Abstract
ABSTRACT Global challenges such as climate change, food security, or public health have become dominant concerns in research and innovation policy. This article examines how responses to these challenges are addressed by governance actors. We argue that appeals to global challenges can give rise to a ‘solution strategy' that presents responses of dominant actors as solutions and a ‘negotiation strategy' that highlights the availability of heterogeneous and often conflicting responses. On the basis of interviews and document analyses, the study identifies both strategies across local, national, and European levels. While our results demonstrate the co-existence of both strategies, we find that global challenges are most commonly highlighted together with the solutions offered by dominant actors. Global challenges are ‘wicked problems' that often become misframed as ‘tame problems’ in governance practice and thereby legitimise dominant responses.
Highlights
Global and grand challenges (GGCs) have become widely reflected in research and innovation governance (Efstathiou 2016; Kaldewey 2018; Kaltenbrunner 2020; Kuhlmann and Rip 2018; Ulnicane 2016)
If research and innovation is framed through the urgent need to address GGCs, how do governance actors approach responses to them? Reflecting on expert-driven and participatory governance traditions, we explore how the need to address GGCs can give rise to a ‘solution strategy’ that legitimises the responses of dominant actors as solutions, and to a ‘negotiation strategy’ that highlights the contested status of GGCs and the need for negotiation between heterogeneous interests and perspectives
All three contexts show how appeals to GGCs often employ the solution rather than the negotiation strategy. Expressed in slogans such as ‘Global challenges, Dutch solutions’ (VNO-NCW 2017) or ‘Global Challenges and European Industrial Competitiveness’ (European Commission 2021), we found that GGCs often set the stage for legitimising dominant responses as solutions rather than encouraging reflexivity about heterogenous perspectives on contested social-environmental problems
Summary
Global and grand challenges (GGCs) have become widely reflected in research and innovation governance (Efstathiou 2016; Kaldewey 2018; Kaltenbrunner 2020; Kuhlmann and Rip 2018; Ulnicane 2016). The notions of ‘grand challenge’ and ‘global challenge’ are of relatively recent origin in research and innovation governance, having gained prominence in the early 2000s by providing a shared frame for urgent social-environmental problems such as ‘grand challenges in environmental sciences’ (National Research Council 2001), ‘global challenges in energy’ (Dorian, Franssen, and Simbeck 2006), or ‘global challenges in water, sanitation and health’ (Rheingans and Moe 2006) While both ‘grand challenge’ and ‘global challenge’ can be usefully distinguished (Brammer et al, 2019), they are often used interchangeably as umbrella concepts that shape policy frameworks.
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