Coordination of innovation policies in the catching-up context: a historical perspective on Estonia and Brazil

This paper highlights some of the crucial weaknesses of innovation-policy-research that limit the relevance of this research for policy-making practices in catching-up countries. The paper proposes a framework that takes a multi-level and dynamic approach towards studying innovation-policy-making processes. This framework is applied herein to examine the evolution of innovation policy and governance trajectories of Estonia and Brazil and how this has affected the capacities for technological accumulation and development. The paper argues that crucial aspects of these contextual trajectories are being overlooked by standard innovation policy and governance analyses. In terms of policy implications, the paper concludes that the increasing influence of external pressures on innovation policy trajectories of catching-up countries is only reinforcing the use of narrow analytical perspectives and threatens to further de-contextualise innovation-policy-making in these countries. The spread of 'participatory' or 'networked' innovation policy models is presented as an example of these tendencies.