Search

We investigate the role of both internal and external co‐inventor networks in regional diversification. The impact of co‐inventor networks on regional technological diversification is tested for a data set containing 1,495,699 patents in 643 technologies in 290 European regions at the NUTS‐2 level, between 1987 and 2016. Our results show that both internal co‐inventor network connectivity and external co‐inventor network linkages could benefit regional technology entry and prevent regional technology exit. However, too inwardly oriented or outwardly connected co‐inventor networks would hamper patent production. Regarding regional diversification, we find that both internal and external co‐inventor networks could facilitate the entry of related technologies and restrain the exit of complex technologies. This paper contributes to the literature by initiating the integration of the complexity dimension into analysing the role of co‐inventor networks in regional diversification. This research bears significant policy implications for the advancement of Smart Specialization Strategy in the European Union. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a general micro-theoretical framework that helps to understand the embeddedness of trade unions within the European system of industrial relations, and the consequences of this embeddedness for industrial relations outcomes. First, starting from the paradoxical observation of a trend towards homogeneity within a complex, multi-layered European industrial relations system consisting of heterogeneous and autonomous agents, the paper aims to explicate the mechanisms which produce these similarities. Second, the paper seeks to analyse potential mechanisms for transnational trade union cooperation and, third, it concludes by outlining its applicability as the basis for methodological approaches which enable realistic and policy relevant analyses.Design/methodology/approach This paper is conceptual and focusses on the development of a general micro-theoretical framework which captures European industrial relations actors’ behaviour and outcomes. It integrates theoretical and empirical accounts from differing social science disciplines and from various methodological starting points on trade union action and interaction into one general micro-theoretical framework.Findings Starting from a typology of trade union goals, the authors show how various social mechanisms lead to interdependencies between trade unions and review empirical evidence for their consequences. The authors, then, identify a set of motives for transnational cooperation that would allow outcomes that are in line with trade union objectives.Originality/value Against the background that previous studies on trade union action and cross-national interaction have paid less attention to the puzzling stylised fact that industrial relations outcomes are mimicked by heterogeneous and autonomous agents actors in different countries, the authors address this research gap by developing a novel general micro-theoretical framework for the analysis of transnational trade union action and interaction in order to better understand the underlying causal mechanisms for the common behaviour and outcomes of autonomous actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many European planning schools recently celebrated their 50th anniversary: a sign that planning education became a distinct and established discipline in Europe. Simultaneously, political regimes, paradigms, cultures, and economies continue fuelling mixed connotations within the planning sector. Additionally, growing wicked problems in built areas emphasize an even greater need for well-trained planners. These challenges span climate crises, wars, authoritarian regimes, socio-political instability, and constantly changing global geopolitics. The increasingly complex demands on planners are highly pertinent for Young Academics (YA). They require political, regulatory, and technical knowledge to navigate the profession. To support them and represent their voices in planning debates, the YA network (YAN) of AESOP was established in 2003. We, the current Coordination Team, use this paper to voice our take on the question of what planning challenges dominate and what can be done to prepare YAs better for the future. Building on plenty discussions within the YAN, literature, and AESOP's activities at large, we propose: A challenge compilation for the profession, a list of core capacities, and a framework for future education. This shall aid in enabling YAs and educators today to set the foundation for planning sustainable and people-centered settlements tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Spatial planners and policy makers currently struggle to understand the peri-urban area, with its mixture of land uses and its transitional status between the urban and the rural. This paper presents the concept of transition, derived from complexity science, to allow planners to analyse peri-urban development in terms of a number of interacting processes, some induced, some evolving autonomously. Drawing on four case studies of European urban regions, the research finds that many of the dynamic processes underlying peri-urban development are not susceptible to the influence of planning agencies. This should enable planners to develop a more adaptive approach in the future, identifying areas where productive and case-specific interventions can be made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Securing the internet has arguably become paradigmatic for modern security practice, not only because modern life is considered to be impossible or valueless if disconnected, but also because emergent cyber-relations and their complex interconnections are refashioning traditional security logics. This paper analyses European modes of governing geared toward securing vital, emergent cyber-systems in the face of the interconnected emergency. It develops the concept of ‘bureaucratic vitalism’ to get at the tension between the hierarchical organization and reductive knowledge frames of security apparatuses on the one hand, and the increasing desire for building ‘resilient’, dispersed, and flexible security assemblages on the other. The bureaucratic/vital juxtaposition seeks to capture the way in which cybersecurity governance takes emergent, complex systems as object and model without fully replicating this ideal in practice. Thus, we are concerned with the question of what happens when security apparatuses appropriate and translate vitalist concepts into practice. Our case renders visible the banal bureaucratic manoeuvres that seek to operate upon security emergencies by fostering connectivities, producing agencies, and staging exercises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The introduction of the fifth generation of mobile technology (5G) is expected to bring disruptive changes. These changes will be much more pervasive than any previous introduction of new mobile 'generations' and they are expected to influence the whole economy. For this reason, the global rush for 5G technology is not only considered crucial in economic or technological terms, but also for its implications in terms of geopolitics, international policy and national security. This paper presents an analysis of the patents in the most relevant fields of specialization connected to the 5G development. The period under investigation is from 2010 to 2019, and the data are extracted from the European Patent Office (EPO) and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) database. The analysis shows how the technologies and the specialisations needed to develop 5G are in the hands of a few countries around the globe, and how single European countries, taken in isolation, are not among those leading players. However, Europe, considered as a whole, competes well with the US and Asia in terms of patented innovations, suggesting the economic and strategic relevance of strengthening cooperation within the EU. • The debate regarding the 5G development, implementation and disruptiveness is gathering growing attention. • The paper present an analysis of the patents in the most relevant fields of specialization connected to the 5G development. • We study the technological complexity of the 5G ecosystem and the related implications for competition and innovation. • There are few countries at the frontier of the technological development of 5G and lagging countries will face many difficulties to cover the gap. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Papel Político is the property of Pontificia Universidad Javeriana and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper addresses the issue how the C@R project on rural living labs has contributed to developing a policy agenda for innovation and rural development. The paper also presents recommendations to be considered in future policy agendas regarding the benefits of rural living labs as engines of innovation and rural development in Europe. The formulation of recommendations for policy-makers at the European Commission level is carried out through a scenario-based framework that considers the complexity of the socio-technical environment in which rural living labs act to stimulate rural development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I focus on a split within the field of educational research between those who approach education as an activity or practice governed by cause–effect relationships and those who see education as a human event of communication, meaning making and interpretation. Rather than just arguing against the former and in favour of the latter view, I outline a way forward in which the question of how education works and how it can be made to work better is considered a legitimate question, but where the answer to this question takes into consideration the specific nature of educational processes and practices. In order to do so I explore the ontology, the axiology and the praxeology of education through a discussion of the question of how education actually works (ontology), the question of what education might work for (axiology), and the question of what this means for making education work and making it work better in the everyday practice of teaching (praxeology). I preface this discussion with observations about the differing ways in which education as a field of academic scholarship has developed in Europe, in order to highlight that ‘educational research’ exists in at least two distinctively different configurations, and to show how the way in which the field has established itself in the German-speaking world might provide helpful resources for conceiving of educational research in a more educational manner. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Abstract: The European Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) is a common policy that originates from 1983 and has been renewed every 10 years. The policy generally aims for sustainable fisheries in terms of living resources, economics and social aspects. The most recent version of the policy was agreed in co-decision by the European Parliament and the European Council of Ministers in 2013. The CFP has often been criticised for not delivering on the objectives and for developing into micro-management with very detailed regulations. In this paper, the evolution of the CFP has been analysed using a simple word-count indicator. The results show a strong increase in the number of words used to describe the basic regulation of the CFP from 3500 words in 1983 to 21,000 words in the agreed regulation in 2013. The expansion of words fits closely to an exponential growth curve. The co-decision process between the European Parliament and the Council showed a 55% increase in words and the article describing the new landing obligation showed a 360% increase in words. First reports on the new CFP have already shown that the complexity in the regulation could increase the likelihood of misunderstanding and suboptimal decisions. Word-counts are obviously a crude way to measure regulatory complexity but they are easy to generate and intuitive to understand to different audiences. The challenge is to create conceptual models that can link this intuitive indicator into an empirical framework that attempts to measure the relative regulatory complexity. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper deals with the problem of knowledge as a human activity that embodies a set of different strategies to be solved. The current analysis focuses over a set of epistemic arguments about knowledge according to the modern science that began in the sixteenth century in Europe. In specific, scientific knowledge is explored as a fuzzy set, which it is establish its epistemic and methodological bounds. All of this under the central question: lineal scientific explanation is enough? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines which economic domains regional policy makers aim to develop in regional innovation strategies, focusing in particular on the complexity of those economic domains and their relatedness to other economic domains in the region. We build on the economic geography literature that advises policy makers to target related and complex economic domains, and assess the extent to which regions actually do this. The article draws on data from the smart specialization strategies of 128 NUTS-2 regions across Europe. While regions are more likely to select complex economic domains related to their current economic domain portfolio, complexity and relatedness figure independently, rather than in combination, in choosing priorities. We also find that regions in the same country tend to select the same priorities, contrary to the idea of a division of labor across regions that smart specialization implies. Overall, these findings suggest that smart specialization may be considerably less place based in practice than it is in theory. There is a need to develop better tools to inform regions' priority choices, given the importance of priority selection in smart specialization strategies and regional innovation policy more broadly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Founded in the second half of the twentieth century, the young European Union was driven by the experience of two world wars which had devastated big parts of Europe and traumatized its population. For some decades its peace-building impulse kept the organization going. After the fall of the Iron Curtain the idea of a common market remained the dominant motivation of the EU. However, the Union’s enlargement in the early 2000s to include almost 30 member states rendered it a highly diverse organization, without sufficiently adapting its structures and processes to this dramatic change. Since neither the insistence on homogeneity and discipline, nor old forms of nationalism, offers an adequate answer to these crises, I present adiversity management model(often used in describing ecosystems), to characterize, examine and understand the EU’s diversity problems and the kind of solutions or directions of change that may be drawn from it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Self‐sorting species: Nonlinear effects are observed in asymmetric hydrogenation reactions if self‐sorted dinuclear complexes are generated. The nature of the substrate also influences this effect, because it affects the solubility of racemic self‐sorted homochiral dinuclear complexes (see scheme). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the renewed interest in early childhood education and care in European politics, and the implications for research in changing policy contexts. Based on the policy analysis, it argues for a radical reconceptualisation of how, with and for whom, and to what end we design, conduct and interpret research in early childhood in present-day Europe. The article argues that the role of research in these contexts is much more than that of a provider of data and information that underpin evidence-based policies. Instead, as part of a critical ecology of research, practice and policy, it is an inherently political practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social policy research deploys a variety of approaches for analysing processes of dynamic change but these face major limitations. This article argues for an institutionally grounded complexity analysis, bringing together the historical institutionalism of Pierson (2004) and Crouch (2005) and the treatment of dynamically coupled adaptive systems by Kauffman (1993; 1995) and Potts (2000). It concludes that, at the very least, social policy researchers will need to make a considered assessment of these complexity-based approaches, as they invade an increasing area of the social sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Humanities have much to offer 21st-century Europe, in terms of both method and issues which may complement and correct those of Science and Social Science. These include, for instance, humanities' generation of plural narratives and plural explanations, of attention to singularity and complexity, and to others' sensibilities and ways of knowing. These disciplines provide higher order skills needed to engage and engage with the New Europe -- rhetorical and communication skills, networked knowledge sharing, responsive and responsible citizenship. In interdisciplinary partnership with 'hard' science research, the Humanities can offer ways of dealing with particularity and imagination, with issues of identity and sensibility, with encountering the other. At the same time, the humanities' own complex interpretative narratives and ability to generate and cope with complexity are vitalizing and enabling in a fearful, complex and supercomplex world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a densely filled space of professional associations EURAM emerged as a new European Challenger. Professors Marafioti and Perretti claim in their article that EURAM is at a crossroads and must decide to be either a generalist or a specialist association. They also claim that in both cases EURAM will face powerful competitors. However, in this brief article I would like to claim that EURAM has successfully chosen a third way, a more difficult but challenging way that emerged from European diversity. The current strategy of EURAM has been developed by many different contributions without centralized planning, giving EURAM a very distinctive and unique position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Organizations can only successfully realize mega-projects when they have in place a governance regime that is capable of adapting to specific projects, dealing with emergent complexity, and changing as the project development process unfolds. This article outlines a foundation for developing mega-project governance framework. In doing so, it re-examines an early 21st century study of 60 large capital projects; it also reviews the literature on institutional, corporate, and project governance and studies two European mega-projects (one involving the British Private Finance Initiative, the other, a Norwegian effort to develop a project approval process). It opens by identifying the eight themes that most affect the front-end of mega-projects and then by exploring the life-cycle relationship between projects, institutional frameworks, and contextual environments. It also compares the idealized role of mega-project governing bodies against empirical observations, discusses the paradoxes in the idealized role, and outlines the challenges of designing governance regimes. It subsequently references the European cases when examining institutional learning, political will, and knowledge-gathering as components in developing a mega-project governance framework. Includes illustrative matter and bibliographical references. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]