Multi-Level Steering and Institution Building: The European Union's Approach to Research Policy

Abstract

Adopting the conception of the university as a primary driver of innovation and economic growth has brought increased pressure for the European Union (EU) to actively steer university-based research policy, despite its being outside of the EU's direct jurisdiction. While the open method of coordination (OMC) was developed for such situations, the complex nature of universities and research policy has meant that such steering does not stop with the OMC and occurs on multiple levels using a variety of governance tools. By mapping out the ways in which the EU uses legal, financial and informational instruments to coordinate policy and build institutions, the article attempts to understand the role and objective of the EU in this policy area in relation to national and other global actors. It suggests that despite strong globalising trends, the EU does more than to echo and promote these trends at the national and sub-national levels, but also attempts to structure the research environment in a complex heterogeneous way.The importance of the concept of a 'knowledge economy' for European Union (EU) policy has brought higher education, and more specifically university-based research, to the forefront of policy concerns. The Lisbon strategy and the subsequent EU 2020 strategy rest on the assumption that knowledge creation and dissemination is and will continue to be the basis for competitiveness in a globalised world. In order to address this area, the EU has sought ways to influence the creation and dissemination of knowledge without directly creating higher education or research policy, as those fall outside of its jurisdiction and are subject to national sensitivities and path dependencies. The attempts of the EU to play a role in higher education can be traced back as far as the 1950s (Corbett, 2006); however, in the year 2000, a significant shift occurred in EU policy. The belief in a direct connection between knowledge creation and economic growth became enshrined in the Lisbon strategy and thus invited new policy initiatives which emphasised the economic role of universities in contradistinction to their cultural and socialising role. While this shift was beneficial for EU policymakers seeking more control over the higher education area, the economic conception of universities originates outside of the EU. The process of globalisation, the drive for national competitiveness, the discourses of the knowledge economy and innovation systems, and broader neo-liberal ideas undergirding the concept of new public management, as well as organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and World Bank, have all been highly influential in pushing countries to adapt their university sectors to a more economically oriented model.What, then, is the role and objective of the EU in the policy area of university-based research? What does the EU bring to the table that neither the national economies nor the global higher education landscape can provide? This article is intended to ma...

Resilience in Academic Research: The Role of Personal and Extraneous Antecedents

“…Thus, it supports Moghdam et al, [3] proposition that university, local, and global policies can influence the intention to publish research. On the global level, Young [62] also presents the fact that the intention, creation, and dissemination of knowledge can be achieved by having the right policies in practice. The author's research shows how the European Union tries to adapt and innovate, even influence research policies in countries that are part of it in an attempt to achieve this aim.…”