 Can network analysis contribute to territorial policy evaluation?Quelle contribution l’analyse de réseaux peut-elle apporter à l’évaluation de politiques publiques territoriales ?Nastasya Winckel (),
Nathalie Kroichvili and
Aurore Niechajowicz
Working Papers from HAL Abstract: Abstract: The authors of this paper seek to assess the potential of network analysis for the evaluation of a territorial development policy. On the one hand, the aim is scientific since the literature on network analysis in the social and human sciences has only marginally examined the evaluation of public policies and territorial dynamics other than economic and driven by firms. On the other hand, it is operational since it involves contributing to the evaluation of a project carried out by two local authorities in the North Franche-Comté region, Pays de Montbéliard Agglomération and Grand Belfort, engaged in an ambitious decade-long project aimed at transforming the northern Franche-Comté industrial territory, subject to deindustrialization, with the creation of an innovation ecosystem around industry 4.0, a hydrogen sector, the acculturation of the population to digital and more generally to innovation. After having identified the strengths and limitations of network analysis to contribute to this evaluation, the authors deploy a methodology which combines qualitative data and analysis of statistics associated with graph theory on the ground of the North Franche-Comté region and draw lessons from it in order to understand the emergence and implementation modalities of this territorial development project and what they reveal about deviations from expectations and the vitality of the project over time. Extended abstract: Assessing the impact of a public policy remains complex and cannot be reduced to measuring indicators. While network analysis is promising for evaluating public policies aimed at territorial development, the scientific literature on networks has two shortcomings; it has only marginally examined networks' evaluation potential under a territorial development perspective; studies on network at the territorial level are usually focused on economic flows generated by the private sector, and not so much on other kind of dynamics. Thus, to understand what is at stake within a territorial development project led by public actors and involving a diversity of stakeholders, we wish to analyze the cooperative dynamics at work within the framework of the project called "Transformation of an Industrial Territory" (TTI), (2017-2027). This project is conducted in the North Franche-Comté region and has obtained public support for project setup and deployment. The project aim is to ease the transformation of the North Franche-Comté industrial territory, subject to deindustrialization, with the creation of an innovation ecosystem around Industry 4.0 principles, the development of a hydrogen sector, as well as digital and innovation acculturation of the population. In this project, researchers designed a framework to evaluate the program deployment and territorial transformations over the duration of the project. Apart from measuring several indicators, this involves observing stakeholders' interactions during various stages of the project (launch period in 2017-2018; 2020-2021; 2022-2023) and understanding their influence on the project. As such, a longitudinal network analysis appeared as a promising avenue to support the evaluation of the territorial development policy underlying the project. After determining what contributions network analysis can bring to the evaluation of a territorial development policy, we use a methodology that combines qualitative data and graphs within the "Transformation of an Industrial Territory" project. A questionnaire about cooperative relationships and their weight within TTI provided data used through the software Gephi to produce statistics and graphs. The network analysis applied to the evaluation of this specific territorial development project highlights a dynamic of network expansion, then reduction.This can either reveal difficulties to maintain the vitality of interactions over time within the project, or foreshadow the existence of cycles in network constitution and project life. This study confirms that network analysis thus has real interest in accounting for stakeholders' relationship nature and evolution in the context of a territorial development project. Indeed, cooperation constitutes an indicator of the effect of this public policy. However, the influence of the network constructed by the public policy on achieving objectives is uncertain. In other words, the causal relationship between the establishment or evolution of the relationships between network actors and the success or failure of the project is less obvious; network analysis can sometimes reveal explanatory factors toward a result, without being exhaustive or estimating the weight of their respective influence. Furthermore, network analysis can help uncover interactions producing unanticipated territorial development effects, such as generating new projects involving the same configuration of actors on similar issues and thanks to collective competencies acquired through participation in the same initial project. Keywords: North Franche-Comté region; evaluation; territorial development; public policy; social network analysis; développement territorial; évaluation; Nord Franche-Comté; politique publique; analyse des réseaux sociaux (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:wpaper:hal-05264218 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Working Papers from HAL |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.