The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’: Biotechnology and the Competition State

5 April 2005 The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’: Biotechnology and the Competition State Hans Löfgren, Deakin University, Australia Mats Benner, Research Policy Institute, Lund University, Sweden PRELIMINARY DRAFT ONLY – revised version to be prepared for DRUID Tenth Anniversary Summer Conference on DYNAMICS OF INDUSTRY AND INNOVATION: ORGANIZATIONS, NETWORKS AND SYSTEMS Copenhagen Business School, Copenhagen, June 27 – 29, 2005 Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 2 The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’: Biotechnology and the Competition State Abstract The central hypothesis of this paper is that the bio-economy is critically dependent on state ‘intervention’ and that public support for R&D constitutes a core asset in the evolution of bio-industrial complexes. It is argued that public policy developments across advanced industrial countries in respect of emerging bio-industries are well captured by the concept of the (Schumpeterian) ‘competition state’. This type of state takes different forms, analogously with the historical variants of the Keynesian welfare state. The paper compares three cases of governance of the biotechnology sector: Finland and Sweden, the USA and the UK, and Australia. The aim is to integrate research on innovation systems (the dynamics of firms and economic sectors) with political economy (research on the social and political regulation of economic relations) and thereby contributing to the analysis of state forms in relation to advanced, knowledge-based and open sectors of the economy, including the regulation of non-economic societal fields which are increasingly drawn into the process of capital accumulation. The term bio-economy is shorthand for a vast complex of service delivery, manufacturing and trading, and research and development (R&D) activities, and interconnected support services and regulatory arrangements, of ever-increasing economic and social significance. The health sector – medical research, pharmaceuticals and other medical technologies, hospitals, health insurance arrangements, etc. – forms its major part though biotechnology (as an enabling technology) has applications across many industries. Commercial developments associated with the ‘new biology’, increasingly fused with ICT and other technologies, are widely seen as potentially sustaining another long wave of economic growth, ‘making reality of the prediction that this will be the century of biotechnology’ (OECD 2004, p. 5). The new biology did not emerge through the spontaneous operation of market forces but as a consequence of state-funded R&D and was subsequently commercialised within clusters and networks with universities, public sector research organisations and other state agencies as core participants. Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 3 The modern state played a direct role in the major technological trajectories of the past two hundred years with the partial exception of the original industrial revolution in England (Perez 2002). Most recently, the ICT sector emerged from government- financed ‘big science’ during and after the Second World War (Castells 2000). The bio-economy is characterised by an even more integral role of government: the scope, diversity, and magnitude of interdependence and blurred boundaries between state agencies, universities and publicly funded research organisations, business firms, and other entities, attest to a multifarious and expanded role of the state. This phenomenon is explored in the literature on innovation and high tech industrial dynamics – often within an ‘innovation systems’ framework – and countless studies have traced the minutiae of alliances and other linkages involving the new ‘dedicated biotechnology firms’ (DBSs) of the 1980s and 1990s (Carlsson and Mudambi 2003; Edquist 2004). In this paper we seek to bridge analyses of general growth models (post-Fordism and post-Fordism etc.) – particularly arguments suggesting a shift from a Keynesian welfare state to a Schumpeterian competition state – with an investigation of the emerging bio-economy, with a focus on the ideal-typical science-based, globally- oriented biotechnology sector. We describe and analyse different components of governance of the bio-industries, especially the interaction between state regulation and market actors (primarily firms) but also aspects of the regulation of health care, public research and development (R&D), norms and attitudes in society, capital formation, and corporate networking within and beyond the nation-state. The aim is to integrate research on innovation systems (the dynamics of firms and economic sectors) with political economy (research on the social and political regulation of economic relations) and thereby contributing to the analysis of state forms in relation to advanced, knowledge-based and open sectors of the economy, including the regulation of non-economic societal fields which are increasingly drawn into the process of capital accumulation. The central hypothesis is that the bio-economy is critically dependent on state ‘intervention’ and that public support for R&D constitutes a core asset in the evolution of bio-industrial complexes. The notion of a new regulatory regime for a knowledge-based globalised economy implies a tendential convergence of policies for economic development (Cerny 1990; Cerny 1997; Hirsch 1991; Jessop 1992; Jessop 2002; Messner 1997; Perez 2002). The critical question (theoretically and politically) is whether a single ‘best practice’ of embedding and regulating the bio-industries is emerging. In the latter part of the paper we analyse the bio-industrial dynamics of ‘coordinated’ and ‘liberal’ market economies to ascertain if the trend is for sectoral characteristics to override national regulatory trajectories or if significant differences in the institutionalisation of the bio-industries persist (Hall and Soskice 2001). We demonstrate that the configuration of ‘academic powerhouses’ and their institutional embeddedness vary across countries, which suggests deep-rooted differences between routes towards knowledge-based innovations in liberal and managed forms of capitalism. In other words, the Schumpeterian competition state takes different forms, analogously with the historical variants of the Keynesian welfare state (Jessop 2002, pp. 259-67). High tech industrial dynamics and the role of the state It is a commonplace to recognise that the 1970s onset of the crisis of Atlantic Fordism triggered a search for a new growth dynamics, and that ICT, biotechnology, and other science based sectors, were received as harbingers of a new ‘virtuous circle’ of Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 4 accumulation (Boyer and Durand 1997; Hirsch 1991; Petit 1999). The most conspicuous dimension of this search was the wave of corporatisation and privatisation, de-regulation, and other political and institutional changes that swept across the OECD in the 1980s and 1990s (Rockman 1998). All in all, the role of the state was reconfigured such that public ownership, Keynesian interventionism and social policy were scaled back in favour of a supposedly minimal state that would achieve a more efficient economy through the ‘freeing up’ of markets. Free market ideas gained influence not only in the liberal heartland but also in countries such as Sweden and Germany where the market-correcting institutional set-up was questioned ideologically and challenged by new corporate strategies, market de-regulations and the rise of new technological paradigms. All these factors seemed to make obsolete the traditional orientation of economic governance in the coordinated market economies towards gradual improvements and industrial reorganisation (Crouch and Streeck 1997). The new economic landscape – the ‘knowledge-based economy’ – favoured thin and weak states. But this conclusion can be shown to be modelled on a skewed understanding of the institutional foundations of high-technology growth and innovation. It is a claim inspired by the design-based, fluid and highly competitive ICT industries, and does not take account adequately of the different dynamics of the science-based industries of the bio-economy characterised by tight interconnections between public and private research, the role played by professionals (such as medical doctors) in bio-markets, and multi-faceted state regulation (Stankiewicz 2001). The growth of such science- based industries provided the context and stimulus for a burgeoning literature on technological innovation within which the apparent affinity between high tech and market liberalism has been examined at great depth. This research confirms that governments in Europe, Japan and elsewhere have adopted innovation policies inspired by the US model, but the axiom of a minimal state has not gained much support and is inconsistent with the ‘innovation model’ of the bio-industries (Wilson 2005). Nor has that branch of the globalisation literature which predicted the decline of the state been proven correct (Evans 1997). A salient feature of the research literatures on industrial dynamics and public policy vis-à-vis high tech sectors is that the grand questions of state and market – which historically so engaged political and economic theorists – are largely circumvented in favour of a pragmatic concern with interdependencies and exchange within ‘innovation systems’. The role of governments within such systems is not principally to make markets more ‘open’ but to foster favourable conditions for innovation and growth, and this typically requires extensive state activity. The focus of academic analysts and policy practitioners is mostly non-ideological and pragmatic, and revolves around ‘a technical question - how to be successful?’ (Hilpert 1991, p. 339). This is the context for the significance of ‘innovation policy’ in both liberal and coordinated market economies. Across the OECD, certain types of state activity vis-à-vis high tech industries have been phased out or are in decline, including large scale programs in support of national champion firms or specific technologies (such as in defence, civil aeronautics and energy). The shift has been towards public policy for the purpose of co-ordination and facilitation within networks, horizontal measures in support of small and medium sized firms, and programs and activities for broader socio-economic and cultural objectives to foster an environment favourable for high tech industrial dynamics (Hart 2002). Particularly striking is a trend towards public sector decentralisation which has enabled local and regional governments to initiate programs to foster cluster developments in sectors such as biotechnology (Asheim and Gertler 2004). Another Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 5 core theme in the understanding of the role of the state in the knowledge-based economy (innovation driven economy, learning economy, etc.) has been to foster entrepreneurial networks in and around academic R&D centres to facilitate the commercialisation of public sector research either directly (academic involvement) or indirectly (academy-industry collaborations). A dominant view is that academic R&D centres, if sufficiently active and internationally visible, will create locations attractive to international high-technology investments, as evident in the agglomeration of biomedical investments on the US east coast (Maryland and Massachusetts) and around Oxford-Cambridge in the UK. Investments follow dynamic R&D environments which are generally publicly funded and to a large extent also publicly managed (Cooke 2003; Cooke 2004). What, then, is the content of contemporary innovation policy? The principal focus of OECD governments in respect of competitiveness and industrial dynamics is on universities and the R&D system, training and education, support for entrepreneurship, and the commercialisation of science, arrangements to ensure the availability of finance, changes to taxation systems, and intellectual property rights. That governments also support measures to facilitate knowledge sharing and networking – contradicting the tendency towards privatisation and commodification of the intellectual commons – points to one of the core dilemmas of the knowledge- based economy. Notwithstanding different ‘models of capitalism’, many studies demonstrate convergence across countries in respect of policy measures to foster science-based industries through a mix of element from the liberal governance/regulation model – such as an emphasis on financial markets, entrepreneurship, and a preference for indirect measures – and the coordinated model including state-industry partnerships, networking and alliances, market regulation, and ethical restrictions on science and industry (Laredo and Mustar 2001). The environmental, health and ethical regulation that has accompanied the ‘new biology’ since its inception represents a type of state intervention that is not principally rationalised by economics. Imposed through political processes and often generating extensive public interest, such regulation has often been the cause of apprehension among R&D and industry actors concerned that innovation and economic growth would be held back. The trend however is for this type of regulation to be developed through trust-based exchange among core stakeholders resulting in regulatory arrangements accepted by industry and scientists not as impositions jeopardising innovation but as conducive for growth and prosperity (Hansen 2001). The integral role of government in the growth of the bio-economy goes well beyond initiatives to foster commercialisation and industrial success and health and safety and ethics related regulation. It also encompasses ‘soft’ measures to influence social and cultural attitudes and behaviour and to create a dialogue on the potential benefits and risks of new technology and the future direction of bio-based research. Indeed, government efforts to monitor and influence consumer perceptions are more conspicuous in biotechnology than in any other techno-scientific domain. In Australia, for example, a federal government agency, Biotechnology Australia, considers one of its core tasks to be the ‘comprehensive tracking’ through annual surveys of public attitudes to gene technology (Cormick 2005). The centrality of norms and attitudes for the acceptance and viability of high-tech developments, and more broadly, post- Fordist growth patterns, is illustrated also by the attention paid to concepts such as trust and social capital (Rothstein 2003). Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 6 These then are the state functions and activities, associated in particular with science- based industries, that lend plausibility to the argument that the state in advanced industrialised countries is (at least tendentially) taking on the attributes of a ‘competition state’ that differs in essential respects from the state type predominant in the period of Fordism (Cerny 1990; Cerny 1997; Hay 2004; Hirsch 2000; Jessop 2002). The competition state concept arose from analyses contrasting the mass production and consumptions systems, and the political and regulatory arrangements, of Fordism with emerging post-Fordist modes of development (Boyer and Durand 1997; Hirsch 1991; Hollingsworth and Boyer 1997; Jessop 1992). In this perspective, biotechnology and new biology exemplify a new paradigm grounded in ‘agglomeration and network economies and the mobilisation of social as well as economic sources of flexibility and entrepreneurialism’ (Jessop 2002, p. 110). The competition state pays particular attention to the supply-side in order to enhance innovation and competitiveness in open economies. The Keynesian welfare state by contrast formed part of a ‘mixed economy’ where government interventions compensated for market failures and provided for adequate demand to ensure full employment, but did little else to stimulate and guide industrial upgrading and structural economic change. The agencies of the competition state do not provide a countervailing force to capital; instead, they operate to reinforce, extend and directly support capital accumulation. It is also in this context that ‘governance’ has gained wide currency as a term capturing the new ‘operating code’ for governments whereby negotiations and interdependencies within networks provide the mechanisms for policy development and implementation, rather than hierarchy and ‘commands’ or the marketisation of the state itself (Pierre 2000). Jessop (2002) identifies as a contradiction and paradox that the ‘ecological dominance’ of capitalist accumulation is now impacting on science and culture to a greater extent than ever before but that ‘structural competitiveness’ within the global knowledge economy at the same time increasingly depends on extra-economic (social, cultural, environmental) conditions for which the state must take major responsibility. This is the very paradox that we explore in this paper by focusing on the composition and function of public policies for the bio-industries. Comparing biotechnology governance for global competitiveness R&D intensive bio-industries are characterised by strong linkages between the public research system and corporate technological developments, tight connections between dedicated biotechnology firms and larger corporations (particularly pharmaceutical firms) and high significance attached to intellectual property rights due to the importance of formalised knowledge for innovation. Markets for the bio-industries differ from those of many other high-technology sectors, notably the control exercised by professions (doctors) over prescription drug purchasing. Innovation is often infused by ethical uncertainty and dispute, and the management of public attitudes can therefore be critical to commercial success. Due to the importance of highly developed labour markets and other mechanisms for knowledge transfer, bio- industries tend to cluster in a limited number of locations. There is a broad span of government responses to the rise of the bio-industries but we distinguish in this section between three patterns: one strongly coordinated and orchestrated model (systemic-competition state), one characterised by the absence of strong regulatory mechanisms apart from R&D expenditure (neo-classical innovation/competition Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 7 state), and one combination of the two, with elements from both the coordinated and the liberal models. The first will be exemplified by the Nordic countries, in particular Finland and to some extent Sweden; the second by the US and the UK, and the third by Australia. Biotechnology governance in Sweden and Finland The Scandinavian system of bio-industrial regulation represents one variation on a coordinated theme where the role of the state is central in all major aspects of the innovation process. There are however striking differences between the structure of the Nordic bio-industries as well as their regulatory models. First, the biotechnology sector is about four times larger in Sweden than in Finland, employing almost 30,000 people compared to around 8,000 in Finland (Finnish Bioindustries 2005; Sweden Bio 2005). The Swedish bio-industry sector is also more mature – in Finland, more than 50 per cent of companies were established 1995 or later – and internationalised, encompassing large international conglomerates such as AstraZeneca, GE Healthcare, and Pharmacia (now absorbed by Pfizer). The big pharma company AstraZeneca alone accounts for the bulk of private bio-based research and development. According to recent estimates AstraZeneca employs about 5,000 R&D staff in Sweden where it expends about a third of the company’s total R&D budget of roughly 30 billion SEK (3.8 billion US$). The significance of big pharma for the Swedish economy is shown also by the magnitude of pharmaceutical exports (in the order of 50 billion SEK in 2001) (Vinnova 2003; The Swedish Innovation System 1970-2001). The Swedish venture capital sector is highly developed in comparison with most other European countries, but public actors play a more limited role than in Finland where the state is still vital for the supply of risk capital. Differences between Sweden and Finland are also apparent in the variety of regulatory and public policy responses. The Finnish example is an interesting case of an elaborate ‘design’ of a complete system of regulation of innovation – including policies and programs for R&D, regional development, universities-industry collaborations, and broad changes in the societal discourse on the preconditions for growth, prosperity and employment. As is well known, this growth strategy was first successful in the ICT area (Schienstock 2004). Although Nokia’s spectacular success – from almost bankruptcy in the early 1990s to global market domination in cellular telephony today –can be attributed to government regulation to only a limited extent (public funding of Nokia’s R&D peaked in the mid 1980s) public policies did play a major role in coordinating resources and actions within the ICT sector. According to an R&D director of Nokia, the National Technology Agency (Tekes) ‘is a binding force which stabilizes research activity in this turbulent environment” (Ali-Yrkkö and Hermans 2004, p. 109). Nokia is in itself a major technology policy actor, with an extensive network of subcontractors in component production and manufacturing, R&D and software development. Ali-Yrkkö & Hermans (2004, p. 113) estimate that Nokia accounts for about 2.5 of total employment in Finland. ‘Innovative networks’ in the ICT industry seem to have been stabilised and coordinated through public policies, creating denser and more durable linkages between Nokia and other actors in the domestic ICT sector. The Finnish bio-industries are much smaller than the ICT sector and have no ‘industrial locomotive’ playing the role of Nokia. Although Finland has a number of Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 8 medium-sized pharmaceutical firms, they have thrived in a largely sheltered environment and are weakly positioned in the globalised pharma sector (Hermans, Kulvik, and Yiä-Anttila 2005). One possible development route for the pharmaceutical companies could be to form tighter connections to smaller biotech firms, which have received the bulk of investments in this sector. A similar strategy is relevant to the forestry industry, where the potential impact of biotechnology on the competitiveness of Finnish firms is considerable (Palmberg 2004). For the biotechnology sector in Finland, the new innovation strategy took shape in the form of major public support for R&D in universities, research institutes and in the private sector, totaling over 400 Million (Hermans, Kulvik, and Yiä-Anttila 2005). Other elements in the growth strategy included cluster programs to create and sustain regional agglomerations of bio-industrial activities (mainly around Helsinki and Turku) (Bruun 2004). These cluster support schemes included not only research funding to academic centres, but also regional development support, infrastructural investments, network programs for academic-industry collaboration, and so on. Also, the Finnish government devised sectoral technology development programs to enhance the interaction between the bio-industries and the traditional strongholds of the Finnish economy, such as forestry, but also with the food and pharmaceutical industries. What emerges from the Finnish case is the central role played by the state in orchestrating resources, supporting investments, creating networks linking public and private actors and devising future strategies for the bio-industries (including cross- sectoral interaction). The state was instrumental in expanding a previously relatively weak public research system, in bringing into existence a venture capital sector, and in ‘correcting’ the fragmentation of the business system. The main result of these interventions is a substantial improvement of the knowledge infrastructure for the bio- industries (in academic, institute and SME settings) though as yet with limited effects on bio-industrial manufacturing. There is an expectation, however, that the government orchestration of resources and knowledge flows between public and private actors will create a new industrial pillar in the Finnish economy. Sweden, in contrast, never devised a comprehensive policy for the bio-industries. In the most recent formulation of a public ‘innovation strategy’ there is no mentioning of specific measures to foster the development of the bio-industries beyond increased support for science-based entrepreneurship (Näringsdepartementet 2004). This does not mean an absence of policies with implications for the development of the bio- industries but that there is no strong coordinating mechanism – a form of ‘governance without coordination’. Biomedical and biotechnology research policy is the dominant policy instrument. The biomedical area traditionally accounts for a large share of Swedish public research resources; currently about a quarter of funding goes to medical research, and if bio-oriented funding in the technical and natural sciences areas is included the figure rises to around 8 billion SEK, about a third of public research investments. In addition, the public hospital system is an important ‘innovation asset’ with its openness to clinical testing, publicly available biobanks, etc. The Swedish bio-industrial sector, by contrast to Finland’s, is large and highly internationalised, comprising in the order of 230 smaller biotechnology firms as well as big pharma companies. Sweden would seem to have more biotech companies per million of population than any other country (except Israel) (Ernst & Young 2004). The sector is dominated heavily by the pharmaceutical industry; other bio-oriented Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 9 industries such as biomaterials, medical devices, and biotechnology outside the pharmaceutical area (chemistry, environmental technologies, etc.) are of more limited significance. The bio-industries are concentrated to the Stockholm-Uppsala area (with over 100 biotechnology firms) and to a lesser extent the Øresund region and Gothenburg (each with 30-40 companies). In contrast to Finland’s state-led development of ‘bio-clusters’, the regional concentration of bio-related activities in Sweden has evolved in a more protracted and evolutionary way, based on long-standing corporate technological trajectories, exemplified by the case of gastroenterology (Losec), and research strengths such as protein technology developed over several decades. In addition, the sharp and radical increase in bio-based entrepreneurship in the 1990s was made possible by the rapid growth of the venture capital sector. Hence existing regional ‘clusters’ have emerged largely without specific state support. As a result of the combination of a strong venture capital market and the , academic entrepreneurship around the research centres is vivid. Nonetheless, the general downturn of the venture capital market after 2001 has reduced the supply of capital for new firm foundation, which points to the vulnerability of a predominantly market- driven ‘entrepreneurial system’. The Swedish bio-industrial ‘innovation system’ is heavily dependent on three actor groups: the public research system, the technology-based SME sector, and AstraZeneca. The traffic between the former two is obvious since firms tend to develop out of or in close interaction with the academic system (Nilsson 2001 – The Swedish Biotechnology Industry; Small Business Economics, 2001) as are the connections between biotechnology firms and the large pharma firms. Interaction between big pharma and academia is however relatively weak, although several R&D funding bodies have established programs for research collaboration between the two. The most important governance mechanisms of the ‘innovation system’ are the private venture capital market, the academic research system (including public research funding) and the large firms, each operating in relative separation. Hence, there is no equivalent to the coordinating role played by Tekes in Finland. In summary, Sweden, with a strong venture capital sector, dominance of internationalised big pharma, the lack of strong public mechanisms for sectoral development and private-public networking and coordination, deviates from the ideal- typical coordinated business/innovation/regulatory system and bears a resemblance to the regulatory model of the Anglo-Saxon countries. It is a pattern which has emerged not by design but by default. Reinforced by an increasing supply of venture capital the Swedish bio-industry has been able to reinvigorate itself and is now a major source of export revenues and employment. The lack of a coordinating policy regime is explained partly by deep-seated historical patterns but also by the Swedish political economy of recent years. Unlike Finland, where the economic crisis of the early 1990s resulted in a radical reformulation of the post-war growth model, there was no fertile ground in Sweden for an overhaul of existing regulatory structures. Moreover, Sweden already had high-technology sectors to build on with established academic centres in the bio-sciences and a nascent but growing sector of small biotechnology firms. Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only 10 Biotechnology governance in Australia Australian federal and State governments consider biotechnology to be the country’s most promising science-based sector, offering the chance of not being left behind in terms of industrial developments, as happened in the ICT area where Australia is now insignificant in terms of innovation and production. Ernst & Young (Ernst & Young 2001; Ernst & Young 2004) provides a buoyant assessment of Australia’s competitive position in biotechnology; strengths are said to include the supply of well trained graduates, high quality science, good and improving linkages between public sector research and industry, low costs and high quality of life, and an appropriate regulatory environment. Australia has approximately 370 biotech companies and another 600 medical device companies, employing about 6,000 people (Department of Industry Tourism and Resources 2005). Firms are based mainly in Victoria (Melbourne) and New South Wales (Sydney) but other States (particularly Queensland) are implementing significant programs to attract and support biotech activity. The major international pharmaceutical companies have a presence in Australia and are seen as key partners both in the fostering of local biotech clusters, and in the development of global R&D networks. But linkages between the public research sector and the big pharma companies are of very recent vintage and remain weak and fragile by comparison to Sweden, the UK and the USA. According to the pharma industry its aggregate annual R&D expenditure is in the order of A$300 million, less than 5 percent of industry turnover (and of this only a small proportion is accounted for by basic research) (Medicines Australia 2005). Historically major pharma companies established production plants to supply the local market – not to engage in R&D or exports – and it is largely as a result of public subsidies and incentive programs that this industry in recent years has come to undertake any R&D in Australia. A program introduced in 1987 to promote big pharma investments and R&D in Australia was the forerunner of a spate a more recent initiatives to promote the new biology and the emerging bio-economy (Lofgren 1997). The comprehensiveness of funding, coordination, regulatory and other activities instigated by federal and State (regional) governments now suggests a shift, at least in respect of this science-based sector, from the historical pattern of government-business relations in Australia, both in the period of high tariffs and Keynesian regulation, and in recent times of neo- liberal restructuring. It is striking that Australia’s federal system of government which more often than not gives rise to strife and confusion (certainly in areas such as health and education) does not seem to impact detrimentally on the coherence and effectiveness of policy to promote biotechnology. Federal R&D funding, regulation, and related initiatives are developed in consultation with, and are supported by, the States, which then put in place additional and supplementary funding and other programs to attract investments in their particular biotech clusters. For much of the past century Australian industrial dynamics were shaped by protectionism combined with quasi-corporatist labour market regulation through a system of conciliation and arbitration courts (Castles 1988; Frankel 2001). From 1983, this model was dismantled through a bipartisan process of market-led economic restructuring. High tariffs that had shielded the manufacturing sector were wound back and the new policy framework promoted engagement with expanding regional and global markets (Argy 2002). The Australian dollar was floated, capital markets liberalised, utilities and government enterprises privatised, and market competition extended in sectors such as banking and transport. Both sides of Australian politics in this period rejected a significant role of the state in technological and industrial [...]... in the USA and the UK [PRELIMINARY SKETCH ONLY The US and the UK are the world’s most powerful centres of bio-industrial activity, hosting large parts of the big pharma industry and more than 300 biotechnology companies in the UK and over 1,400 in the US Academic research efforts in the biosciences have also clustered in the US and the UK, with some of the largest concentrations of research efforts the. .. Products of National Innovation Systems: Four Ways of Looking at the State Science and Public Policy 29 (3):181-188 Hay, Colin 2004 Re-Stating Politics, Re-Politicing the State: Neo-Liberalism, Economic Imperatives and the rise of the Competition State Political Quarterly 75 (1):38-50 Hermans, Raine, Martti Kulvik, and Pekka Yiä-Anttila 2005 International MegaTrends and Growth Prospects of the Finnish Biotechnology. .. developed and mature’ and ‘consistent with the regulatory environment of the major markets of biotechnology products around the world’ (Ernst & Young 1999, p 29) This relatively coherent yet flexible regulatory system, responsive in all essentials to the needs of research organisations and business, is the result of continuous and purposeful state interventions over the past twenty years The significance of. ..Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only upgrading, and from 1996 a conservative government, disavowing any notion of social partnership, accelerated the de-regulation of the labour market Interventions to promote high tech sectors such as pharmaceuticals and measures in support of education and R&D were dwarfed by the sheer force and magnitude of economic... embeddedness’ and mutual interdependence (Cooke 2004) We find interesting deviations between 14 Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only the US and the UK however in the area of biomedical research regulation, with an ultra-liberal stance toward stem cell research in the UK (similar to the regulation in Sweden) whereas the ‘relational embeddedness’ of politics and. .. Philip G 1997 Paradoxes of the Competition State: The Dynamics of Political Globalization Government and Opposition 32 (2):251-274 16 Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only Colebatch, Tim 2005 Forget the J-curve, We're on a Long and Slippery Slide Towards a Disaster The Age, 2 March, 1 Cooke, Philip 2003 The Evolution of Biotechnology in Three Continents: Schumpeterian... kind of direct state structuring of the interest representation of business is hardly consistent with the orthodox economic liberalism to which Australian governments professed allegiance in the 1980s and 1990s Biotechnology Australia’s main priority has been the development and implementation of a National Biotechnology Strategy – encompassing education to enhance the public’s understanding of biotechnology, ... In none of the countries included in this study is the role of pursuing these objectives the sole responsibility of either the state or the market Instead, different systems are tightly interconnected, big pharma dependent on smaller biotechnology firms that are in their turn critically dependent on the public science base and a variety of support programs for technology transfer; funding 15 Lofgren... provision of conducive intellectual property legislation, and the monitoring and reshaping of public opinion Compared to the northern European countries, or Singapore, Australia is a high-tech laggard, but the basic institutional elements and associated policy strategies and the ideological discourse of a competition state oriented towards promotion of science-based industry developments are now in place Biotechnology. .. Lofgren & Benner The Political Economy of the ‘New Biology’ – preliminary draft only organisations orchestrating private/public knowledge networks and influencing public opinion on bio-business and new interventions in the life course (such as in stem cells – although we here find interesting differences between the ultra-liberal stance of Sweden and the UK and the restricted approach in the US) In countries