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Abstract

This paper reports the results of an empirical study on how the German federation and Länder interact in the field of innovation policy and whether this interaction counts as co-ordination. For there to be genuine co-ordination, there must be evidence of fitting together as part of a coherent framework and some commonality of objectives. The fieldwork sought to identify the areas of interaction which were seen by respondents as part of a co-ordination process. Three broad areas of interaction were accordingly positioned in a spectrum of declining formality: innovation infrastructure, promotional programmes and individual projects. An important finding, which emerged from the fieldwork in Germany was that a combination of factors is shifting the balance of emphasis and activity from the formal and binding to the informal and voluntary end of this spectrum. The factors cited most frequently by the interviewees were a reduction in federal expenditure, an increasing use of competitions and some broader constitutional developments. But is this interaction really co-ordination? The authors put the case for taking a broad view of what counts as co-ordination and conclude that there is genuine co-ordination up to a certain point (the federal system places limits on how far that process can go). A subsidiary conclusion coming from the empirical study and which may surprise many non-Germans, is that German officials are familiar and comfortable with the areas of untidiness which result.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2002 Elsevier. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/
Publisher Keywords:	Innovation; Germany; Federalism; Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management
Departments:	Bayes Business School > Management
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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