Abstract
Research policy in many countries has primarily been the business of the central state and has not been captured clearly within the scope of the local government. This chapter aims to better conceptualise the decentralisation of research policy from a multilevel governance perspective. Given the dearth of empirical analyses of such processes over time, the chapter focuses on a case of Sweden, examining changes between the central and local governments in power and resources. Overall, decentralisation of research policy can partly be seen as a bi-effect of decentralisation of welfare, higher education and regional development policies. It is argued that the role of local governments in Swedish research policy is primarily to function as complementary partners to the central state, rather than as independent policy-makers.
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Notes
- 1.
The primary data collection was carried out in 2017 and 2018 (see Persson 2018).
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Persson, B., Kitagawa, F. (2021). Decentralisation and Reconfiguration of Multilevel Research Policy: The Case of Sweden. In: Bergström, T., Franzke, J., Kuhlmann, S., Wayenberg, E. (eds) The Future of Local Self-Government. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56059-1_13
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