Effective research and innovation (R&I) policy in the EU-28: A causal and configurational analysis of political governance determinants

Effective research and innovation (R&I) policy depends on the extent to which ideas, interests and institutional mechanisms for policy making work together rather than work against each other. In a political governance model for effective R&I policy in the EU-28, the separate influence of inter-ministerial coordination, regulatory impact assessment extended to sustainability checks, parliamentary committee surveillance, media attention and societal consultation is investigated. Interaction effects are investigated in a set-theoretic analysis for the econometrically best-fit model. Our results show that the societal consultation, policy-informed opposition and sector-informed informal policy coordination are necessary but not sufficient to bring about effectiveness to R&I policy. Their influence on effectiveness of R&I policy depends on the combination with either media attention or Regulatory Impact Analysis (RIA) extended to sustainability checks. We reached these results with the help of ordered logit estimations and fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses using 2011-2013 (SGI) data of Bertelsmann Stiftung and Lexis Nexis Academic.