Between institutions and agency: How tensions shape the trajectory of governance

Abstract

The Europe 2020 strategy promoted the concept of smart specialization as the future for regional development strategies in Europe. The aim was to improve governance practices within European countries on sub-national levels. Nevertheless, not all regions in the European Union produced smart-specialization strategies within the year 2020. The failure to produce a strategy does not mean that actions were not taken. It is instead that actions were taken within different contexts that greatly affected how the implementation process played out. As such, smart specialization has presented opportunities to study the meaning of place. How the policy concept has been translated into action through endogenous frameworks for governance may be analyzed from a distance. However, without observing the actions of the actors involved in the process, the full picture is far from revealed. Hence, studying smart specialization up close becomes a study on how institutional frameworks interact through interpretations and actions by the people within the place in question. Using smart specialization as an experiment in how a concept may yield different outcomes based on place-specific contexts, experiences obtained from the processes may provide valuable new knowledge on how institutions and agency shape trajectories for regional development. This thesis is based on field research conducted in the Stockholm region during interactions between regional stakeholders. The researcher was part of a project to implement smart specialization in the region, but the project stagnated and came to a stop. Furthermore, this was not the first attempt to implement smart specialization in the region. Hence, there seemed to be factors that shaped the trajectory for governance in the region that had not been properly recognized. The case is centered around interactions concerning the European Regional Development Fund, and the platform tasked with connecting the funds with the regional actors. As such, the study focuses on a narrow piece of a much greater and complex system that makes up the total of innovation activities in the region. Hence, the thesis is not about innovation activities in a region as a whole, but rather on how a set of observed events between people representing certain stakeholders was both affected by, and had an effect on the framework they operate within in a complex interplay between institutions and agents.

Through observations, interviews, and document analysis, the thesis explores the case by applying a four-dimensional analytical model built on a place-based perspective. The analytical model structures the data in a discussion concerning institutional factors, the regional approach to governance, how the mobilization was conducted, and what outcomes were observed, reflecting on matters of actors and their agency as a vital component to the process.

The initiative did not lead to a smart specialization strategy. Moreover, the workshops hardly resembled a process intended to change governance structures at all. Furthermore, the observations uncovered underlying tensions that indicated inhibiting factors on mobilization in the region. As such, to understand what happened, the study intends to explore these relations. The study found that even though the pre-existing framework for governance defined the mobilization, meaning no smart-specialization strategy would be produced, tensions between the actors eventually triggered actions that would impact practices for inclusive governance in the region.