Frans van Waarden, born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in 1950. Ph.D. from Leiden University. Professor of Policy and Organisation at Utrecht University.
Fellow (1 September 1998 – 30 June 1999)
As co-coordinator of the “National Systems of Innovation and the Idea-Innovation Chain” theme group naturally some of my time at NIAS went into the organisation of the activities of this group: the weekly meetings, two international conferences and a workshop for Dutch policymakers at NIAS, contacts of the group with the Ministries of Economic Affairs and of Education, including the editing of a report for the former Ministry. Furthermore, I also had some tasks as co-ordinator of an ‘offspring’ of the theme group, an international comparative project studying the institutional and organisational determinants of innovation in the telecommunications and biotechnology industries in Germany, Austria, Finland, and the Netherlands. This project, funded by the European Union, started during my year at NIAS. Two workshops of the international research team were held at NIAS.
As far as the contents of the project on innovation is concerned, I focussed on three topics: the elaboration of the concept of institutions as regards innovation, an exploration of the world of biotechnology, and an investigation of the role of law and regulations – as a concrete and important type of institutions – on innovations.
Furthermore I finished the editing of three books, projects that were started before I came to NIAS: a volume on regulatory styles, one on markets and institutions, and one on renegotiation of the welfare state through corporatist institutions. The edited volume on regulatory styles is closely related to another project I worked on while at NIAS: a monograph comparing the regulatory styles of civil servants in five countries (the US, Britain, France, Germany, and the Netherlands); trying to trace the roots of these differences in enforcement style to differences in political and legal institutions; investigating whether and how these styles are changing under the influence of European integration, notably the formation of a European legal system; and how they affect the equality of implementation and enforcement of European regulations and directives in different Member States. At NIAS I wrote five chapters for this book.