Constructing an internal market for research through sectoral and lateral strategies: layering, the European Commission and the fifth freedom

This article explores how European research co-operation has evolved from being a ‘spending’ policy to one now focussed on establishing an ‘internal market for research’. It identifies how the Commission enabled adoption of reforms in this policy area when similar attempts earlier had been dismissed.

By concentrating on one mode of institutional change known as ‘layering’, two strategies effecting reforms are inductively specified. It is proposed that the Commission could pursue a sectoral strategy (intensifying coordinative efforts in the research field) and a lateral strategy (shifting research targets to another policy field) to trigger some of the sectoral transformation now observed.

Three policy instruments for researcher mobility bring the propositions to life: the European Charter and Code of Conduct for researchers, the scientific visa package and the portability of supplementary pensions. The article concludes that cross-sectoral interaction generates the under-conceptualized dynamics in area formation beyond moments of ‘grand bargaining’.