Norm Transformation in EU Research Security: A Pragmatist Approach

Abstract

This article examines the recent development of a research security policy agenda in the EU. In responding to changes in the geopolitical environment, the EU has adapted its research and innovation policy by subjecting it to security concerns. At stake in this development is the norm of openness in international science, and more broadly, the status of the liberal values and principles on which the EU rests. To examine this development, this article mobilises pragmatist norm transformation theory, which, in brief, proposes that norms transform through the reorientation of conventions and the creative adaptation to changing political circumstances. Through this theoretical lens, the article analyses key policy documents about research security coming out of the EU from 2021 to 2024 and finds that the norm of openness in international research was transformed through the negotiation of two main discursive tensions: open/safe science and national/global security. These tensions were ultimately reconciled, moreover, as the EU framed international research cooperation as ‘open and safe’ and in need of ‘derisking, not decoupling’.