What Capabilities Do the New Innovation and Structural Change Policies in Uruguay Require?
By Carlos Bianchi, Guillermo Fuentes, Lucía Pittaluga
This paper analyzes three organizations that implement productive development policies in Uruguay: (i) the Dirección Nacional de Recursos Naturales Renovables (National Directorate of Renewable Natural Resources); (ii) sectoral councils; and (iii) the Agencia Nacional de Investigación e Innovación (National Agency of Research and Innovation). Selected cases show that during the past decade, there was a major effort to boost productive development policies in Uruguay and build capabilities for that purpose. The paper also takes note of the various institutional designs in organizations that work with productive development policies in that country. Nevertheless, one can conclude that the capacity-building process depends not on the type of organization but on other factors that make up the policy cycle—design, implementation, and consolidation—and getting a rough idea of the target population of that policy. The main challenges in terms of government capabilities in implementing productive development policies relate to building coalitions that better coordinate public action, particularly within the government itself but with the private sector as well.
Full Content: Inter-American Development Bank
