The Regionalization of Swedish Knowledge Society: Some preliminary consequences

This paper reviews existing empirical findings for regionalization of the Swedish university system and its impact of regional and national innovation systems. The conclusion is that regionalization of the Swedish system for higher education and research has been driven by multitude of factors and interests, both external and internal to the system itself. The result is a system that seems to raise regional production due to direct and indirect causes, i.e. through the work and consumption of employees and students of universities, more than raising regional productivity through the exploitation of knowledge. In the wake of the developments, more recent universities and university colleges have developed two strategies for legitimisation, one traditional relying on the international academic system of peer-review (normal science) and one alternative relying on regional innovation systems (post-normal science). Conseqences of these stratggies for legimitation are discussed.