Policies to foster entrepreneurship: Elements from the European experience in the integrated micro-meso-macro analytical perspective

This article aims to present entrepreneurship policy practices from a micro, meso, and macrodimension to identify if there are signs of divergence or convergence in public intervention and policy of different European countries. To this end, it analyzes first the contemporary significance of entrepreneurship enhancement policies and, second, their relation to multilevel analysis. After proposing a repositioned and compound multilevel approach (micro-meso-macro) of the socio-economic system in terms of the “competitiveness web,” it uses as a case study different countries of the European South affected by the economic crisis and presents their political reforms over the last years. According to the findings of the research, it appears that development initiatives and regulations of these countries primarily focus on macro-economic and macro-social measures to enhance the potential of their business environment. On the contrary, an integrated policy in the context of the “competitiveness web” that takes into account all levels of space and different forms of developmental challenges by focusing primarily on the dynamics of innovative aptitude of the firms seems relatively underused until today. As a result, many firms and local business ecosystems maintain and reproduce their inability to grow and sustain their competitiveness in the current phase of restructuring of globalization, despite a wide variety of entrepreneurship enhancement policies.