Science Diplomacy as an Emerging Topic: Some Insights from Professor Pierre-Bruno Ruffini

On 21 February, 2017, Pierre-Bruno Ruffini, Professor of Economics, University of Le Havre (France) and previously Counselor for Science and Technology at the Embassy of France in Russia (2007-2010) and Italy (2010-2013), delivered the open lecture «Science Diplomacy – Basic Concepts and Key Issues» under the HSE Master`s programme «Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation» for students, scholars and practitioners.

He argued that in recent years, science community as a non-state actor is much more integrated in policy-making decisions than it could be seen in the past decades. Science diplomacy as a theoretical approach was firstly introduced in the 2010 publication  «New Frontiers in Science Diplomacy: Navigating the Changing Balance of Power» by the Royal Society and American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Since then the number of scholars devoting thoughts to this topic in the form of  academic research papers, conferences, PhD theses is increase significantly.

The general idea of science diplomacy can be stated as the interaction between science community and diplomatic officials to achieve the political goals of the country through science-based projects. Professor Ruffini discussed some examples of very complex and hardly realizable projects that had no chance to further develop without the international collaboration of diverse governments, such as ITER energy project (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor), SESAME project (Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East) and IPCC project (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change).

As a matter of fact, science diplomacy is a fundamental platform to attract foreign researchers, maintain international cooperation networks and influence the cultural norms and values as a soft power strategy in other countries. In practice, science diplomacy is linked to archeology where the unique knowledge of archeologists in both spatial locations and cultural background of the population is a valuable tool for diplomats to make international negotiations. Another case is polar region which is vitally important for scientific research but quite challenging for global community territorial allocation.

Despite the numerous advantages of science and diplomacy ties, Professor Ruffini argues that science is under the risk of politicization, which negatively affects the economic, cultural and political prosperity of the society. The crucial role of scientific research is to independently influence the major global challenges and promote public policy for future societal changes.

Prepared by

Alexander Kalita, first-year student, Master’s programme «Governance of Science, Technology and Innovation»