Serial and Comparative Analysis of Innovation Policy Change

Marja-Liisa Niinikoski* and Johanna Moisander Accepted for publication in Technological Forecasting & Social Change (http://www.journals.elsevier.com/technological-forecasting-and-social-change) 2013-2014

ABSTRACT
Much of the existing literature on innovation policy analyzes policy change as an outcome of rational, cognitive processes, where the availability of new information prompts policy-makers to rethink and revise their policies. This paper aims to broaden this perspective by building a new methodological approach, Serial Comparative Analysis (SCA), to the analysis of policy change. SCA is proposed as an analytical perspective that sheds light on the social and political complexities of policy-making, and thus allows for a more nuanced understanding of the dynamics of policy change. SCA builds on the archaeological approach to discourse and basic methodological principles of ethnographic inquiry. By conceptualizing a policy domain as a discursive formation, SCA provides insights into the socio-historical conditions under which a specific policy emerges, forms and transforms. Whilst other methodological approaches may adopt the presumption that policy change is a causal outcome of new information used in policy-making, SCA views policy change as something that is discursively constructed and negotiated in specific institutional and historical settings. In doing so, SCA brings to light the rules that organize the truth-values of policy discourses in particular contexts, and elucidates how changes in these rules bring about changes in policy. Keywords: policy change; science, technology and innovation studies (STI); discourse; policy knowledge; policy-making practices; serial and comparative analysis (SCA)

Aalto University School of Business, Department of Management and International Business Aalto University School of Business, Department of Communication and University of Gothenburg, Center for Consumer Science
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INTRODUCTION
All over the world, state governments are currently engaged in actively promoting the creation, production and diffusion of various types of knowledge and innovations to pursue particular national social, political, and economic objectives. While the specific objectives of this innovation policy-related activity vary, typically covering a wide range of initiatives [1, 2], innovation policies are usually geared towards improving the growth and competitiveness of national economies [1, 3]. Quite recently, moreover, there have been attempts to broaden and deepen the domain, so as to respond to the so-called grand challenges or wicked problems [3, 4], such as climate change, water shortage, aging population, and pandemics [3]. The concepts of horizontal innovation policy [5], broad-based innovation policy [6], and transformative innovation policy [7] have been introduced to allow governments and institutions to stay better attuned with the changing nature of innovation policy. In the literature on science, technology, and innovation (STI) studies, however, much of the existing research on innovation policy analysis still emphasizes the rational learning aspects of policy change [8, see also 9, 10]. Drawing on the rational learning approach, this research recognizes the important roles that researchers, experts, and analysts play in change processes. Nevertheless, this paper contends that this approach largely fails to account for the ways in which the broader socio-political contexts and political will formation, for example, come to shape policy transformations [11]. As Morlacchi and Martin [12] have argued, STI policy studies are typically overly pragmatic and based on excessively instrumental concerns. Apparently, the core goal of STI studies is to help practitioners build more effective policieseffective in the sense of boosting innovation as well as economic, technological, and social development, for example through better co-ordination and strategic policy intelligence [13]. STI policy studies thus typically posit instrumental rationality [14], sometimes to the extent that policy change is attributed to a mere injection of new information into the processes and practices of decision-making through which policies are planned and executed. In recent times, however, this overly instrumental, rational, and pragmatic approach to innovation policy change has come under critical scrutiny [14, 15, 16, 17]. A number of critical STI scholars have argued that in focusing their energies on what policy-makers ought to do, STI scholars pay alarmingly little attention to what policy-makers actually do [14]. Moreover, in treating the political process as given [18], many scholars also overlook the highly complex nature of public policy-making. As Uyarra [15] has argued, policies emerge and are adopted in complex contexts of pre-existing policy mixes and institutional frameworks, which have been shaped through successive policy changes. In practice, therefore, policy-making is typically characterized by high uncertainty, irreversibility, path-dependency, and continuous struggle [16]. Hence, to gain deeper insights into this complexity, a more critical, reflexive approach to policy analysis would seem to be needed. In this paper, we continue this critical scholarship. Drawing on the notions of discourse and qualitative inquiry, we propose a new methodological approach to the analysis of policy change, Serial Comparative Analysis (SCA), which seeks to overcome some of the limitations of the existing approaches. We offer SCA as an analytical tool that shifts attention to actual
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policy-making processes, as opposed to ideal ones, shedding light on the complexities that arise from the multitudeand the conflictsof interests that underlie the processes and the everyday practices of policy-making. In doing so, we argue, SCA helps innovation policy analysts broaden their perspectives and provides them with a concrete tool for gaining insight into the possible social, economic, and political ramifications that a policy change might entail, be they intended or unintended. SCA builds on the concepts of discourse and discursive formation [19]. Accordingly, innovation policy is conceptualized and analyzed as a discursive formation, constructed out of policy-related knowledge and practices of policy-making [3], which influence the mobilization and allocation of public resources as well as the organization of the institutional settings where this takes place. The focus of analysis lies in the regimes of truth and practices that structure, shape, and legitimize the processes through which policies are constructed, changed, and implemented. The aim is to render more transparent the implicit assumptions that inform these processes, as well as to shed light on the unintended socio-political effects that different policy-options possibly involve. As a methodological approach, SCA highlights the effects and interplay of dominant policy-related knowledge and practices in policy-making. It makes the multiple different interests that underlie policy-making processes more transparent highlighting the role of dominant rules that organize truth regimes in policy. Moreover, SCA sheds light on certain conditions under which policy can change or endure, bringing to the fore possible rigidities in policy transformation over time. In doing so, it opens the black box of policy-making, and offers policy-makers concrete tools for scrutinizing and re-thinking the prevalent, taken-for-granted ways of reasoning that guide policy-making. To illustrate how SCA can be used in practice, we draw on examples from a recent empirical study on the formation of Finnish innovation policy over three decades, from the late 1980s until 2010 [3]. The study elaborated on the ways in which innovation, as a policy object, was defined and redefined over time. The aim was to elaborate on the ways in which particular truth-values empowered and disempowered different actors and how the observed changes in the innovation policy unfolded through a series of re-objectifications.

SERIAL COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS: A DISCURSIVE APPROACH TO POLICY CHANGE ANALYSIS

SCA may be described as a discursive approach to policy analysis. By discursive approach, we refer here to an array of methodological perspectives that are based on explaining social action in terms of discourse1 including social practices. Traditionally, discourse analysis has been used to study language in use, with an analytical focus on talk and text in context [20]. In this paper, however, we draw on a broader perspective on discourse that transcends the domain of language and shifts attention to social practices and institutional regulation as constituent elements of discourse [21, 22, 23, 24]. In proposing SCA as a new methodological approach, we draw on the archaeological approach to discourse [19] and conceptualize discourse as practice. From this perspective,
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Institutionalized ways of thinking, talking, and representing knowledge about phenomena.

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discourse is not only textual or something that is said, it is a socially instituted practice of producing and regulating statements, which directs the articulation of new statements and defines what can be said and how within a certain discursive formation and context. In line with the foundations of archeological analysis, moreover, SCA focuses not only on the formation but also on the transformation of discourses. More specifically, the objective is to render change observable and analyzable by identifying and establishing the system of formation that brings about change. We offer SCA as a conceptual and methodological tool for analyzing both the formation and change of policy knowledge and policy-making practices over a period of time. It is based on the assumption that through the reformulation of rules, which organize policy knowledge and policy-making practices, a discourse can change allowing for the emergence of a new type of policy. Compared with the existing approaches to policy change analysis, such as Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) [25] and the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) [26] in particular, SCA has some similarities and differences. Much like SCA, ACF is also primarily concerned with the analysis of policy change, with a specific policy subsystem as the primary unit of analysis. However, SCA conceptualizes this subsystem as a discursive formation, as we shall discuss below. As regards the IAD, its analytical scope has recently shifted and broadened towards the social construction of policy-makers subject positions. Like SCA, it has rejected, to some extent, the overly individual-centered explanation model of ACF2. Compared with SCA, however, it is still rather inadequate, we argue, for studying change and transformation over time [26]. Conceptually, SCA is anchored in three constructs: the formation of objects; discourse; and transformation. All three constitute the analytical lens of SCA, opening up three analytical dimensions (see Figure 1). As an analytical tool, SCA focuses on the formation of particular objects within the discourse that constitutes the policy subsystem in focus. A policy is analyzed as an outcome of a policy discourse, the rules of which organize policy knowledge and policy-making practices in the particular context of the policy. This policy discourse, in turn, can change through various altering factors occurring at the intra-, inter- or extra-discursive level of the investigated policy. The intra-discursive level refers to the investigated policy field as such and the inter-discursive level to other policy domains. The extra-discursive level refers to external structures and elements, such as institutional settings, which are pre-existing elements in any policy in a given time.

ACF interprets policy changes through individual choices which attach subjective and instrumental meaning to any behavior in the framework of bounded rationality and embeddedness in communities (Ostrom 2011, 12-15).
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Fig.1 The conceptual underpinnings of SCA

Analyzing formation of objects A policy object becomes defined on the basis of particular rules of formation that are applied within a particular discourse. SCA is designed to examine the level of these rules by directing analytical attention to the specific factors that enable or restrict changes in the discursive formation of these objects. More specifically, SCA focuses on the production of statements. By statements, we refer here to serious speech acts [19, 27, 28, 29]. These are utterances that qualify as candidates for truth and falsity because they conform to a historically specific system of rules. They are held to be true or false because they are accepted as such by the relevant community of policy-makers. A set of rules, which organizes truth-values in policy, actualizes in practice by mobilizing resources, empowering certain actors, and targeting policy measures in particular ways. First, to specify the production of these statements, one has to map out the surfaces of an objects emergence. The object can be, for instance, a concept or a phenomenon that emerges in the investigated policy discourse. It can be a new object or its appearance can be a sign of a rupture or a turning point in a discourse. The aim is to describe what kind of status the investigated object is given, how it is described, and how it is made manifest. Based on these identifications the task is to map out a series of formations through which the object is defined and re-defined during the time period under study. Second, in analyzing the formation of objects, one has to study the authorities of delimitation, the relevant actors making the investigated objects nameable. Depending on the empirical phenomenon, these authorities can consist of certain social groups that have recognizable formal and institutional relationships in society. Technical scientists, social scientists, and various interest groups, for instance, may constitute such institutional authorities [3].
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Third, one also has to analyze the grids of specification, i.e. the systems according to which different kinds of an object are divided, contrasted, related, regrouped, classified, and derived from one another as objects of policy. This means that an investigated object is identified and analyzed from the point of view of its various elements and their changes, appearance, strengthening, dispersion, and abatement. Fourth, one has to identify the discursive relations that characterize the policy discourse under study. Besides new discoveries in certain discourses in terms of the factors described above. SCA also elucidates, what made them possible, and how these discoveries could lead to others that took them up, rectified them, modified them, or even disproved them [19]. Towards this end, one has to analyze the dependences and specificity of the discursive relations that characterize the policy discourse. These relations are not present in the object, but enable it to appear in the discourse. To sum up, in Figure 2 we depict all the analytical dimensions that SCA focuses on in determining the formation of an object. Fig.2 The factors determining the formation of an object

Analyzing discourse with its rules and statements SCA is based on a theoretical assumption that discourse provides conditions of possibility for a certain object to exist. In order to analyze discourses, one has to pay attention to rules and statements that define a discourse. Over a given period of time, the unity of discourse is constituted by the interplay of the rules that makes the appearance of objects possible [19]. The formation of an object is an analyzable manifestation and an outcome of the rules. It is not possible to identify the rules of any discourse as such but rather the role they play in constructing a discourse. The conditions formulated in a certain discourse make it possible for specific objects to exist, but at the same time these conditions restrict some other formulations of objects. To learn about the rules, SCA investigates the conditions that make possible the formation of a specified object and its change within the discourse.
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The rules of formulation also affect discursive practices, and policy-making practice is an example of a general discursive practice. This means that discursive conventions apply both to the content of policy and to the ways in which policy-making takes place, separating qualified policy-makers that fulfill complex requirements of policy discourse from unqualified ones. It makes distinctions between actors that can or cannot make serious claims about policy. A statement organizes the thinking and roles of actors in various ways [19], functioning as a reference point in differentiating acceptable from unacceptable usages of sentences. Acceptability refers here to the sentence being used and understood in a certain way. A statement can be a subject having a specific position that may be filled under certain conditions by various individuals. From this perspective, however, a statement cannot refer to the consciousness of an individual or to an individual as the author of the formulation. A statement is a domain of coexistence for other statements. Furthermore, a statement is a materiality that is the substance or support of the articulation, a status, rules of transcription, and a possibility of use and re-use. In empirical investigations, this means that statements can come from various semantics, including economic, administrative, and legal. Statements can be based on mixed experiential, practitioners and scientific constructions [11] which means that the formation of an object in a given policy discourse is not defined solely by scientific information. When analyzing the formation of the object from the point of view of the underlying rules and statements, the task is to describe the dispersion of these objects, and to formulate their law of distribution [30]. In summary, this emphasis on analyzing the role of rules and statements in policy analysis makes SCA unique in comparison to the policy analysis approaches that only focus on cognitive and rational aspects in the analysis of policy changes. A better understanding of a policy subsystem as a discursive formation constituted by particular rules and statements enables the policy analyst to also look at policy-making processes from the point of view of acceptable policy-making practices. In doing so, SCA broadens the definition of policy knowledge, encouraging policy scholars and the practitioners they study to step outside of scientific semantics. The identification and the analysis of the factors of the formation of the object enable us to clarify dominating policy knowledge and policy-making practices. This knowledge and these practices, identified through the serial part of SCA, can make explicit the underlying assumptions of any policy. Analyzing change and transformation Because the rules of discourse can change in the course of time [19], the changing conception of a policy object can be seen as reflecting changes in the rules. As a methodological approach, SCA not only indicates such changes, it also analyzes them. To analyze the complex reformulation processes of rules, SCA identifies and maps out a set of temporal vectors of derivation: to show how a succession of events is possible and to point out the different levels at which distinct successions are to be found. Therefore, when analyzing the reformulation of an investigated object, the main focus of analysis lies in identifying and describing the different changes that have occurred in the system of formation. These changes are analyzed at the level of discursive practices.
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SCA highlights the complex nature and the multi-causality of policy changes. It differentiates itself from the approaches that focus on the point-to-point sequences of the causality. SCA distinguishes between three different levels in the analysis of change [19, 31]. First, at the level of a specific discourse, there are the internal changes that can be identified in the rules of that specific discourse, and the relations between the identified changes. In order to formulate an object in a new way, it might be necessary to differentiate the object in a new way or to formulate the concepts concerning the object differently. As a starting point for the investigation of the formation of an object, SCA primarily uses the intra-discursive level, representing a specific policy domain. In addition, other discursive levels, such as policy domains other than the investigated one or the external structures and elements of a specific policy domain, can serve as starting points. Second, at the inter-discursive level changes are analyzed in the interrelationships between various policy discourses and how these changes affect rules of the investigated policy discourse defining the object under investigation. Whilst it is not self-evident how the distinctions between intra- and inter-discursive levels can be analytically and plausibly made, SCA assumes that various policy domains can be analytically distinguished from each other. Science and technology policy, for example, can be distinguished from social and health care policy as manifestations of the many policy discourses that all have specific rules and practices of their own. Third, at the extra-discursive level, the focus of analysis lies in the ways in which the rules of a policy discourse change as a result of certain extra-discursive practices. The extra-discursive 3 level refers to external structures and elements which are pre-existing elements in discursive constructions but which become co-opted into discursivities [32]. The external structures, as pre-existing social institutions, become surfaces of emergence for discursive objects. Thus, there is a complex interaction between the discursive and the extra-discursive in this manner. SCA can show how discursive practices change these extra-discursive practices, and vice versa. In policy analysis, the focus at this level is on the institutional setting of a policy domain primarily within the whole politico-administrative system, and more generally in the socio-political context. Besides the identification of various discursive levels to transform policy discourse, it is also necessary to define what these changes consist of. Four types of transformation can be identified [19]. First, by going from the more particular to the more general, one can and must describe how the different elements of a system of formation were transformed. In the analysis of policy change, these types of elements can be, for instance, political decisions coming from the outside of the investigated policy domain, or changes in population structure, and variations in the rate of unemployment as elements at the extra-discursive level. Second, changes can consist of the characteristic relations of a system of formations and how these relations were transformed. These kinds of changes can be revealed, for instance, in relations between the perceptual field, the linguistic code, and the use of instruments and information being put into operation by a policy discourse, thus making possible the definitions of an object in particular ways. These relations may alter if new
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Whilst the concept of extra-discursive is theoretically developed in The Archaeology of Knowledge, there is not clean separation of discursive and extra-discursive (Hardy 2011, 71).
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discursive constructions in the investigated discourse are put into operation. Third, one can and must describe how the relations between different rules of formation were transformed. The analysis can show also that certain rules can be unchanging, and that they thus maintained certain policy discourse and practice despite efforts to change existing rules. The fourth type of transformation concerns the question of how the relations between various individual and autonomous systems for formations of statements might be transformed. This means that a system of formation itself can also transform. In SCA, these various discursive levels and transformative factors form a two-dimensional analytical framework for identifying and analyzing policy change. The framework is depicted in Figure 3. Fig.3 The two-dimensional analysis framework of changes
Discursive levels Levels of possible events as transformative factors or restrictive conditions Elements Intra-discursive Inter-discursive Extra-discursive Characteristic relations Rules System of formation

METHODOLOGICAL ROOTS OF SCA

Besides the archaeological methodological roots, SCA also draws on the methodological principles of ethnography. In doing so, SCA enlarges the archaeological concept of archive and broadens the perspective on empirical material as something that can be obtained through fieldwork [33]. This extension makes SCA useful for analyzing contemporary phenomena, and a long chronological distance to the investigated phenomenon is not an ultimate requirement. SCA is organized around four methodological principles [19]. First, SCA seeks to analyze and define a policy subsystem as a policy discourse that obeys certain rules. Second, the aim of SCA is to define the discourse in its specificity. Third, SCA focuses on the types of rules that run through individual documents and works, sometimes governing them in parts, at other times entirely. Final, SCA does not repeat what has been said, but instead seeks to provide a systematic description and analysis of a discourse-object. The analysis is not premised upon an assumption of the knowing subject, but rather on a theory of discursive practice [34]. In this sense, SCA differs significantly from ACF, which highlights the roles that individuals and their learning play in the policy-making processes [25]. SCA also focuses primarily on the analysis of the general archive of a period at a given moment [35]. Put simply, this means that one ought to read and study everything. When using SCA, a policy analyst needs to focus on empirical material that covers the whole archive of the investigated phenomenon. The question, then, is, how to set up an archive, as not all material can be covered in empirical analysis due to time and scale issues. Thus, the point of gathering archive material is related to the question of whether a plausible interpretation of a
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studied phenomenon can be made through selected empirical exemplars examined in any study. So as to allow for the analysis of more recent phenomena, the archive can be set up using not just documentary material, but also interview and fieldwork material. As Honneth [36] has argued, archaeological analysis may be viewed as a general methodological framework for ethnological analysis that attempts to go beyond the individual in examining the experiential world as a cognitive achievement. From this perspective, a policy analyst might find it additionally useful to collect material for the archive through ethnographic fieldwork, particularly to learn about the present state of affairs in the policy context. In practice, this fieldwork might involve observing what happens, listening to what is said, and also asking questions through formal and informal interviews, in addition to collecting policy documents [37]. In employing the basic techniques of ethnographic fieldwork, as complementary methods for setting up the archive, SCA opens up a perspective that allows for the empirical analysis of the meanings, functions, and consequences of human actions and institutional practices, and directs attention to the ways in which these activities are implicated in local as well as societal contexts [37]. Ethnographic methods are used to unravel the regimes of truth through which a specific policy is constituted, and how these truths have structured institutional practices during the studied period of time. All kinds of empirical materials are suitable for SCA, and the use of multiple materials may be useful for contextualizing the phenomenon and the analysis of change [38]. As Denzin and Lincoln [39] have pointed out, the question of methodological rigor is not so much about gathering an extensive archive. Instead, it is more important to evaluate and critically assess the suitability of the chosen research strategy, the robustness of the whole research design, as well as the role of researchers and their interpretive paradigmsthe art and politics of interpretationin the process of analysis. According to Andersen [40], the objective to read and interpret everything can mean a number of things. First of all, one cannot define the discursive formation beforehand in the sense of limiting reading to one theme, since themes can relate to each other in unpredictable ways, which, moreover, can change over time and between spaces. In other words, the analyst should not only read about the object under investigation but should also follow statements references and references references across policy fields horizontally and vertically, both nationally and supra-nationally, as well as across all relevant fields of sciences. Second, it is obviously not enough to read all the canonical work related to the field of study. Instead, the reading should include the statements of the institutions that demonstrate the practice. For instance, one can read the regulations and accounts of the institutions themselves, as well as statements in scientific works. In addition to documents, the reading can also include interview material. Third, any preconceived distinction between types of sources used in any study as empirical material is not needed. As such, all material can be used for the analysis of policy as a discursive formation. All this means that the gathered research material is transformed into a unified whole describing the investigated discourse. SCA is useful here to group various elements in the discourse, to make them relevant, and to place them in relation to one another in order to form totalities [19].
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After crafting these monuments, representing the archive, the challenging task is to constitute a series. By series, we refer to a policy objects formation as a function of time. In order to constitute a series one needs to define the elements appropriate to each series, to fit its boundaries, to reveal its own specific type of relations, to formulate its laws, and beyond this, to describe the relations between them [19]. As monuments, the documentary traditions of the past do not possess an intentional content [19]. In line with Deleuzes interpretation of the archaeological approach [41], SCA seeks to form a variety of series based on the empirical material, and to analyze different elements throughout the whole of empirical data. The objective also is to analyze empirical material transversally instead of simply displaying phenomena or statements in their vertical or horizontal dimensions. SCA analyzes practices at the level of traces, particularly verbal traces [35]. The aim is to examine the discursive rules through which policy knowledge comes to be produced, encoded, displayed [42], and transformed. One does not establish any differences a priori, but tries to find how the collection of these traces constitutes a sort of domain considered to be homogenous [43]. SCA does not look for a better-hidden discourse, but seeks to analyze the structure of discourse in its own terms [42]. According to SCA, if the rules of policy discourse have changed, then it implies a change in policy. One has to analyze whether the reformulation of an investigated object can be considered as a change. On the other hand, a transformation means that a certain discursive formation is substituted for another, which means that a general transformation of relations has occurred, and statements are governed by new rules of formation.

METHODS FOR SCA

Besides offering a general strategy for analysis, SCA also proposes the use of particular research methods and methodological procedures. In the sections that follow, we describe a set of concrete methods for applying SCA in practice. It seems worthwhile to clarify here that by the selection of a research method we refer to a more or less well-defined procedure of managing empirical material in line with the epistemological stance adopted in the study. From the epistemological perspective that SCA draws on, the rigorousness and applicability of specific research methods are not evaluated based on their ability to produce true knowledge about the object of study. Methods are rather deemed appropriate if they provide and illuminate representations of what is assumed to exist, as Prior [42] points out. SCA is based on the view that representations are not to be taken as more or less true and accurate reflections of some aspects of an external world, but as particular discursive constructions that need to be explained and accounted for in terms of the discursive rules and themes that predominate in the socio-historical context of the study. We offer SCA as an analytical tool for the analysis of these rules by tracing the points at which certain types of elements like verbal traces have been admitted into the text and others expelled from it [42]. By examining the rules of new and discarded elements, it is possible for the researcher to determine how the world is ordered and reordered.
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SCA is based on three sets of specific techniques for conducting empirical analysis at different phases of the research process. In the following sections, we discuss these techniques and explicate how they are to be applied in research design development, data management and analysis, as well as evaluation and reflection of the research results (see Figure 4). Fig.4 An overview of the method

Research design In SCA, the development of the research design starts with identifying and choosing a particular policy-related object, the formation and possible transformation of which will be analyzed in the study. To identify this object, the aim is to look for possible turning points or ruptures in the discursive organization or reorganization of possible objects. No specifics are assumed beforehand about change or the nature of the policy subunit; rather, they are treated as empirical questions. As with any scholarly research, the research design is then developed on the basis of a review of relevant literature. Prior studies of the empirical field under investigation, theoretical work on the phenomenon, and studies deploying distinctive discursive approaches all represent relevant literature for the review. Existing analyses of STI policy changes, in particular, might prove helpful for gaining a better understanding of the policy under investigation, as well as for gaining insights about the different theoretical approaches and constructs that have been developed in prior research for the investigation of policy changes and their dynamics in similar contexts. Data management and data analysis When applying SCA in practice, data is managed and analyzed through five main tasks. The first task is to gather empirical material, and the second task is to organize it in a
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chronological order at the different discursive levels of analysis (the intra-, inter- or extra-discursive level). The aim, in doing so, is to detect regularities and explore the particular conditions of the studied phenomenon in a new way [28]. A subset of the empirical material can be used as specific organizing material, around which the archive is chronologically ordered. The third task is to read the data closely, and the fourth task is to carry out a serial analysis of the formation of an object. The first step, in this serial analysis, is to select an initial viewpoint through which the material is systematically reviewed, and on the basis of which the first serial analysis of the investigated object is made. The first series is created diachronically, based on the organizing research material, and the second series is generated by extending the analysis synchronically to other types of research material. These other types of material may also include interviews and field notes. Through these diachronic and synchronic serial analyses, the aim is to elaborate on the various conceptualizations of innovations, their origins and larger socio-political contexts, as well as the specification level of the conceptualizations and their grids of specification. After tracing the surfaces of the key viewpoint, in this way, the next step is to identify and elaborate on the relations and dimensions that constitute the discursive space within which the investigated object becomes formed. Discursive dimensions can also be mapped out chronologically in a time series that covers the whole research period in a diachronic way. When doing this task, it is possible to start with the subset of empirical material that was selected as the organizing material in the earlier phase, and then expand the serial analysis synchronically to other material. The analysis of the first selected viewpoint is integrated diachronically and synchronically to the latter analysis of discursive dimensions. The analysis of discursive dimensions can serve as elements to identify essential discursive relations to form the investigated object. Also in this phase, it is important to determine possible changes, appearances, strengthening, dispersions, and abating. After these two types of serial analyses, the analysis is extended to the identification and description of the relevant authorities of delimitation and the possible grids of specification through which the object is defined. These analyses create the basis for the identification of the essential rules of formation that apply in a particular discourse. It is also possible to undertake this part of the serial analysis simultaneously with the first steps of the analysis, but doing them separately may render the process more manageable. Based on the analysis of the formation of the investigated object, the fifth task is to carry out a comparative analysis of possible changes and transformations. In this phase, the results of the serial analyses at different points of time of the studied period are compared between each other. Special attention needs to be paid to the rules of formation that organize the investigated discourse. It is necessary to examine whether or not these rules change, simultaneously shifting the borders of knowledge and changing practices through which they are constructed. The two-dimensional heuristic model, proposed in Section 2, can be used to capture possible changes and static elements. In this phase of the comparative analysis, the aim is to analyze analogies and differences at the level of the rules of formation. More specifically, the objective is to investigate: whether different discursive elements are formed on the basis of similar rules; whether and to what extent certain rules apply or do not apply in the same way;
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whether these rules followed the same model in different types of discourse; whether different concepts occupied a similar position; whether single notions covered distinct elements; and whether relations of subordination or complementarity were established [19]. Overall, the purpose of this comparative phase of the serial analysis is to identify and elaborate on a particular type of knowledge that is used to construct the investigated phenomena, and possibly also to detect changes in it. Certain distinctive phases in the formation of the investigated object might also be identified. Evaluation and reflection In SCA, validity and quality are assessed primarily in terms of the transferability of the research results. SCA draws on the criteria suggested by LeGreco and Tracy [44], who argue that the evaluation and assessment of a particular research method should be based on the usefulness of the theoretical and practical implications that can be drawn from a case study in which the method has been used. This usefulness of the theoretical implications is usually assessed in terms of the transferability of the results and implications of the study across different contexts, such as how the analysis of a single case creates insights that are theoretically viable in other contexts [45]. The usefulness of the practical implications, for its part, can be evaluated in terms of the quality of the conceptual tools the study offers to policy-makers for critical reflection and analysis of their own policy-making practices. Practically useful research helps practitioners, individually and collectively, to scrutinize and problematize the prevalent and taken-for-granted policy-making practices and provides them with tools for exploring and evaluating the possible outcomes of particular policy designs, from the point of view of different stakeholders. The objective is not, however, to offer any clear normative criteria that policy-makers can use to judge their decisions and policy-making practices.

RESULTS: USING SCA TO ANALYZE THE FORMATION OF FINNISH INNOVATION POLICY

To illustrate SCA to STI policy analysis we discuss an empirical study of Finnish innovation policy and its formation from the 1980s until 2010 [3]. In this section we focus on the two phases of the method. In the last part of this section we begin the discussion of the implications of SCA based on the Finnish study, and continue the evaluation and reflection of the approach in general in the last section of the paper. Research design In the research design phase both the existing literature on STI policy analyses and empirical material on Finnish STI policies were examined carefully. After familiarization with the material, the emergence of new concepts of innovation policy, such as broad-based and horizontal innovation policy, was understood to represent a turning point of the policy. The indication of the changing nature of the policy created the basis for defining the research case.

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Data management and data analysis In the Finnish study both national and supranational policy documents were gathered, and interviews of relevant policy-makers were carried out in order to build the archive for research purposes. The research material was first organized in a chronological order at the different discursive levels of analysis. The intersection of science and technology policies represented the intra-discursive level of the analysis before innovation policy gained its own status. The other policy fields, such as education and environmental policy, represented the inter-discursive level. The regular reviews of the Science and Technology Policy Council, which represented the intra-discursive level, were used as organizing material in the chronological ordering of the data. The other empirical material was arranged around this ordering. Careful and analytical reading followed the ordering. Subsequently, a serial analysis was carried out to analyze the formation of an object, and to contextualize the results of the analysis. The concept of innovation, and its surfaces in various forms, was used as a starting point. In order to specify the production of statements, the first author mapped out the surfaces of an objects emergence. The author constructed a series of the objects surfaces in the archive, summarizing the analysis in a table, which presented the year of the appearance and the formulation of the investigated object, as well as the source of the appearance. An example of this analysis is given in Appendix (Table A.1). After the analysis of the objects surfaces, the first author analyzed the authorities of delimitation, the agencies, and the actors that defined the objects in the policy discourse during the 1990s. In Appendix (Table A.2), we provide an example of this analysis. The serial analysis was expanded towards the analysis of the grids of specification of innovation in the research material. The aim was to depict the systems according to which different kinds of the investigated object were defined. Table 1 illustrates results from this phase of the analysis. In order to contextualize the results of the serial analysis, the first author identified the discursive relations that characterized the policy discourse around innovation. In the early phases of the studied period, for example, the policy discourse revolved primarily around the national research system, the manufacturing industry, the national economy, and exports. Later on, however, these dimensions opened up inter alia towards education, work force, producers and users of scientific knowledge, regions, social, and health care. Through these dimensions, it was possible to enter into the analysis of discursive relations, looking at a specific formation, how it was made possible by a group of relations established between authorities of emergence, delimitation, and specification. By contrasting accepted and denied candidates for policy knowledge over the studied period of time, the analysis of discursive relations, enabling an object to exist but at the same time setting its boundaries, made it possible to specify the boundaries of the investigated policy discourse, and to identify dominant policy knowledge organizing the whole policy field. The first author used these discursive dimensions to initially identify the set of particular relations that constituted the discursive formation of innovation policy, as well as to contextualize the various surfaces and conceptualizations of innovations as objects of public policy-making. As an outcome of this analysis, it was possible to identify and elaborate on the conditions of the complex set of

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relations that enabled innovation, and later on innovation policy as a policy field, to appear in the empirical context of the study. Table 1. An example of the grids of specification of the investigated object during the 1990s
Innovation concept Technological innovation (economic innovation) Application area Varieties of industrial branches and clusters, dominance of telecommunication Social innovation No clearly defined mechanisms or policy instruments in the Finnish context during the 1990s Social and organizational innovation Development of working life in a large scale, not only inside of workplaces To expand the policy focus from technological and economic aspects to wider social context, especially in terms of working life and its conditions To expand the policy focus from technological and economic aspects to wider social context Main purpose To enhance economic and technological development, especially economic growth Theoretical background Economics and innovation studies (eg. Schumpeter 1934, Solow 1957, Nelson and Winter 1982, Romer 1990, Lucas 1998, Freeman 1987, Lundvall 1992, Nelson 1993, Edquist 1997) Integrating natural and social sciences; studying the relationship between scientific excellence, technological innovation and economic and social well-being (eg. MacKenzie & Wajcman 1985, Williams and Edge 1996) Working life and social research, integrated with innovation studies (eg. Aichholzer & Schienstock 1994, Andreasen et al 1995,, Badham & Naschold 1994, Kasvio 1994, Loikkanen & Seppl 1994)

Based on the analysis of the formation of the investigated object, a comparative analysis was then carried out to analyze possible changes and transformations. Changes and transformations were analyzed by comparing the results of the serial analyses at different points of time of the studied period. In the Finnish study, three phases of the investigated policy could be identified. They were separated from each other on the basis of dominant policy knowledge in each phase. In the phase of the comparative analysis a two-dimensional framework was used to depict the results of the comparative analysis. Table 2, which describes the transformative factors and the restrictive conditions of the policy formation during the transition phase, illustrates the usage of the framework in the analysis of Finnish innovation policy. In this study, particular analytical attention was focused on exploring the ways in which changing conceptions of innovation reflected changes in the statements and practices that constituted the policy. In the Finnish study, this interrelationship was quite evident; in some cases new rules allowed restructuring of the institutional settings, whereas in some other cases, despite several efforts by various policy-makers for example, the governance structure of the policy remained quite stable. Thus, it was possible, for instance, to show how the existing institutional structures were changed due to new discursive practices (and rules) of the investigated policy.
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Table 2. An example of key transformative factors and restrictive conditions at various discursive levels during the transition phase of Finnish innovation policy
Discursive level Intra-discursive New elements The relevance of services in manufacturing industry, and in the whole economy measured in the GDP. The governments political will to expand the R&D based development approach to service sector, and to significantly increase public R&D expenditures. Characteristic relations Conceptualizations of a variety of innovations with new, primarily science and research-based, authorities of delimitation representing fields, such as working life development, information society research, business studies and industrial design. Binding EU-wide state aid rules addressing to fair and unfair competition (competitive neutrality). The EUs innovation policy-making integrating in its argumentation endogenous growth theories with innovation system approaches, and legal frameworks from the point of view of competition policies. Inter-discursive The Europeanization of national education policy, and the restructuring of polytechnics. Expansion of the cluster programs into new policy fields. Extra-discursive The political decision to become a member of the EU, and later on to follow the aims of the Lisbon strategy with its controlling practices. Copyrights in creative industries remained unacknowledged as sources for innovations. Service development without technical dimensions was left outside of innovation policy measures. Creative and service businesses as such were not seen to contribute to net exports. Transformative factors Restrictive conditions

Moreover, in the empirical study of Finnish innovation policy, these rules divided, for instance, industries into two groups: industrial sectors which were eligible for public resources in order to carry out innovation activities, and sectors which were not. In a similar way, the rules categorized various types of innovations, such as technological, social, business, and service innovation, as qualified and unqualified. Furthermore, it was possible to identify researchers and experts who were eligible to offer new candidates for policy knowledge in contrast to researchers and experts whose eligibility was denied. In the study of Finnish innovation policy, the role of various statements became apparent in situations where representatives of certain business sectors or researchers of particular fields of social sciences were not empowered to influence the state with existing and dominant policy knowledge; in other words, they were not able to expand the boundaries of the existing policy knowledge.

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Implications of the study SCA as a methodological approach, focusing on actual discursive constructions and practices of policy-making, offered a divergent conceptual framework to the well-established innovation system approach in the Finnish policy-making context4. Rather than offering direct policy recommendations, what the policy-makers ought to do, SCA increased policy-makers understanding of the complexities of policy-making processes, and empowered them to review and evaluate their own practices and to learn from them.

DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSIONS

In this paper, we have taken a critical, reflexive approach to STI studies and proposed a new, discursive approach to policy analysis that focuses on actual policy-making processes and their socio-political complexities instead of ideal and rational ones. We have argued that this approach, which we call SCA, sheds light on and provides important insights into the social, political, and economic complexities that day-to-day policy-making involves and helps us to better understand how policies change and are transformed in practice. In offering this approach, our aim has been to expand the existing literature on critical and reflexive STI policy studies, and to respond to an important theoretical and methodological limitation that characterizes much of the earlier approaches to the analysis of policy change; namely, that they assume rational decision-making processes and over-emphasize the role of experts in introducing new concepts and approaches to policy practitioners. In doing so, we argue, these approaches have largely neglected the broader socio-political contexts and political will formation in policy-making. We propose SCA as an analytical tool that comes with a methodological framework and concrete research methods for analyzing policy transformation and change in complex policy-making contexts that involve ideological tensions and conflicts of interest. SCA conceptualizes policy domains as discursive formations, constituted by policy knowledge and practices of policy-making. It offers a two-dimensional heuristic framework for depicting and analyzing changes across various discursive formations and institutional settings. In doing so, SCA serves as a tool for surfacing the transformative as well as restrictive factors that underlie policy knowledge and policy-making practices in an explicit, consistent, and coherent way, as our empirical example illustrates. Overall, SCA therefore contributes to the literature on policy change analysis by offering a new methodological approach that illuminates diverging interests in policy-making processes, and highlights the crucial role of the rules that organize truth regimes within a particular policy domain in a given time and space. Moreover, SCA contributes to a better understanding of the discursive conditions of possibility for a given policy to change or endure. Lastly, it brings to the fore possible rigidities in the day-to-day practices and processes through which policies change over time. Compared with earlier approaches to policy change analysis such as ACF and the IAD framework, SCA differs primarily in terms of its underlying theoretical assumptions about the
4

See R. Miettinen, National Innovation System: Scientific Concept or Political Rhetoric, Edita, Helsinki, 2002 about the analysis of the innovation system approach in Finland.
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mechanisms of change. Although scholars using ACF have developed explanations for collective action in policy-making, through a narrative policy framework for instance [46], they still assume that beliefs as causal drivers [47] are personal qualities of various individuals [47, 48], who, in turn, create coalitions according to their belief systems in a policy subsystem. As regards the IAD framework, it focuses on action situations and how they change over time in the light of how the outcomes at an earlier time affect perceptions and strategies of actors over time [26, 49]. Much like ACF, this approach focuses on individuals, firms or policy-makers as key actors, attributing their agency with their unique resources, valuations, and ways of utilizing knowledge, within the framework of bounded rationality. In doing so, IAD emphasizes the role of individuals, sometimes as members of communities and their choices to attach subjective and instrumental meaning to policy-relevant behaviors [26]. While IAD extends its theoretical scope of analysis towards the social construction of the agencies and knowledge through which change is brought about in the policy domain, the approach fails to outline specific methodological practices and procedures for analyzing these changes in practice. As Ostrom [26] points out, the focus of analysis in IAD has been on the working parts of action situations rather than on factors underlying any particular action situation. We therefore argue that the IAD framework is still rather inadequate for studying the evolution of (socially constructed) action situations over time [26]. IAD offers merely tools for descriptively addressing the question of how changes in the ecological conditions or in broader cultural and/or political settings affect the structure and outcome of particular action situations [26, 50, 51]. SCA, in comparison, explicitly questions assumptions of instrumental rationality and cognitive learning in processes in policy-making. In doing so, SCA bears some resemblance to a number of the approaches developed in the stream of science policy literature that focuses on social equity issues [52]. Scholars working in this field have argued that inequitable outcomes are built-in to the very institutions of science and technology policy. However, while these scholars build conceptual models to analyze various types of equities, they do not systematically analyze how distributional effects may have changed in the process, over time, due to changes in policy-making practices which is something that we have tried to make explicit with SCA. To conclude, we argue that to gain deeper insights into the dynamics of policy change, it is necessary to acknowledge that innovation policy-making is not merely rational and a value-free activity in any simple and straightforward manner [11, 12, 14, 53]. The policy can have significant distributional effects in the economy and society [52, 54, 55]. Focusing research on actual policy-making practices can inform more policy-makers about policy and its distributional effects than the pure instrumental approaches that are primarily concerned with suggesting better policy tools and designs [16, 17]. For this purpose, SCA can empower policy-makers to critically judge their own policy-making processes, to discuss them, and to introduce new practices to construct policy knowledge when needed. From the point of view of the usage of the results of technological forecasting and future studies in the context of policy-making processes, SCA highlights that these activities are also not value-free activities as planning tools helping to construct policies. Researchers themselves in those fields can

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represent relevant policy-making actors, and in this sense SCA can empower even these researchers to critically scrutinize their role in policy-making processes.

APPENDICES
Table A.1. An example of selected years of the time series about the emergences of the investigated object
Year 1987 Innovation Innovations are based on technologies A big deal of applied new technologies and innovations are based on these basic technologies [like electronics, data processing, bio technology, new materials etc.] 1999 Social and technological innovations in the information society The government fosters especially social and technological innovations as part of modernizing service culture of public sector. 2007 Innovations and public finance When the annual revenues of shares overstep 400 million euros, it can be used maximum 25 percentage, however not more than 150 million euros as occasional investments to foster know-how, innovations and the growth of the economy regardless of the budget frame. Service innovations and municipalities Prerequisites of municipalities will be improved in terms of research and development, and service innovations. Social and health care, service and technological innovations The service innovation project of social and health care will be carried out which is directed among others at improving independent initiative, participation and operational preconditions of citizens, developing division of labour, improving impact and cost effectiveness of activities and services, and increasing variety of services. Furthermore, utilization of new technology is developed and commercialization and export of service and technological innovations of social and health care.
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Source STPC Review 1987, 33

The governments program (also referred in the STPCs record, Meeting 3/1999)

The governments program 2007, 17

The governments program 2007, 23

The governments program 2007, 54, 55

Table A.2. An example of actors and agencies delimiting the object during the 1990s
Actors, agencies The OECD The European Commission The Finnish Government The Science and Technology Policy Council Conception of innovation Technological innovation Technological innovation Companies innovations Large conception of innovation including economic, social, human, organizational innovations without specific definitions The role of economic innovation most elaborated Tekes The Ministry of Labor Innovations including technological elements Organizational innovation Working life innovation

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