What public sector capabilities are critical for implementing mission-oriented policies in Latin America?: insights from a systematic review

Abstract

Mission-Oriented Innovation Policies (MOIPs) have emerged as one of the most influential modalities in the field of industrial and science, technology and innovation policies in the last decade. It is a revival of the Technological Missions approach initially implemented by the central countries in the post-war period. Today, a new generation of these policies is focused on addressing Grand Societal Challenges, placing issues such as mass youth unemployment, the crisis in public health systems and climate change at the center. In this context, developing countries are the most affected by these challenges, so MOIPs appear as a promising path towards systemic policies, more strategic and oriented to critical development problems (Mazzucato & Penna, 2016). They also show potential in terms of overcoming the usual problems for policy coordination. But the fact that most of the experiences and studies linked to MOIPs come from developed countries presents the usual risks of emulating policies from other contexts (Karo & Kattel, 2010). In this framework, the research question that motivates this paper is: What state capacities are needed to effectively implement MOIPs in the Global South, with emphasis on the experience of middle-income countries in Latin America.