We explore how political struggles influence innovation policy through a Norwegian case study on the formation of a state-funded research and development program for utilizing natural gas feedstock from the North Sea. Despite the apparent dominance of business, specialized branches of the state, and R&D institutions in the realm of innovation policy, the key argument is that labor unions and regional interests exert considerable influence in shaping national innovation policy, in particular when reflexively exploiting new forms of state accumulation strategies while retaining a defensive stance against deindustrialization. First, we argue that the struggle for state funding to natural-gas-based R&D was particularly effective because appropriate strategic political networks and alliances were mobilized. Second, the construction of strategic arguments to accommodate the social corporatist heritage of state intervention on the one hand and the competition-oriented language of flexible specialization on the other, proved crucial for acceptance as a state strategy. We engage a strategic–relational approach to state theory and argue that this is a useful starting point when studying how particular contexts affect how and why certain innovation policies emerge. In so doing, we also address the lack of political analysis in innovation studies.
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