A socio-political approach to exploring the innovation culture in post-socialist countries: the case of Croatia

Jadranka Švarc

Post-Communist Economies, 2017, vol. 29, issue 3, 359-374

Abstract: Innovation culture and the social determinants of national innovation capacities have rarely been empirically researched in innovation-weak post-socialist countries despite the fact that innovation is considered one of the main drivers of their economic growth and convergence. Applying an alternative approach to identifying the factors that shape a national innovation culture is challenging as there has been little empirical research in the area. Moreover, the global cross-cultural concepts of national innovation culture hold little relevance for post-socialist countries. The trans-disciplinary socio-political approach employed in this article relies on the qualitative analysis of the dominant concepts used in political economy and sociology to identify the socio-cultural and political aspects of Croatia’s post-socialist transformation into a capitalist country. This is presented as one of the critical formative determinants of innovation culture. Croatia is chosen as a typical innovation-weak post-socialist country, where innovation remains weak. The analysis presented here suggests that transition-induced factors dominated by ‘crony variance of capitalism’ have an equal, if not a greater, suppressive impact on the current innovation culture than standard explanations based on the socio-cultural heritage of socialism and cultural inertia.

Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:pocoec:v:29:y:2017:i:3:p:359-374

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DOI: 10.1080/14631377.2017.1315001

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