Comparing innovation strategies: Canada's Ocean Supercluster and Europe's Smart Specialisation initiatives

The Global Innovation Clusters’ Initiative (GIC) is an innovation program launched in Canada. This article aims to describe the policy, in particular its key similarities and differences with the Europe's Smart Specialisation (S3) policy initiative, and critically explore the logic behind its inception. The article reveals that although policy implementation practices are bespoke and context-specific, the need to increase coordination between different levels and sectors of policy making is acknowledged to be important for achieving both innovation and local economic development objectives.     

Documentation Requirements,Intrinsic Motivation,and Worker Absence

ABSTRACT

Command systems are widely used to monitor public service provision, but little is known about unintended effects on individual workers’ motivation and work effort. Using insights from motivation crowding theory, we estimate a SEM model that captures how Danish childcare assistants and social/healthcare assistants perceive documentation requirements. We analyze how this perception relates to intrinsic motivation measured in a survey and sickness absence as reported in administrative registers, and find that individuals who perceive documentation requirements as controlling have lower intrinsic motivation and higher sickness absence. The association is statistically significant, but very small in substantive terms. The result is nevertheless consistent with the expectation in motivation crowding theory and contributes to the literature by including a new, reliable behavioral variable—sickness absence—and by drawing attention to possible downsides of command-and-control. Even though command systems can also have positive disciplining effects, knowledge about potential drawbacks is important for public managers.     

Multinationals and institutional competitiveness

This article discusses how institutional competitiveness and multinationals are mutually enriching concepts. Multinationals transfer capital, technology, and knowledge into new settings. They allow subsidiaries access to new markets, new resources, and new processes. Potentially, therefore, institutional competitiveness can be increased by the presence of multinational corporations (MNCs) and their subsidiaries. However, this depends on the type of multinational and the type of institutional context. By differentiating two types of MNC in terms of short‐term and long‐term orientations to investment, and two types of host institutional setting in terms of strength of institutional complementarities and interconnectedness, we develop a typology of four types of interaction between MNCs and institutional settings. We then analyze how each type influences institutional competitiveness. We conclude that these outcomes, while structurally shaped, are still dependent on how actors (individuals, firms, collective organizations, and governments) strategize to develop institutional frameworks in the context of highly competitive global markets.     

Images Revisited – Postmodern Perceptions of Power and Democracy: Political Empowerment in the Danish Case

This article discusses postmodern perceptions of power and democracy based on a Danish study. Danes appear to have a nuanced perception of societal power and former and well known images of society seem out-faded. Politicians, media, capital, interest organisations and experts are all experienced as powerful. Most people, however, conceptualise power as being blurred, systemic and structural. Nevertheless, the Danes generally do not feel powerless or distant from power. Paradoxically, while experiences of power as 'system' are common, the actors appear to be both resourceful and active – there is a high degree of empowerment. Confidence in indi-vidual capacity to make a difference is considerable. Ordinary Danes seem to believe that it can pay to exercise one's influence – that one is able to make a difference.     

Democratic Transitions

Przeworski et al. (2000) challenge the key hypothesis in modernization theory: political regimes do not transition to democracy as per capita incomes rise, they argue. Rather, democratic transitions occur randomly, but once there, countries with higher levels of GDP per capita remain democratic. We retest the modernization hypothesis using new data, new techniques, and a three-way rather than dichotomous classification of regimes. Contrary to Przeworski et al. (2000) we find that the modernization hypothesis stands up well. We also find that partial democracies emerge as among the most important and least understood regime types.     

Tax Structure and Public Spending - Or How the Electorate Is Deceived into Paying for Bigger Public Spending than It Really Wants

It is a classical proposition that tax structure may influence public spending. Two such propositions concerning the visibility and the elasticity of the tax system are tested. Visibility is not important while highly elastic tax systems are correlated with big public spending in times of economic boom. In times of economic decline and recession, high spending countries turn to deficit financing. In both cases big spenders seem to rely more upon a dose of fiscal illusion than moderate spenders.     

Constitutionalism,populism, and the imaginary of the authentic polity: a socio-legal analysis of European public spheres and constitutional demoicratization

The sociology of constitutionalism emphasizes the duality of constitutions as both power limitations and power enhancements. Following the socio-legal perspective, this article focuses on the constitutional imaginary of the public sphere and distinguishes it from the imaginary of the authentic polity, in which the constituent power of the people is protected against the corrupting effect of representative institutions and technocratic bodies. The promise of authenticity is behind the recent resurgence of populism and the constitution of what Zygmunt Bauman describes as ‘explosive communities’. The final part of the article focuses on the transnational politics and law of the European Union (EU) and discusses its possible responses to the imaginaries of constitutional populism – most notably, the emergence of European public spheres and demoicracy. Without the constitutional imaginaries of an anti-explosive transnational and democratically constituted community, further enhancement of the power of EU institutions will always lead to populist backlash at the national and local levels of its member states.     

Models of Public Service Provision—When Will Knights and Knaves Be Responsive to Pawns and Queens?

This article extends the framework of Le Grand (2003 Le Grand, J. 2003. Motivation, agency and public policy, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], 2010 Le Grand, J. 2010. Knights and knaves return: Public service motivation and the delivery of public services. International Public Management Journal, 13(1): 56–71. [Taylor &; Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) to encompass responsiveness, and the main argument is that the combination of employee motivation, user capacity, and models of public service provision potentially has serious implications for responsiveness across service areas. Although research on employee motivation thrives, especially in the public service motivation (PSM) literature, few studies have investigated user capacity empirically, and we know little about the combination of PSM, user capacity and models of service provision. Analyzing four central service areas (day care, schools, hospitals, and universities), we find variations in both user capacity and PSM. Taking this variation as a point of departure we discuss what implications different combinations of employee motivation, user capacity, and models of public service provision may have for responsiveness.