Sectoral Research as a Contested Concept in Sweden

Magnus Eklund, PhDDepartment of Economic History, Uppsala University

Workshop on Rhetoric of Innovation in Contemporary Society

University of Helsinki, 8-9 February 2010.

The Project

• Three-year research grant from the Handelsbanken Research Foundations.

• Started in October 2009: work in progress!

• I previously studied how the innovation system concept was adopted in Sweden as a strategy to preserve bureaucratic and societal influence over public research funding (Eklund 2007).

• The rhetorics of resistance against the innovation paradigm.

The Approach of Conceptual History

• Concepts shape our perception of the world.

• When a concept is created or used to cover a social issue, that issue is more easily defined as a problem and subjected to political action.

• British school: the political struggle behind changes in concepts and their application (Tully 1988, Skinner 2002, Palonen 2003).

• The speech act behind the use of a concept.

• Concepts as ‘neutral’ containers.

• Apologists: actors manipulating concepts to defend a contested social institution.

• Innovative ideologists: actors manipulating concepts to attack a contested social institution.

The History of Post-War Research Policy

• Ruivo (1994): Most industrialised countries have strikingly similar research policy periodisations.

• Science as motor of progress science as problem solver science as a source of strategic opportunity.

• Deviation from a Vannevar Bush – Michael Polanyi ideal of science – the Ruivo-trend should be controversial!

• Where is the resistance?

• The Society for Freedom in Research 1940-46 (Werskey 1978, McGucken 1984).

• Most countries did not have a dominant contemporary concept for these deviations.

• In retrospect, scholars have given the periods many different names.

Similar Periods, Different Names

Ruivo 1994 Science as a motor of progress

Science as a problem solver

Science as a source of strategic opportunity

Gibbons et al. 1994

Policy for science

Science in policy

Policy for technological innovation

Brooks 1990 Cold war Social priorities

Economic competitive-ness

The Concept of Sectoral Research

• The concept of sectoral research played an important part in a Swedish counter-offensive against the Ruivo-trend!

• Mostly a Scandinavian concept (Finland, Norway).

• Originally denoting research procured by government agencies to facilitate policy in their respective policy areas/sectors (problem solver).

• The concept increasingly encompasses all instrumental research with a bureaucratic influence over the allocation of funding (like research funded to support future technical change – strategic opportunity).

• The concept is increasingly normatively associated with ‘bad research’.

• Appropriating the concept of sectoral research, extending it and defining it as a problem (innovative ideologists)!

Historical Development of the Concept: A Preliminary Outline

• Few research institutes in Sweden, universities functions as research institutes for ”all of society”.

• 1960s and 1970s – sectoral research funding expands.

• The problem with sectoral research was that Swedish research policy was too divided (sectoralized).

• 1980s and 1990s – a section of the academic world attacks sectoral research and tries to increase academic control over its funding (Gustavsson, Elzinga, Nybom, Wittrock).

• The concept moves from the unified research policy debate to the academic freedom debate!

• 2000 – the concept of sectoral research largely disappears from the Swedish debate.

Successful Mobilisation?

• Fairly successful 1980-2000.

• Forced sectoral agencies to reluctantly create structures resembling research councils (Persson 2001).

• In spite of Carl Tham at the Ministry of Education, two investigations took the university side (SOU 1996: 29, SOU 1998:128).

• Much sectoral research funding transferred to FAS and FORMAS.

• Many complaints that Swedish research policy too much favoured curiosity-driven basic research (Arnold et al. 1999, Elan & Glimell 2004, Gergils 2006).

• Post-2000 – most concepts are used to legitimise Ruivo’s trend (Mode 2, Triple Helix, Innovation System, Cluster etc).

• Difficult to establish that having a concept was the cause of the successful mobilisation, but makes it interesting to study conceptual use!