Knowledge Dynamics, Regions and Public Policy

The developement of a so-called knowledge economy remains a widespread ambition for Europe. The Lisbon Strategy aimed to make EU "the most competitive and dymanic knowledge economy in the world" (European Council, 2000), and the current Euope 2020 Strategy is even more ambitious because knowledge is seen as a prerequisite not only for economic growth but for social cohesion (European Commission, 2010). At a regional scale, this ambition has been translated into economic development policies that draw heavily on concepts from Regional Studies and Economic Geography in aiming to support "clusters", innovative "milieus" and "triple helix" relations (Amara, 2005; Lagendijk, 2006; Rutten and Boekema, 2007; Borras & Tsagdis, 2008).

These policies reflect what have become almost axiomatic assumptions about the benefits of geographical proximity, institutional thickness and the developement of close relationships/knowledge exchange between firms and other organizations in sectorally defined regional agglomerations of economic activity. To be successful, however, public policies must reflect and respond to economic structures and processes, and the relationship between public policy and economic development remains intricate and ambiguous. At best policy makers will target percieved causes of, for example, slow growth or low levels of innovation in a particular region, but the effects of public initiatives may still be uncertain due to the complex interaction local and global processes. Policy-making is not just a rationalistic exercise in problem-solving but a heterogeneous multi-tier political process prone to path dependancy with regard to governance, strategies and implementation, and hence the public initiatives may point to all sorts of directions.