Skills Development for the Twin Transition: Building Transnational High Skills Ecosystems Through Experimentalist Governance

The twin transition to a greener and more digital economy is linked to the need for new skills in the workforce However, given the scale and speed of change, it is difficult for policymakers, employers, and educational institutions to predict what types of skills will be in demand and how best to create them. In addition to strategic uncertainty, European policymakers seeking to facilitate skills development are confronted with a wide diversity of national and regional skills systems and a multi-polar distribution of power. In this context, we find that European policymakers rely on experimentalist governance to create and sustain transnational skills ecosystems (TSE) in which local actors collaborate at both the local and European levels to develop innovative solutions to the challenges posed to skills development in the twin transition. We find that European policymakers build on the iterative policy cycle of experimentalist governance to provide the ingredients needed to create and sustain TSE. Experimentalist governance (a) acts as a catalyst for TSE by setting relevant framework goals, (b) builds and strengthens linkages between interdependent actors by delegating responsibility to local networks within TSE, (c) provides nourishment for cooperation within and between TSE by promoting peer review and regular reporting, and (d) offers a generally supportive host environment for the maintenance and development of TSE by periodically reevaluating framework goals, measures and methods. To empirically ground our argument, we explore the case of the newly established Erasmus+ Centres of Vocational Excellence, which encourage local actors in various European regions to develop solutions in a bottom-up and networked way.