González López, Manuel2025-01-202025-01-202019González-López, M. (2018). Understanding policy learning in regional innovation policies: lessons from the Galician case. Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research, 32(1), 104–118. https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2018.15197801351-1610https://hdl.handle.net/10347/38768This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Innovation: The European Journal of Social Science Research on 14 Sep 2018, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/13511610.2018.1519780The objective of this paper is to analyze how learning happens at regional innovation policies in a multilevel governance framework. We explore the case of Galicia, a region with competencies on innovation policies also affected by two other government levels. Our methodology consisted of in-depth interviews with the persons who bore the major responsibility for innovation policies during last decades. Our findings suggest that the interactions with other government levels are a key channel for policy learning. Sometimes learning is associated with simple imitation of the national level, which might lead to questionable results because neither the previous policy-making trajectory nor the region particularities are taken into account. Other times learning is needed because a new political rationality is imposed. This has been the case of the Smart Specialization strategy in Galicia, which nevertheless was key to enhance social and political participation, a channel for policy learning not used before.engAttribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internationalhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/InnovationPolicyRegionsLearningGaliciajournal article10.1080/13511610.2018.15197801469-8412open access