Browsing by Subject "politiikka -- verkostot"

This thesis examines the work of the Koheesio 2014+ working group established by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy in 2011. The Koheesio 2014+ working group prepares the reform and implementation of European Union (EU) regional policy in Finland in the 2014–2020 programme period. The working group’s task is to prepare a proposal for a Partnership Contract to be signed between the European Commission and Finland. The Partnership Contract sets the criteria for the allocation and administration of the structural policy funds in the 2014–2020 structural fund programme period. This thesis examines how the members of the working group seek to shape the content of the Partnership Contract, what kind of policy strategies they employ to promote their policy goals, and how they seek to advance their arguments within the working group. The paper also assesses whether the Partnership principle is realised in the work of the group, and whether there are any dividing lines within the working group regarding the content of the Partnership Contract. Elite interviews carried out in February 2012 form the empirical part of the thesis. Members of the Koheesio 2014+ Working group were interviewed for this study. The elite interviews were carried out in order to examine the working group’s members’ organisations’ main goals for the next structural fund programme period concerning the European Regional Development Fund and the European Social Fund. The theory of multi-level governance forms the theoretical basis for this study. The theory has often been employed in the study of EU regional policy. The theory is based on the assumption that the state shares decision-making authority with many other policy actors on different levels of government. The partnership principle, which influences structural fund policy-making, is often considered a typical example of the realisation of multi-level governance. The principle also affects the work of the Koheesio 2014+ Working Group. The research is deductive qualitative research. This thesis employs Paul Sabatier's and Hank Jenkins-Smith's Advocacy Coalition Framework (ACF) model for the study of EU regional policy networks in Finland. The ACF model is a policy networks theory that seeks to explain policy change through the analysis of policy networks in a policy subsystem, such as EU regional policy. This thesis examines the Finnish EU regional policy subsystem. In the end I provide an assessment of the applicability of the ACF model to the study of EU regional policy networks in Finland. The interviews indicated that no great divisions exist over the investment priorities for the next programme period. All the members seemed to agree that the investments should be focused on fewer priorities and the bureaucracy slimmed down due to the worsening of the economic conditions. However, the working group had not yet discussed the priorities extensively at the time of the interviews. The reason for this was that the group was divided over the question of how to organise the national structural fund administration. For this reason the research focus had to be narrowed down to the debate over the administrative model, and it subsequently turned out that the administrative model was a watershed dividing the working group's members into two advocacy coalitions. The key finding in this paper is that the ACF model can be applied to the study of EU regional policy networks in Finland. Two advocacy coalitions were identified by employing the ACF model: an advocacy coalition favouring a regional structural fund administrative architecture and an advocacy coalition favouring the centralisation of the structural fund administration. Furthermore, this paper also confirmed a few of the ACF’s criticisms.