The political coordination of knowledge and innovation policies in Switzerland

Abstract

The article highlights the main problems Switzerland faces in engaging in a more encompassing knowledge and innovation policy, an objective that is widely shared by the political elites. Two ‘coordination gaps’ are highlighted in the context of Switzerland: the ‘federal divide’ that structures political governance in the knowledge space in manifold ways and the ‘utilitarian divide’ that is institutionalised within the federal administration. It is demonstrated that Swiss policy-makers have taken great pains to overcome the obstacles in the wake of the federal divide with some success, but have failed to do so with regard to the utilitarian divide. The lack of guiding and reflexive capacities at the cabinet level will make it difficult to overcome this divide in the future, though planned reforms at the agency level may help to build some bridges between at least basic and technological research.