confirmed three investment priorities that had been already quite established. Stakeholders from local governments, universities and other government departments contested this choice as not fully representative of the local potential and societal needs. Through their participation in a multi-stakeholder body advising the government they succeeded in adding four priorities that address local societal issues: sustainable food, urban living, culture and environmental protection. Our findings underline that rational planning using statistics gets governments only so far in meeting pressing societal challenges. Stakeholders contesting and complementing statistical insights make policies more responsive to local needs.
This paper calls for a better integration of place-, evidence-based and inclusive dimensions in the implementation of the Science, Technology and Innovation (STI) strategic plans in sub-Saharan Africa. The study contrasts with and takes inspiration from the recent and ongoing international experiences in the elaboration of Innovation Strategies for Smart Specialisation. Pragmatic recommendations are drawn for more effective innovation-based local development strategies.
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