Browsing by Author "Halonen, Liisa"

The Structural Funds of the European Union includes both strong and soft governance of the Union. In strong governance the state reforms their legal system and institutions functions based on the obligations of the Structural Funds. Soft governance, in contrast, is focused on the inhabitants of the unions, who then are governed indirectly by transmitting them the union´s values and by inciting. This thesis deals with the soft governance that is included in the Structural Funds. Additionally, the focus is on the innovation funding share of the Structural Funds. The theory framework of the thesis is governmentality literature, which states that governing consists of rationality and technology of government. Rationality means transmitting values and mindsets, and technology of government means the practical tool to do this. In the Structural Funds the distribution of funding forms the technology of government. There are several kinds of these technologies. This thesis focuses on the technologies of agency and productivity, as well as, transmitting regimes of practices. The Structural Funds program of Finland and the areal plans for the term 2014-2020 form the study material. The first part of the study is content-based, and it examines what kind of actors and what kind of acting the Structural Funds target. The second part of the study is theory-bounded, and it combines the results of the first part with the technologies presented in the governmentality literature. A new feature of this thesis is the division of actors into second and third parties. The second parties are the distributors of the funding, all of whom the European Union can govern directly, that is, using strong governing. The third parties are those actors who have the possibility to apply for the funding, but whom the Union cannot control directly. The only possibility to affect their acts is to induce, which is soft governing. The purpose of this division is to make clearer the difference between the two modes of government, strong and soft, in the second part of the study. The distributors of funding and their actions were not very visible in the study material. Both the distributors and their actions were referred mostly in general terms, if any. The most important actions required from the applying participants were to internationalise, specialise, and innovate, although innovation was also a defining feature when choosing the study material and therefore an obvious study result. All of these three actions were seen in the study material only in a positive light, although a lot of research has done where innovations have cut down those actions the Structural Funds are developed at the beginning: jobs and decreasing the differences between areas. In the study material the emphasis on the individual's responsibility, especially, in matters of obtaining training and skills represented the technology of agency. However, this was much more common in the programme documents related to the Social Fund than to the Regional Development Fund. The participants in these projects supported by the Social Fund should also benefit the companies that were funded by the Regional Development Fund. Ultimately, all the required features and results of the projects are the result of people's activities. The technology of performance was strongly present in the study material. The distribution of the funding is entirely based on the existence of predetermined numerical objectives and the funding applications must demonstrate how they can meet these objectives. Transmitting the regimes of practices was represented in the material by the presence of regions as subjects and the participation of the public organizations, along with the companies, in the project funding competitions.