Regional Innovation Policy in Hungary : Façade Regionalism or the Limitations of Achieving Good Governance through Europeanization

This paper surveys the ‘Europeanization’ of the Hungarian regional innovation policy. We argue that the transposition of EU directives in the national legislation does not automatically fulfill the intermediate objective of Europeanization: good governance. Neither does it necessarily accomplish the ultimate objective of Europeanization: in this case, the reinforcement of the regions’ knowledge-based, competitive capacities that enable and enhance their catching-up. We document that Hungary complies with the procedural conditionalities listed in the European regulatory and legislative documents, but procedural Europeanization could not prevent a systemic failure caused by policy opportunism. The paper describes the social mechanism that has brought about state capture (also) within the public policy field of territorial development. We show that instead of substantive Europeanization, a single-actor governance system has been established. The concept of smart specialization in territorial development was easily incorporated in a carefully established system of façade regionalism. Meanwhile the real-world practice of regional innovation and development policy implementation recalls the hierarchical, paternalistic redistribution and subsidy allocation that characterized both the socialist era and the early transition years. This ‘traditional’ system features however some new elements, referred to by Magyar (2013) as the post-communist mafia state. We conclude that procedural compliance conceals a cynical abuse of the opportunities the Structural Funds offer.

Hitotsubashi University

2014-11

English(eng)

technical report

VoR

20

Hitotsubashi Invited Fellow Program Discussion Paper Series

https://hdl.handle.net/10086/26913