Open Access

Jekaterina Markow, Susanne von Münchhausen, Anna Maria Häring

• The Multi-Actor Approach (MAA) is a normative standard the European Commission (EC) formally applies to many of its (co-)funded innovative projects in agriculture, forestry and rural development. The MAA requires projects 1. to build on the activities of partners with complementary types of knowledge, including in particular (representatives of) the targeted users of the project results; and 2. to ensure the joint engagement of these diverse partners in all phases of the innovation process. Projects that are required to comply with the MAA are officially called ‘Multi-Actor projects’. They include some international research and innovation projects funded under the EC’s Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development Horizon Europe (or its predecessor Horizon 2020), as well as local EIP Agri Operational Groups (OGs), which are co-funded by the EC and the Member States (MS). As with all public policies, several groups of actors – including the EC itself – have a legitimate interest in learning how well the MAA is beingThe Multi-Actor Approach (MAA) is a normative standard the European Commission (EC) formally applies to many of its (co-)funded innovative projects in agriculture, forestry and rural development. The MAA requires projects 1. to build on the activities of partners with complementary types of knowledge, including in particular (representatives of) the targeted users of the project results; and 2. to ensure the joint engagement of these diverse partners in all phases of the innovation process. Projects that are required to comply with the MAA are officially called ‘Multi-Actor projects’. They include some international research and innovation projects funded under the EC’s Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development Horizon Europe (or its predecessor Horizon 2020), as well as local EIP Agri Operational Groups (OGs), which are co-funded by the EC and the Member States (MS). As with all public policies, several groups of actors – including the EC itself – have a legitimate interest in learning how well the MAA is being implemented by its intended target actors. A general answer to this question is complicated by the fact that Multi-Actor projects differ in many respects, such as the innovative objectives they pursue, the size and composition of their consortia, the duration of their activity, and their geographic scope. One aspect that makes it particularly difficult to identify general implementation determinants is their embeddedness in distinct multi-level governance settings. For example, while Horizon Europe-funded research project consortia operate under the direct management of the EC’s agencies, OGs are funded under a measure which is formulated by the EC but implemented at the national, or in some MS, regional level. These differences inevitably have an impact on how success in the implementation of the MAA can be achieved. In this paper, we propose a framework for analysing the factors that determine success in the implementation of the MAA, as well as their interrelations. This framework builds on a review and integration of insights from various fields of social scientific research, notably research on public policy implementation, multi-level governance, and participatory approaches in agricultural policy. To test the framework, we apply it to data from four case studies of OGs that we conducted in 2020 in the frame of the H2020-funded research project LIAISON.…