Science diplomacy is a hybrid field, shaped as much by the practices of those involved as by the theoretical work carried out by researchers in the humanities and social sciences. This hybridity also concerns the players in this field, who can be simultaneously or successively scientists involved in diplomacy, diplomats who contribute to the conceptualization of the field through their feedback and reflection, and researchers in the humanities and social sciences who adopt these new practices as their “field”.
The University of Ottawa and the French Embassy in Canada have recognized the importance of this field by creating a chair that I have the honor of occupying for two years with my colleague Patrick Fafard. We will thus both be researchers, striving to advance interdisciplinary thinking on health policies in their international and diplomatic dimensions, and, in a way, “science diplomats” fostering the development of fertile scientific relations between Canada and France. Our work will be carried out in close collaboration with Alexandra Gheciu, who welcomed me to the University of Ottawa for a research residency in May.
As a first contact with this field, here are some extracts, chosen by him, from an article by the best international specialist in these questions, Pierre Bruno Ruffini, with whom we have been working regularly since 2018 and who will be closely associated with the work of the Chair.
Watch the interview:
How to define Science Diplomacy
Text by Pierre Bruno Ruffini Extract from (2022) “Ministries of Foreign Affairs and the Challenge of Science Diplomacy”, in Christian Lequesne (Ed.), Ministries of Foreign Affairs in the World – Actors of State Diplomacy, Leiden: Brill, 228-250.
Science diplomacy (SD) entered the vocabulary of international relations a dozen years ago and has since become very popular among practitioners, policymakers and academics. As a first approach, SD refers to a large array of professional practices at the intersection of diplomacy (the implementation of a state’s foreign policy through privileged ways of mediation and negotiation) and science (understood as the activity of research, all disciplines taken together, and the incorporation of its results into technology). Science and technology (S&T) issues permeate important and various aspects of diplomacy, whether in the context of country-to-country relations or at the multilateral level. From a state’s perspective, S&T is an essential resource for development and competitiveness. They are also a matter of national sovereignty and can be used as instruments of influence and power. From a global perspective, they are essential resources to face the threats to the planet and to mankind, of which the Covid-19 pandemic gives the most recent illustration. In its broad understanding, SD encompasses both these dimensions, national and global.
The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) established in 2008 its Center for Science Diplomacy and co-organised with the British Royal Society a conference on the New Frontiers of Science Diplomacy in 2009, which gave birth the year after to a highly publicised report. Highlighting interactions between the sphere of science and the sphere of diplomacy, this seminal report laid the foundations of SD by categorising it in three parts: informing foreign policy objectives with scientific advice (science in diplomacy); facilitating international science co-operation (diplomacy for science); and using science co-operation to improve international relations between countries (science for diplomacy).
Another taxonomy came up a few years later identifying actions to be labelled as SD as the ones designed to ‘directly advance a country’s national needs’, from ‘exercising soft power to serving economic interests to promoting innovation’; to ‘address cross-border interests’ such as ‘matters relating to transborder shared resources’; and to meet ‘global needs and challenges’ and ‘advanc[e] global interests’ regarding shared challenges across borders (climate change, global biodiversity, etc.) and spaces beyond national jurisdictions such as polar regions and outer space. These leading contributions have shaped practitioners’ discourse on SD to focus on issues combining scientific knowledge, foreign policies of states and governance of global challenges. This widely disseminated discourse has highlighted what is so peculiar with SD and could explain a large part of its appeal: the promise of a better world through reasonable and smart use of scientific knowledge in international relations.
Two levers should be activated to this end: scientific co-operation, which can help maintain or restore dialogue between countries by using the universal language of science; and sound scientific expertise, which is critical to informing the collective action of states in the face of global threats. Each of these two registers—reducing geopolitical tensions and tackling global challenges—acknowledge how S&T can shape the international order.
See also the reference work, translated into several languages:
Ruffini, Pierre-Bruno. Science et diplomatie: Une nouvelle dimension des relations inter- nationales (Paris: Éditions du Cygne, 2015).
For a complementary approach :
Griset, Pascal, « Innovation Diplomacy: A New Concept for Ancient Practices? », The Hague Journal of diplomacy, Vol 15, issue 3, Online 19 august 2020, pp 383-397.
