ABSTRACT
The main purpose of our project is that of inquiring into the possible meanings and applications of `sustainable development' and into the best modes of governance through which Europeans can manage its multifarious (economic, social, environmental) aspects. This inquiry will be located in some European areas characterized as `urban industrial regions in transition' (Uirit) where the following features can be found:

1. 1.face the transition from Fordist to post-Fordist economy, from old modes of production with large physical inputs, big consumption of environmental resources and large quantity of waste, to new economy, characterized by, for example, dematerialization, high productivity and reduced human labour;
2. benefit from policy initiatives funded by EU Structural Funds directed at improving resource-productivity and a fairer distribution of economic advantages, while taking into account the constraints of sustainable development;
3. experience the transition, specially in Eastern Europe, from public assistance to economy (or direct central planning) to privatisation of public industries and market economy;
4. experience the crucial change from central government to local modes of governance which, in the light of the White Paper on European Governance, is particularly important for European institutions.

1. does transition improve local wealth and wellbeing in economic terms? We shall use some economic index to test variations in indicators such as human productivity, supply of goods and services, per capita consumption, capital formation and consumption, etc.
2. does transition improve social wellbeing or is it acceptable from the point of view of just distribution and fairness?.
3. does transition work in favour of the environment and future generations? We shall assume that new economy modes of production tend to dematerialization and reduced consumption of physical resources in order to respect the capacity of sustenance of the environment both for preserving the good functioning of ecosystems and for not pre-empting the wellbeing of future generations.
4. does transition favour local modes of governance over central government? We shall test the application and normative desirability of the five principles of the White Paper on European Governance: openness, participation, accountability, effectiveness and coherence.

Most dynamic now-a-days societies are those that base its development in an increasing growth of knowledge. Unlike the European education access standards, in emerging regions exist serious deficiencies in the access to basic education that have a clear incidence on social exclusion. It also has a repercussion on R&D policies, as, by exclusion, it limits the human resources that can take part of them. A key question in our project is to find out if emerging regions of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) aim their efforts to acquire knowledge and technology to Europe or to other world centres.  The case of Hungary will also be considered, as representative of the countries most recently incorporated to EU.
In this project we adopt a deductive methodical position. We understand that without deep social transformations, mainly in the LAC regions, the process of knowledge transfer will not be sustainable, as it does not integrate a great part of its population. They remain excluded off the system due to gender, poverty or ethnic reasons.

Our objectives are:
- Evaluate the results of the main European knowledge-transfer programmes, such as: AL-Invest, @Lis, URB-AL, ALFA, Alban and Erasmus Mundus and also the bilateral co-operation policies. 
- Analyse if the external-knowledge acquisition programmes in the LAC countries aim mainly to Europe or to other regions. 
- To consider the degree of coincidence and disparity of R&D in the new EU countries respect the older EU countries.
- To diagnose the limits imposed by social exclusion in R&D education policies and in Knowledge transfer in the emerging LAC regions.

The expected Impact of the project is to let us know:
- If European knowledge transfer policies towards the LAC regions help reinforcing the relationship between both regions. Also if this relationship will allow going forward with the creation of a EU-LAC Common Area for Higher Education space, and to what extent the social issue in the emerging countries could thwart this process.
- And if the potential difficulties and synergies that will arise with the integration of the EU R&D systems and the recently incorporated countries from Eastern Europe. Both results are certainly interesting for policy makers.

For more information please contact:
Prof. Dr. José Luís Luzón Benedicto
University of Barcelona
luzon@pcb.ub.es
www.ub.edu

The SOL working group seeks to better understand learning as a strategy of decision-makers to cope with uncertainty, risks and information-overload. We are interested in social learning as reflexive action with the goal to obtain better work processes and outcomes. Currently three research projects are dealing with social learning in the field of politics, TECHLEARN and RTD-GOV, both financed by the Austrian National Bank's Jubilee Fund, and LEARNPOL, financed by the Austrian basic research fund FWF. All projects focus on policy learning as a form of social learning, in which policy makers assess their own past policies as well as policies of other actors on national and international levels. The goal of such a process then is to deploy new policies, which are (better) suited to solve the problems they have been devised for.

More information on the research cluster SOL can be found at the Institute for Advanced Studies' Internet site http://www.ihs.ac.at/index.php3?id=518

Information on the head of the research group, Dr. Peter Biegelbauer, is available in German under http://science.orf.at/science/biegelbauer/bio and in English on the site of the Sociology Department of the Institute for Advanced Studies under http://www.ihs.ac.at/index.php3?id=540&hr=46 - where also information can be found on the other group members, Dr. Erich Griessler, Dr. Bernhard Hadolt, Dr. Lorenz Lassnigg and Mag. Kurt Mayer.

For further information please do not hesitate to contact directly
Dr. Peter Biegelbauer, Austrian Institute for Advanced Studies, Vienna,
Tel: ++43/1/59991-170
Email: beagle@ihs.ac.at