Flanders Ahead, Wallonia Behind (But Catching up): Reconstructing Communities Through Science, Technology and Innovation Policymaking

Drawing on a documentary analysis of two socio-economic policy programs, one Flemish (“Vlaanderen In Actie”), the other Walloon (“Marshall Plans”), and a discourse analysis of how these programs are received in one Flemish and one Francophone quality newspaper, this article illustrates how Flanders and Wallonia both seek to become top- performing knowledge-based economies (KBEs). The paper discerns a number of discursive repertoires, such as “Catching up,” which policy actors draw on to legitimize or question the transformation of Flanders and Wallonia into KBEs. The “Catching up” repertoire places Flanders resolutely ahead of Wallonia in the global race towards knowledge, excellence, and growth, but suggests that Wallonia may, in due course, overtake Flanders as a top competitive region. Given the expectations and fears that “Catching up” evokes among Flemish and Walloon policy actors, the repertoire serves these actors as a flexible discursive resource to make sense of, and shape, their collective futures and their regional identities. The article’s findings underline the simultaneity of, and the interplay between, globalizing forces and particularizing tendencies, as Flanders and Wallonia develop with a global KBE in region-specific ways

Developing evaluation capacities in integrated care projects: Lessons from a scientific support mission implemented in Belgium

peer reviewedThe capacity of self-assessment, to learn from experience, to make information-based decisions, and to adapt over time are essential drivers of success for any project aiming at healthcare system change. Yet, many of those projects are managed by healthcare providers' teams with little evaluation capacity. In this article, we describe the support mission delivered by an interdisciplinary scientific team to 12 integrated care pilot projects in Belgium, mobilizing a set of tools and methods: a dashboard gathering population health indicators, a significant event reporting method, an annual report, and the development of a sustainable “learning community.” The article provides a reflexive return on the design and implementation of such interventions aimed at building organizational evaluation capacity. Some lessons were drawn from our experience, in comparison with the broader evaluation literature: The provided support should be adapted to the various needs and contexts of the beneficiary organizations, and it has to foster experience-based learning and requires all stakeholders to adopt a learning posture. A long-time, secure perspective should be provided for organizations, and the availability of data and other resources is an essential precondition for successful work

An Intravenous Pharmacokinetic Study of Cannabidiol Solutions in Piglets through the Application of a Validated Ultra-High-Pressure Liquid Chromatography Coupled to Tandem Mass Spectrometry Method for the Simultaneous Quantification of CBD and Its Carboxylated Metabolite in Plasma

peer reviewe

Linking political discourses on science with an evolving and densely populated context: Exploring the prospects of Cultural Political Economy

As a PhD student, I investigate the multiple ways science is conceived and valued in a research and innovation (R&I) policy context under seismic shifts (Tyfield, 2012): I aim at analyzing and comparing the various political discourses about R&I in Flanders and Wallonia (the two main regions of Federal Belgium). With regards to that goal, I am currently in the process of analyzing a corpus of 33 semi-structured interviews with principal investigators of two University biotech research centers, with members of two University research management boards, and with representatives of two regional science policy advisory boards. In order to analyze this particular set of discourses, I build on various sensitizing concepts (van den Hoonard 1997) such as policy narratives (Radaelli, 2000), while following the tenets of Grounded Theory (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). However, it is, I believe, necessary to connect the specific discourses I am studying to a broader context made of institutions, of actors engaged in power relationships, of policies and policy reforms, of a specific history, of other discourses, etc. The way one build ties between a particular set of data and broader contextual aspects is key to a fruitful sociological analysis. My proposal is to explore the potentialities offered by Cultural Political Economy (Sum & Jessop, 2013), an approach concerned with “the relation between semiosis and structuration in political economy” (Sum & Jessop, 2013: X), when trying to link discourses on R&I to the context they are part of. Acknowledging the “interdependence and co-evolution of the semiotic and extra-semiotic” (ibid., 23), CPE offers heuristic tools to study the articulation of specific discourses “with technologies and agency” (ibid., 20). My communication will disclose the iterative process of discourse analysis relying on CPE, as well as its results.taST