Industrial Restructuring and Innovation Policy in Central and Eastern Europe since 1990

Erik Reinert (), Rainer Kattel () and Margit Suurna

The Other Canon Foundation and Tallinn University of Technology Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics from TUT Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance

Abstract: The paper aims to show that, first, innovation policies deployed in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries since 1990s have been a double-edged sword: on the one hand enabling fast and furious industrial restructuring while, on the other hand, locking CEE economies into economic activities with low value added/productivity growth and thus undermining future sustainable growth. However, the impact of accession into the European Union (EU) has been equally pivotal for industrial restructuring and innovation policy making in CEE countries in the 2000s and this process can be summed up as a strong Europeanization of innovation policy in CEE. The paper proceeds to show, second, that also Europeanization has been largely a double-edged sword for CEE countries. Since joining the EU in 2004 or 2007, and already during the accession process, there is a strong change in innovation policies in many CEE countries towards a much more active role of the state. In this change there is a clear and strong role of EUÿs structural funding, particularly the negotiations and planning that comes with it. However, these changes come with specific problems: first, there is an over-emphasis in emerging CEE innovation policies on a linear understanding of innovation (from lab to market) that is based on the assumption that there is a growing demand from industry for R&D (which is not the case because of the structural changes that took place in the 1990s via the Washington Consensus policies); and, second, increasing usage of independent implementation agencies in an already weak administrative capacity environment lacking policy skills for networking and long-term planning.

Pages: 43 pages
Date: 2009-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eec, nep-ino, nep-knm and nep-tra
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hum.ttu.ee/wp/paper23.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tth:wpaper:23

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in The Other Canon Foundation and Tallinn University of Technology Working Papers in Technology Governance and Economic Dynamics from TUT Ragnar Nurkse Department of Innovation and Governance Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Shobhit Shakya ().