A Model for Science and Technology Diplomacy: How to Align the Rationales of Foreign Policy and Science

Abstract

Various researchers and policy analysts have made empirical S&T diplomacy studies. There are, also, some endeavors of theoretical modeling but they are still too few to promote a general discourse in the academic level. Short of any theoretical platform agreed upon to have a common understanding of multiple aspects and dynamics of S&T diplomacy, no practical guidelines extracted for the research in this field. This paper is a preliminary attempt to fill this gap. Narrowing down the subject, it introduces a theoretical and practical platform of S&T diplomacy at the national level. The paper in the first part, establishes that S&T diplomacy is an extension of innovation policy and enumerates the conditions of its effective governance. In the second part, it offers a theoretical platform for research and to build it, two steps were taken: 1) deepening the Technological Innovation System approach by differentiating the national and the international dimensions of the functions of the innovation system, 2) aligning the rationales of Power (Foreign policy) and Learning (innovation policy) by implanting the operationalized concept of power as instrument and goal in the context of innovation policy.