Abstract
The European Commission’s pursuit of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) and its implementation in the European Research Area serve to investigate how ambitious policy goals can be conveyed into action. Challenging about implementing policy is the need to foster coherence in the interpretation of policy goals while coordinating their elaboration in practice. This chapter identifies the European Commission’s approach to implementing RRI as a case of New Public Management, and contrasts this with efforts at ‘bottom-up’ RRI implementation. Experiments with involving researchers and other stakeholders in designing and executing concrete RRI actions that fit their professional setting are understood as manifestations of a New Public Governance approach to implementing RRI policy. It is found that such deliberation of policy concepts and goals, and their concretization in a context-specific learning-by-doing approach practically enables the uptake of normative policy ambitions in networks of interdependent, non-hierarchically related actors across diverse substantive and administrative contexts.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Title of host publication | Putting Responsible Research and Innovation into Practice |
| Subtitle of host publication | A Multi-Stakeholder Approach |
| Editors | Vincent Blok |
| Publisher | Springer Science and Business Media B.V. |
| Pages | 211-228 |
| Number of pages | 18 |
| ISBN (Electronic) | 9783031147104 |
| ISBN (Print) | 9783031147098, 9783031147128 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 2023 |
Publication series
| Name | Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy |
|---|---|
| Volume | 40 |
| ISSN (Print) | 1387-6678 |
| ISSN (Electronic) | 2215-0323 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:An example of ambitious policy goals in legal text with limited practical guidance is found in the European pursuit of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) as a process for “better aligning research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society” (EC 2016: 6). The RRI concept was included as a cross-cutting issue in the law establishing the European Commission (EC)‘s 8th framework program for funding research and innovation, Horizon 2020 (H2020) (EC 2013). The concept was further elaborated in the 2014 ‘Rome declaration on RRI’ with the intent to stimulate responsibility for better aligning research and innovation with societal values and needs in the European Research Area (ERA). Despite these policy goals, research into the operationalization of RRI across H2020 programming has revealed limited success in policy implementation (Novitzky et al. 2020; cp. Forsberg et al. 2018).
Funding Information:
The recently completed NewHoRRIzon project was funded by the EC to review progress towards, and aid the implementation of the RRI policy goal. In our experience, the EC effort to mainstream responsible research and innovation in the ERA presents a prime example of policy implementation challenges in practice. In this chapter, we ref ct on NewHoRRIzon results and experiences, asking: How was RRI put into practice in the ERA and what lessons can be drawn about policy implementation in such complex governance settings? Our goal is to contribute to underdeveloped scholarly research on policy implementation in view of complexity (cp. Howlett 2019; Baldwin et al. 2019).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023, The Author(s).
Funding
An example of ambitious policy goals in legal text with limited practical guidance is found in the European pursuit of “Responsible Research and Innovation” (RRI) as a process for “better aligning research and innovation with the values, needs and expectations of society” (EC 2016: 6). The RRI concept was included as a cross-cutting issue in the law establishing the European Commission (EC)‘s 8th framework program for funding research and innovation, Horizon 2020 (H2020) (EC 2013). The concept was further elaborated in the 2014 ‘Rome declaration on RRI’ with the intent to stimulate responsibility for better aligning research and innovation with societal values and needs in the European Research Area (ERA). Despite these policy goals, research into the operationalization of RRI across H2020 programming has revealed limited success in policy implementation (Novitzky et al. 2020; cp. Forsberg et al. 2018). The recently completed NewHoRRIzon project was funded by the EC to review progress towards, and aid the implementation of the RRI policy goal. In our experience, the EC effort to mainstream responsible research and innovation in the ERA presents a prime example of policy implementation challenges in practice. In this chapter, we ref ct on NewHoRRIzon results and experiences, asking: How was RRI put into practice in the ERA and what lessons can be drawn about policy implementation in such complex governance settings? Our goal is to contribute to underdeveloped scholarly research on policy implementation in view of complexity (cp. Howlett 2019; Baldwin et al. 2019).
| Funders | Funder number |
|---|---|
| 8th framework program | |
| European Commission | |
| Horizon 2020 | EC 2013 |
| Horizon 2020 |
