| The thesis investigates European collaborative research and development policies. Since 1980, a considerable scope of collaborative behavior has emerged among European technical and business communities. An array of mechanisms fosters that cooperation--e.g., billions of dollars in public subsidies, changing laws and property rights regimes, and evolving social norms that favor collective activities. Why?;Several converging factors explain this story. In the "technology gap" 1960s, the European policy response to the American challenge was large "national champion" firms, trade protected and subsidized, aimed at taking advantage of multinational markets and economies of scale. These insular policies were at odds with broader efforts to integrate Europe. By the early 1980s a new external threat emerged: Japanese firms overtook significant portions of information technology industries. The national champions had not kept pace.;The threat came with a new policy model. Drawing lessons (now questioned) from the Japanese, business and governments worldwide began experimenting with collaborative approaches to innovation. Moreover, intra-European collaboration fostering policies such as ESPRIT and EUREKA--despite little evidence that they have helped European competitiveness--gain substantial support as one mechanism for increasing the social, political and economic integration of Europe.;The thesis also examines the design of European collaborative R&D policies through three theoretical approaches. First, models of R&D market failures explain how policymakers see innovation as central to economic growth, and why they seek R&D scale economies, risk spreading and broad dissemination of results. Second, an embeddedness model stresses the importance to innovation and technology diffusion of sustained personal relationships and their social contexts. It illuminates the policy emphasis on firms' abilities to access and creatively apply external sources of technology.;The third, social capital, approach views the policies to be as much about teaching collaborative social institutions as about providing technologies. They explicitly aim to make intra-European technology sharing a behavioral norm, part of everyday business routines. In this, the policies dovetail especially well with the deeper socio-political ideologies of European integration, which the European Union was founded to promote. |
