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ABSTRACT
Drawing on a multilevel framework of Marshallian external economies, we present a perspective on the foundations of enterprise policies across different levels of government. In so doing, we add complexity to the traditional approach to industrial districts, which often disregards the role of supra-local policies. The argument is based on the idea that the main task of policy-makers is not just to provide generic public goods for communities of people defined by administrative boundaries, but also to support the provision of public goods that strengthen the competitiveness and innovative capacity of social and productive systems functioning at various territorial scales, from that of compact centres of industry to the nation-state and beyond. We apply this multilevel framework to the interpretation of the Italian enterprise policies.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Annalisa Caloffi http://orcid.org/0000-0002-7819-5173
Notes
1. As it is well known, innovation policy is not completely comparable with industrial policy. Industrial policies may use the levers of innovation and technological change to promote industrial development, which is their ultimate goal, but the policy toolkit also includes the regulation and liberalization of markets, the strategic use of public demand (e.g. through public procurement or public-private partnerships (PPP)s) or issues of market protection through import-substitution practices. Recent EU communications (European Commission, Citation2012, Citation2014) see industrial policy as a set of actions aimed to favour an industrial renaissance, with a recovery of industrial investment share of manufacturing. According to these communications, industrial policy includes interventions on innovation, market conditions, access to finance and human capital and skills.
2. Following the definition provided by Bellandi (Citation2006), specific public goods are characterized by a combination of low rivalry in consumption, low exclusion rights and an uneven but non-random distribution of net benefits (before funding) in accessing the good among a population that has a general right to access. The non-randomness of the benefits lies in the fact that a subset of the general population shares a cognitive proximity, which explains specific interests in the provision of the specific good and focused collective demand.
3. See the example cited by Dewald and Fromhold-Eisebith (Citation2015) on the development of the photovoltaic technology in Germany. The authors clearly illustrate that in order to build a new innovation system, different scales and actors are needed, who can support the different stages of the process. While in the initial stages the local context plays the main role, in later stages the support of supra-local agents is of fundamental importance.
4. The Chamber of Commerce, operating on a provincial scale, has long provided direct incentives to businesses, especially for promotion in the international market. However, their role is now much reduced.
5. These laws result from a delegation of the state to the regions in the field of industrial districts that took place in the 1990s. Following the national law, the regions designed a set of rules for the funding of districts. However, the regional laws were almost never applied because the Italian government did not provide any fund for their implementation. Only some regions were able to find the resources to fund these projects autonomously, largely by resorting to European funds (Bellandi & Caloffi, Citation2006).
6. The first call for the new national technological clusters was launched in May 2012, and the programmes of the selected clusters are still in the start-up phase. Thus, an assessment of the effectiveness of these policies would be premature.
7. See, for instance, the Local Economic Development initiative carried out by the World Bank and the Development of Clusters and Networks of SMEs programme launched by the UNIDO.