Political Economy

The study of varieties of capitalism is moving on from the analysis of static national types to embrace local and sectoral diversity and the study of systems in the process of major change. This book addresses the issue by examining four localised sectors, comparing a German case with one in another European country. The general changes taking place in Germany itself and the other countries (Hungary, Sweden, and the UK) form the context of the studies. The case studies concern the following: furniture making in North-Rhine Westphalia and southern Sweden; automotive manufacture in east Germany and northern Hungary; biotechnology around Munich and Cambridge; and TV programme and film-making in Cologne and central London. The studies find a complex pattern of conformity with, and deviation from, national types, but only occasional examples of where divergence takes the form of a direct confrontation with a national model. This is partly because national models are themselves changing; partly because they are often capable of accommodating more diversity than is often assumed by national studies; and partly because firms are increasingly able to reach outside their national boundaries for institutional resources.

The Nordic welfare states have been at the top of the lists of national competitiveness throughout the 2000s. The Nordic welfare model is deemed able to combine equality, welfare and economic efficiency. Among the Nordic countries, Finland has been considered as an epitome of information society, of high-quality education and systemic innovation policy. In order to make sense of the Finnish development, this book puts political economy, innovation studies, welfare state research, organizational institutionalism and cultural-historical psychology into dialogue with each other. It develops an approach of studying institutional change and learning based on cultural-historical activity theory. This approach is used to analyze the emergence and development of the Finnish comprehensive school system. The steadfast success of Finnish students in the PISA studies shows, against neoliberal principles, that a public school system inspired by educational equality can achieve excellent results with moderate costs. The book outlines a model of an enabling welfare state which develops further the capability cultivating universal services created by the welfare state in the 1960s–1980s. In future these services — produced by multi-professional collaboration — will be increasingly tailored to meet the needs of different individuals and specific life situations. They enable citizens to cope with risks and to meet the challenges of the rapidly changing labour market. An enabling democratic welfare state fosters local experimentation as well as learning in collaborative communities and developmental associations. It mobilizes well-educated professionals and practitioners to innovate in all spheres of society and in this way deepens democracy within the society.

Innovation is often associated with high-technology industries, such as information and communication technologies, scientific research in large-scale facilities in firms or universities, and professionals working in highly urbanized environments. Norway, however, has no major international firms in high-tech industries. Its share of R&D in GDP and population density are among the lowest in Europe and exports consist mainly of natural resource based products. Still productivity, measured as GDP per capita, is among the highest in the world in Norway and this holds even if rents from its oil and gas production are adjusted for. This book focuses on the relationship between Norway's pattern of economic specialization and its innovation system. The Introduction to the book outlines the ‘national systems of innovation’ approach, considers its application to the Norwegian context, and compares the Norwegian evidence to that of other developed countries. The first section of the book then provides an analysis of the development of the Norwegian national innovation system, with particular emphasis on the public research infrastructure and government policies affecting innovation. The second section contains detailed studies of innovation within important sectors of the Norwegian economy, including aluminium, aquaculture, the oil and gas industry, and the ICT sector. The third and final section analyses the current structure and performance of Norway's knowledge infrastructure (public research institutes and universities) and policies for financial support of innovation-related activities in industry.