Proactive legitimation of R&I policy interventions: beyond market and system failure

This article examines currently available approaches to rational and procedural legitimation as to whether they are capable of providing sufficient arguments for the legitimation of measures aimed at mastering societal challenges. Market and system failure are the academic concepts most frequently referred to in accounting for R&I policy interventions. Both are reactive approaches to legitimation since they focus attention on problems of innovation systems and not on the opportunities that innovations offer. A look at the literature suggests that we currently lack of a theoretically well-founded approach providing a coherent argumentation capable of legitimating interventions on grounds of opportunities instead of failures We attempt to carve out the building blocks for such a proactive legitimation strategy. Our approach is based on a theoretical understanding of innovation systems that takes the mode of operation of complex systems into account while incorporating the need to consider society's problems and opportunities at the same time. The empirical section of this article gives an answer to the question as to whether the patterns of argumentation underlying such an approach have already entered the Austrian debate on the justification of R&I policy intervention.