Conceptual Drift: Ten Years of Science Diplomacy

• In Event: The Language of STI Policy in the 21st Century - II

Abstract

Over the last decades, new concepts in science, technology and innovation have proliferated that call for a different relation between science and the political system. Next to e.g. ‘frontier research’, ‘grand challenges’, ‘responsible research and innovation’ and ‘disruptive innovations’, ‘science diplomacy’ has drawn the attention from actors in the lifeworld of foreign affairs and science policy as well as from scholarly communities. While science, technology and international affairs do share a longstanding and in fact coevolving history, it was not until the mid-2000 years when the concept was intentionally employed and made explicit in foreign policy as a tool of soft power. After the concept of ‘science diplomacy’ had been especially embraced by the US administration, e.g. to reach out to the Muslim community worldwide by alluding to the virtues of science, it did not only proliferate worldwide but its purposes and meanings have grown for more than a decade, almost to turn into an all-inclusive concept. In this contribution, I will assess how ‘science diplomacy’ has been employed by various actors and, thereby, what underlying interpretive schemas of their worldviews can be revealed. My argument is that science diplomacy with its different means and ends (science for diplomacy, diplomacy for science and science in diplomacy) overstretches social expectations of what science can cater for society. Moreover, that policy makers get encouraged to instrumentalize the public image of science for their own purposes, can be lead to great disappointments with both science and policymaking.

Author

• Tim Flink, Humboldt-Universitat zu Berlin