Missions have become a popular approach among policymakers worldwide to tackle grand societal challenges, such as climate change. But it remains unclear how to design and implement policies to achieve such missions. In her doctoral thesis, Barbara Hedeler investigates the role of policymaking in achieving societal missions.
What challenges do you focus on in your research?
“My research focuses on understanding the critical role of policymaking in designing and achieving societal missions. Missions have been used for a long time, for example, in the 1950s to bring the first man to the moon. Missions are characterised by time-bound, specific, and measurable goals. However, it is quite recent that missions are also used to address grand societal challenges, for example, climate change.”
“Such challenges are embedded in complex sociotechnical systems, where multiple interrelated elements interact. In brief, they can be understood as wicked problems. During the past years, it has been argued that missions can help address such challenges. While it is widely acknowledged that a combination of policies, a policy mix, is needed to shape the direction and dynamics of change, it is less clear how to design and implement such policy mixes.”
How do you address the problem?
“My thesis builds on the historical and ongoing transformation of the process industries in the Nordics. Although not explicitly formulated as missions, these countries have pursued ambitious goals to decarbonise domestic industry sectors and develop new industries for a long time, for example, based on biofuel technologies. Since these policies were often formulated in a time-bound, specific, and measurable way, they resemble societal missions. Therefore, we can learn a lot about the mechanisms at play from the Nordics, what has worked in which case and why, and what can be key challenges when implementing mission-oriented policies.”
What are the main findings?
“My research mainly contributes with a better understanding of the role that policymaking plays in achieving societal missions. For example, one study compares the development of biofuels in Finland and Sweden. Both countries had fairly comparable preconditions to build domestic industries from the outset, with large forest resources and strong forest and oil sectors. But we could see that during a period of 20 years, from 2003 to 2020, the biofuel industries looked quite different, with a lot of production in Finland, while Sweden has been very strong in technology development and distribution, with less domestic production. And we can also show that these differences can be explained by the design and implementation of national policy mixes, for example, which market mechanisms are selected, be it taxes or reduction quotas, when they are implemented, and how they are combined with other types of instruments.”
“At a broader level, the findings from the Nordics provide insights into the role of policy in societal missions. The Nordic cases suggest that addressing societal missions requires a strategic policy approach to navigate the complexity and interconnectedness of these challenges effectively. In my thesis, I provide empirical evidence and also discuss key challenges when implementing such policies. And the thesis also provides some inspiration how the policy process and policy mix design could be better aligned with mission goals, by proposing some steps on how to analyse systems to guide policymaking.”
What do you hope your research will lead to?
“There are no ”one size fits all” solutions, but research can provide some insight into into best practices, common challenges, and effective strategies for designing and implementing mission-oriented policies. I hope that my thesis helps policymakers and others involved in missions with a deeper understanding of the multifaceted challenges involved in societal missions. For example, that the design, combination and timing of policies really matters. This knowledge could contribute to the development of strategies to mitigate these risks, leading to more robust and resilient mission-oriented policies.”
Read the thesis: Mission-oriented policies for sustainability transitions: lessons from the Nordic industry transformation
Public defence: 31 January 2025 at 09.00, see link above.
- Senior Researcher, Environmental Systems Analysis, Technology Management and Economics