The evolution of the national innovation system as programmatic policy idea in Finland

Abstract

This article studies the idea of a national innovation system (NIS) as a policy program. Previous research has addressed NIS as a policy idea in the context of expert discourse or as normative frames in policy discourse. The idea has not yet been studied as a policy program that explicitly coordinates public policymaking. In this article, we study the programmatic idea of NIS and its status and impacts in the coordination discourses of Finnish policymaking in 1990–2019. We find that the idea of NIS was omnipresent in Finnish policy programs of the 1990s and 2000s, but lost its programmatic status in the 2010s. We show how Finnish policymakers explicitly deployed the idea to prescribe budget allocations and new legislation. The findings suggest that the idea was given a tangible but, compared with the breadth of the idea, relatively narrow role in coordinating public policy.

The power of the economic outlook: An ideational explanation of the distinct pattern of Finnish wage setting within the Nordic context

“…For the official reform documentation, we used a simpler forward citation tracing method, common in ideational analyses of programmatic policy documents (e.g. Alaja and Sorsa, 2020), to identify the ideas that travelled throughout the negotiation process.…”

Political changemakers in Norway: The strategies and political ideas of welfare providers

“…In particular, research on framing and political ideas has documented that policymaking processes related to welfare production often provoke a 'political struggle over ideas', prompting substantial arguments and disagreement (Béland, 2005: 5, 8-9;Béland, 2007: 23;Hall, 1993;Taylor-Gooby, 2005). In this regard, it is relevant to distinguish between two types of ideas (Alaja and Sorsa, 2020;Campbell, 2002):…”

“…In particular, research on framing and political ideas has documented that policymaking processes related to welfare production often provoke a ‘political struggle over ideas’, prompting substantial arguments and disagreement (Béland, 2005: 5, 8–9; Béland, 2007: 23; Hall, 1993; Taylor-Gooby, 2005). In this regard, it is relevant to distinguish between two types of ideas (Alaja and Sorsa, 2020; Campbell, 2002): Programmatic ideas, such as economically, technically and legally anchored statements, specify concrete policy alternatives and cause-and-effect through ‘precise guidelines about how already-existing institutions and instruments should be used in specific situations’ (Campbell, 2002: 28) with the aim to solve particular policy problems. Normative ideas express more general ideas, norms and values of the good society (Schmidt, 2002: 170) and are about ‘moral and social appropriateness’ as they are related to actors’ principled beliefs and identities (Campbell, 2002: 24). The study treats these programmatic and normative dimensions of claims-making as potentially linked and argues that such links make the discourse more influential. That is to say, rational programmatic arguments that target a concrete political issue may be framed within a more generalised and normative perspective through connecting ‘a proposal to a positive idea or value that is widely available in the population’ (Chong and Druckman, 2007: 116).…”

“…It narrows the focus and treats interest groups as strategic actors that aim to perform in accordance with their interests within the limitations of bounded rationality defined by the institutional context, accessible resources and the actions of other organisations (Binderkrantz and Krøyer, 2012; Campbell, 2002; Klüver et al, 2015; Pedersen et al, 2014). The self-interests may interplay with and be framed by actors’ political ideas—programmatic and normative claims—and communicated to policymakers through different direct and indirect strategies (Alaja and Sorsa, 2020; Binderkrantz, 2005; Campbell, 2002; Klüver et al, 2015; Schmidt, 2002). So far, we know little about whether interest groups tend to use the same ideas and frames in different communication modes.…”

Innovaatio nykykapitalismin ideologisena arvona

“…Tästä syystä se herätti pelkoja siitä, että sitä käytetään välineenä valtiokeskeisten periaatteitten ujuttamiseksi innovaatiopolitiikkaan -vaikka samaa näkökulmaa on toisaalta syytetty siitä, että se ottaa annettuna puhtaasti välineelliset taloudelliset tavoitteet (Lemola 2020, 124-125). Kansallinen innovaatiojärjestelmä ei jäänyt vain politiikkaideaksi, vaan se vaikutti myös ohjelmallisemmin poliittiseen päätöksentekoon, kuten valtion budjettipäätöksiin (Alaja & Sorsa 2020).…”