The rediscovery of mission orientation in research and innovation policy in Europe: in need of new state capacities

Wolfgang Polt and Matthias Weber

Chapter 6 in The New Role of the State for Transformative Innovation, 2026, pp 92-107 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: The past decades have seen a normative turn in a number of policy areas, including research and innovation (R&I) policies. One way to implement a more directional type of policy is through mission-oriented policies. The European Union (EU) has embraced this policy approach by making it a major part of its current Horizon Europe framework programme for research and innovation. Applying analytical and conceptual frameworks developed in comparative work on mission-oriented policies to the current EU missions, the authors find that: (1) there are differences between types of missions with respect to their implications for governance (especially between accelerator and transformative missions); (2) the majority of current mission-oriented interventions are still at an experimental stage; (3) patterns of policy interventions emerge which depend heavily on the institutional trajectory of the respective countries’ governance system; (4) the type of transformative missions that the EU is pursuing calls for whole-of-government approaches; and (5) most of the countries as well as the EU need to substantially scale up their capacities to be able to successfully implement this new and demanding policy approach.

Keywords: Mission Orientation; Governance; Research and Innovation Policy; State Capacities; Horizon Europe (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781839100253
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