LIST OF PANELS

Technological innovation is considered a key lever for tackling persistent and complex societal problems, such as the transition to low-carbon energy technology in order to mitigate climate change or fostering medical innovation to tackle persistent health challenges. Also, technological innovation is a key driver behind the competition between states and world regions for industry leadership in future lead technologies, such as the EU’s policy strategy to catch up with East Asia in energy storage technologies (Beuse et al. 2018). While it is well established in the literature that public policy has a strong influence on technological change (e.g., Mowery 1983, Mazzucato 2015), how to design effective policies for steering technological innovation remains a central challenge for policy design and policy designers at all levels of policy-making. While the older literature on policy effectiveness related to technological innovation revolved around questions of instrument choice (i.e., what is the best instrument to foster innovation) (e.g., Carley 2011), more recent empirical investigations have turned attention instead to investigating the effect of policy design choices on lower levels of abstraction (i.e., the calibration and settings of policy instruments) (Howlett & Lejano 2012). At the same time, the ‘new’ policy design literature (Howlett 2014; Peters et al. 2018) has called for greater attention to questions of designing, i.e. the processes that lead to the adoption, implementation and subsequent evaluation and (potential) reform.

Studying technology-related policies offers the opportunity to engage with important questions regarding design and designing:

I. Technologies can be differentiated along the types of capabilities needed to master innovation: they can be simple or complex in terms of their inherent design and they can be simple or complex in terms of their manufacturing (Schmidt & Huenteler 2016; Huenteler et al. 2016). This conceptualisation of technology-complexity, however, is just beginning to gain traction in empirical policy analysis (e.g., Schmidt & Sewerin 2018). Yet, effective policy design, i.e. the identification of policy design elements that foster technological innovation, requires a solid understanding of technology-complexity. Also, policy design has to address the problem of lock-in of technology choices (Hoppmann et al. 2013; Sandén & Azar 2005; Schmidt et al. 2016) while balancing general uncertainty about technologies’ future development (Hoppmann et al. 2014). Thus, questions of effective policy design, i.e. finding the best policy instrumentation and design, remain pertinent.

II. Designing technology-related policies also involves potentially very conflictual policy-making processes: emerging or sufficiently developed technologies can pose a direct threat to powerful incumbents, impeding the political feasibility of policy action. Crucially, these threats to incumbents often are policy-induced, i.e. are feedback effects of previous policy decisions (Schmidt & Sewerin 2017; Meckling et al. 2015) Yet, the role of actors and agency in such long-term policy feedback loops is not well established, particularly since the role of actors and agency in the initial designing of technology-specific policies and the feedback effects of policy-induced technological change on politics are seldom studied systematically. Since public policy plays a huge role for technological change, the field of technology-related policy is particularly suited to study the relationship between agency in the designing of policies and policy-induced real-world changes.

Overall, policy design and designing in the field of technology policy is far from routine, making it a fascinating area of investigation for researchers interested in effective policy design. (See the Call for Papers for more specific research questions we’re interested in.)

Literature

· Beuse, M., Schmidt, T. S., & Wood, V. (2018). A “technology-smart” battery policy strategy for Europe. Science, 361(6407), 1075-1077.

· Carley, S. (2011). The era of state energy policy innovation: A review of policy instruments. Review of Policy Research, 28(3), 265-294.

· Hoppmann, J., Peters, M., Schneider, M., & Hoffmann, V. H. (2013). The two faces of market support—How deployment policies affect technological exploration and exploitation in the solar photovoltaic industry. Research Policy, 42(4), 989-1003.

· Hoppmann, J., Huenteler, J., & Girod, B. (2014). Compulsive policy-making—The evolution of the German feed-in tariff system for solar photovoltaic power. Research policy, 43(8), 1422-1441.

· Howlett, M., & Lejano, R. P. (2013). Tales from the crypt: The rise and fall (and rebirth?) of policy design. Administration & Society, 45(3), 357-381.

· Howlett, M. (2014). From the ‘old’ to the ‘new’ policy design: design thinking beyond markets and collaborative governance. Policy Sciences, 47(3), 187-207.

· Huenteler, J., Schmidt, T. S., Ossenbrink, J., & Hoffmann, V. H. (2016). Technology life-cycles in the energy sector—Technological characteristics and the role of deployment for innovation. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 104, 102-121.

· Mazzucato, M. (2015). The entrepreneurial state: Debunking public vs. private sector myths (Vol. 1). Anthem Press.

· Meckling, J., Kelsey, N., Biber, E., & Zysman, J. (2015). Winning coalitions for climate policy. Science, 349(6253), 1170-1171.

· Mowery, D. C. (1983). Economic theory and government technology policy. Policy sciences, 16(1), 27-43.

· Peters, B. G., Capano, G., Howlett, M., Mukherjee, I., Chou, M. H., & Ravinet, P. (2018). Designing for Policy Effectiveness: Defining and Understanding a Concept. Cambridge University Press.

· Sandén, B. A., & Azar, C. (2005). Near-term technology policies for long-term climate targets—economy wide versus technology specific approaches. Energy policy, 33(12), 1557-1576.

· Schmidt, T. S., & Huenteler, J. (2016). Anticipating industry localization effects of clean technology deployment policies in developing countries. Global Environmental Change, 38, 8-20.

· Schmidt, T. S., & Sewerin, S. (2017). Technology as a driver of climate and energy politics. Nature Energy, 2(6), 17084.

· Schmidt, T. S., & Sewerin, S. (2018). Measuring the temporal dynamics of policy mixes–An empirical analysis of renewable energy policy mixes’ balance and design features in nine countries. Research Policy.

· Schmidt, T. S., Battke, B., Grosspietsch, D., & Hoffmann, V. H. (2016). Do deployment policies pick technologies by (not) picking applications?—A simulation of investment decisions in technologies with multiple applications. Research Policy, 45(10), 1965-1983.

There are a number of gaps in the literature on technology-related policy design, two of which we seek to address in this panel: the design of effective policies for fostering technological innovation remains challenging given the varying complexity of technologies and the role of actors and agency in designing policies remains elusive (see the description of the panel). Against this background, we invite empirical as well as conceptual contributions, comparative or single-case studies relating (but not limited) to these topics:

I. How does policy design accommodate technology differences? What are possible policy designs to foster (innovation in) technologies of varying degrees of complexity? Are there country or sector specific patterns of technology policy design?

II. How effective are policy designs for technological innovation? What kind of interventions are most effective? Are policy design choices at lower levels of abstraction (policy calibrations) more important than design choices at higher levels (policy instruments and policy instrument logics)?

III. What is the role of actors and agency in the designing of technology-related policies? What are motivations and/or strategies of actors during the policy design phase? Do actors have long-term strategies aiming at picking their preferred technologies over others or are they technology-agnostic? What is the role of policy entrepreneurs, advocacy coalitions or design coalitions?

IV. What are the feedback effects of policy-induced technological change on subsequent politics and policy dynamics? What are the precise mechanisms behind these feedback effects? Can feedback effects (or path-dependency) be designed?

V. What is the role of ideas and learning for the design and designing of technology-related policies? Do actors have established ideas or beliefs about technologies that are fixed or are these ideas or beliefs open to learning? Over time, do actors gain a better understanding of the feedback effects their previous design choices have induced and do they apply these insights to subsequent policy design loops?

VI. How does policy design accommodate the spillover of technologies from other sectors or countries? Do policy-makers build on policy designs from these sectors or countries or do they build on established practices in their sector or policy field?

VII. Does improving the efficiency of existing technologies constitute a specific challenge for policy design(ers)? How can policy design address the challenge of updating existing (public or private) technological infrastructure? What is the role of regulation vs. voluntary measures or incentives for effective policy design for increasing efficiency?

We welcome contributions from any scientific background – but are particularly interested in attempts to bridge literature and/or insights from different fields, e.g. innovation studies and public policy/policy design studies.