168ments from the agency in question. When a number of private, profit-maximizing companies compete with each other in a procurement procedure, significant sums are at stake. The winner of the procurement can hire additional staff at the next stage and charge by the hour in a way that benefits both superiors and shareholders. It would be strange if such an arrangement did not affect how evaluations are formulated, not least because this is a repetitive game in which the results from one evaluation can be expected to influence the outcome of the next procurement. The companies that carry out these evaluations are placed in an incentive structure in which it becomes very difficult to frame the results negatively.

169Evaluating Evaluations of Innovation Policy: Exploring Reliability,. . .

Conversely, an evaluated agency is also in a challenging situation. With demands to be evaluated continuously and to report results to responsible politicians, the need for positive evaluations is apparent. As pointed out by the Swedish National Audit Office (2020), the government has, from time to time, presented results from evaluations to the Swedish parliament in more positive terms than are proportional to the results and methods of the evaluation. Such an observation also suggests that there is a demand for positive evaluations among responsible politicians. Thus, a pressure might exist on government agencies to generate positive results, as these are demanded by decision-making politicians. Since the present study does not look at whether policies in the field actually work, it is not possible to determine exactly how these explanations should be judged. Further research in the field is hence important.

Every year, large sums are spent on innovation policies. Strictly speaking, results from the evaluation of any single policy can only be generalized to the specific policy intervention, and possibly similar ones carried out in the near future. Yet, there are well-articulated and important reasons for policy development and policy evaluation to “accumulate knowledge” and learn (Mazzucato, 2012). Hence, evaluating practices and quality remain central to any type of innovation policy that seeks to direct or enhance the sum, quality, or type of innovations in society.

The special nature of innovation policies, with limited funding in the form of often time-limited financial efforts, makes the results more difficult to directly apply