States of innovation: a critical perspective

Joakim Juhl, Erik Aarden and Sebastian Michael Pfotenhauer

Chapter 18 in The New Role of the State for Transformative Innovation, 2026, pp 290-307 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Theories about transformative or mission-oriented innovation policies calling for ‘more state’ continue to promote a supine, apolitical, and severely limited meaning of statehood with regard to innovation, principally focused on the state as an economic entity. Through three brief vignettes, the authors illustrate how the impact and politics of innovation and innovators increasingly transcend constitutional boundaries between the private and the state. They then retrace key moments in the history of innovation theory to show that the idea of the state as a hands-off facilitator has remained largely unchanged since World War II (WWII). This leads them to discuss three areas where this reductionist understanding of statehood is insufficient for capturing the complex role of the state in transformative innovation: First, a narrow, apolitical understanding of statehood draws an artificial boundary between the domains of ‘innovation policy’ and ‘technology governance’. Second, innovation has become a powerful framing device for policy priorities and national identity. Innovation has become part and parcel of political statecraft, enabling actors to propose visions of desirable futures and pathways for attaining them. Third, the authors argue that the prominence of innovation as the dominant pathway for transformation tends to forego alternative options for social change. they conclude by arguing that we need to see innovation as a deeply political and normative space that touches all the aspects of statehood in the traditional sense, including questions of identity, the expression of political will, the material politics of technologies, distributive justice, or the guarantee of basic constitutional rights.

Keywords: Innovation; Innovation Policy; Innovation State; Holistic Innovation; Statehood; Statecraft (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781839100253
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