Piloting Regional Innovation or Much Ado about Nothing?—Evaluating the R&D Policy Initiative of Nordland,Norway

This article evaluates the results of almost a decade of experience with regional R&D development and implementation for enhanced innovation in the county of Nordland, Norway. Following a 2002 national devolution initiative, the county of Nordland was the first among Norwegian counties to coin and implement a distinct R&D policy for business-related innovation and development. This was done by setting up a broad regional partnership, framing a regional strategy and by coordinating substantial budgetary resources to implement the strategy. The evaluation describes the results of this process as ambiguous. This article looks at the process from three perspectives. First, we look at the organizational side of how the policy formation and implementation processes have performed. Second, we evaluate the business community response to the policy initiative to see whether any signs of altered behaviour can be found. Third, we look at how the partnership dynamic can explain policy outcomes. Theoretically and policy-wise we then discuss how our findings contribute to new insights in the field of analysing and generating regional innovation policy.     

Layering,Administrative Change and National Paths to Europeanization: The Case of the Water Framework Directive

The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) can be seen as a reform effort that intervenes in the member states' domestic administrative system by obliging “whole of government” measures across sectoral lines of authority and levels of government. This puts pressure on the sectoral authorities to coordinate their activities. In this article we ask the following questions: How do the state executives respond to the WFD? How can we understand their behaviour and action choices in the implementation of EU law? And third: What can our findings tell us about changes to the European administrative system? This article reveals that despite resistance and strong cognitive priors among the state executives, the WFD logic of ecosystem-based management is gaining a foothold as an administrative principle. Thus, in order to explain changes in the administrative system, we need to take the regional level into account. Our findings suggest that attention needs to be paid to the role of complex, multi-level structures, which includes the regional, river basin district level in the development of a European administrative order.