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COMPETITIVENESS POLICY EVALUATION AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE. Mari José Aranguren Edurne Magro James Wilson. Eu-SPRI Conference , Karlsruhe , 12th June 2012. Rationale for the Paper. Contemporary competitiveness policy is characterised by:
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COMPETITIVENESS POLICY EVALUATION AS A TRANSFORMATIVE PROCESS: FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE Mari José Aranguren Edurne Magro James Wilson Eu-SPRI Conference, Karlsruhe, 12th June 2012
Rationale for the Paper • Contemporary competitiveness policyis characterised by: • Mix of theoretical rationales, policy instruments and timescales • Interaction between policies designed at multiple administrative levels • Strong inertia in the policy process • Koschatzky & Kroll (2007); Laranjaet al (2008); Arangurenet al. (2010); Flanagan et al. (2011); Magro & Wilson (2011) • Complexity & inertia in the policy process offer important opportunities for policy learning • Both among policy-makers and among agents touched by the policies • But policy learning remains a loose concept • Smits & Kuhlman (2004); Nauwelaers & Wintjes (2008); Barca (2009) • Policy evaluation can contribute to policy learning, playing a transformative role, but there is a gap in our understanding of how this happens (or not) in practice
Why transformative evaluation? • Mode-1 & Mode-2 knowledge (Gibbons et al., 2004) • Knowledge bridging (Karlsenet al., 2012) Policy evaluation can play a role in this process; it can be ‘transformative’ We explore how this can happen through the comparative study of three cases in the Basque Country region Source: Karlsenet al. (2012)
ROUTE TO TRANSFORMATIVE POLICY EVALUATION No CREATE AWARENESS EVALUATION REQUIRES MODE 2? MODE 1 No DEMAND FOR EVALUATION? MAIN EXPECTATION? Yes 1 Yes DIALOGUE SPACES EXIST? CREATE THEM MODE 2 No Yes ALL RELEVANT PARTIES INVOLVED? DEVELOP INCLUSION MECHANISMS No Yes COGNITIVE PROXIMITY & TRUST BETWEEN RESEARCHERS & POLICY-MAKERS? TRANSFORMATIVE POLICY EVALUATION KNOWLEDGE CO-GENERATION AROUND EVALUATION WORK TO BUILD IT No Yes
Conclusions • Importance of demand for evaluation & engagement in evaluation from both policy-makers and researchers • Engagement tends to increase during the learning process, but not always (e.g. changes in the people involved) • Stability (policy-makers & researchers) aids transformative evaluation • Evaluation techniques are not the key issue; rather, when and why they are used • Depending on who should learn and what they should learn, it is important to create different spaces for dialogue • Transformative policy learning is a continuous process • Evaluation for policy learning depends not only the technical capabilities of researchers, but also on their capacities to facilitate long-term processes Following a certain route, policy evaluation can be ‘transformative’ in that it generates behavioural additionality in policy-makers and researchers
Eskerrikasko / Gracias / Thankyou edurne.magro@orkestra.deusto.es jwilson@orkestra.deusto.es edurnemagro jamierwilson www.orkestra.deusto.es