Swiss science diplomacy after a decade of global geopolitical turbulences: development and outcomes
Project Abstract
Background: The concept of science diplomacy saw a surge of interest with the start of the new Millennium, especially in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. In 2009, the UK’s Royal Society, in partnership with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), attempted to define the role of science diplomacy and to demonstrate how scientists, diplomats and other policymakers can instrumentalise it. The three main dimensions of science diplomacy were described as follows:
(i) Science in diplomacy – informing foreign policy objectives with scientific expertise and evidence;
(ii) Diplomacy for science – facilitating international science cooperation; and
(iii) Science for diplomacy – using scientific cooperation to improve international relations between countries.
At the national/global strategic level, science diplomacy can be conceptualised as the set of practices at the intersection of science and foreign policy to be instrumentalized to (i) advance national interests and needs and (ii) address global societal challenges. Today, some view the latter as the main contemporary raison d’être of science diplomacy. At the actor level, the key motivator to pursuing science diplomacy are the benefits to the liaison of the scientific and foreign policy communities. For the scientific community, international cooperation is often driven by a desire to access the best people, research facilities or new sources of funding. For the foreign policy community, science offers useful expertise as well as networks and channels of communication that can be used to support wider policy goals.
The features of Swiss science diplomacy have been well-described in the 2010s. With a long tradition of expertise in the fields of science, research, education and innovation, science diplomacy assumed an important role in Switzerland during this new wave of science diplomacy activities. Especially “swissnex” − a worldwide network of science and technology outposts under the auspices of the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI) in cooperation with the Federal Department of Foreign Affairs – was, nationally and internationally, viewed as a successful science diplomacy instrument. It was indeed suggested as a suitable model science diplomacy instrument for other small countries.
While swissnex is focusing activities to established or upcoming innovation hubs − often in high-income countries, Switzerland has also a strong commitment to North–South research cooperation for development (https://www.nccr-north-south.ch/Pages/default.aspx). The Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC) − the main governmental actor − aims at empowerment, local capacity building and solution-oriented research projects. The Commission for Research Partnerships with Developing Countries (KFPE), promotes efficient, effective and equitable research partnerships with institutions in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) and provides guidance on the conduct of such partnerships to funding agencies, policy makers and development organizations (see: “A Guide for Transboundary Research Partnership”). KFPE constitutes an “alliance of Swiss institutions that engage in such transnational research partnerships for the benefit of global cooperation and sustainable development and to solving global and local challenges through partnerships”. The idea of a ‘Commission for Research Partnership’ was proposed in the Swiss Strategy for the Promotion of Research in Developing Countries in 1993 jointly set up and published by the SDC and by the Swiss Academy of Sciences (SCNAT). By definition KFPE has been operating in the science-for-diplomacy arena since the foundation.
Research gaps: Science diplomacy is increasingly considered to serve as means to solve all sorts of problems. The lack of empirical evidence leads to a rather paradox situation where the importance of science to international relations is highlighted, yet “the scientific method is rarely applied to study science diplomacy”. This situation implied that the predominant perception of the benefits of science diplomacy (i.e. increasing international trust and transparency and evidence-based foreign policy-making) is backed by weak evidence. There is a paucity of articles having actively tried to quantify or qualify aspects of science diplomacy.
For Switzerland, the science diplomacy scene has been described in some detail in the 2010s and the swissnex instrument has been described and evaluated more recently in a comparison with equivalent science and innovation centres in Germany. However, to our knowledge, there is no recent systematic and comprehensive mapping of science diplomacy actors and instruments in Switzerland. Thus far, no attempt has been made to describe the developments and the main perceived outcomes of science diplomacy in Switzerland over the past decade.
A further gap is the lack of evaluation of science diplomacy in a specific North−South context. Which role does and did science diplomacy play in North−South research and for Swiss−LMICs diplomacy? Which role could science diplomacy play in an ideal world? What could be learned from, e.g., the swissnex science diplomacy model for North−South research and diplomacy?
Main objectives: Given the stark impact of the recent major global and geopolitical emergencies (e.g. COVID-19 pandemic, war in Ukraine) on national priorities and budgets, the main objectives of this project are to (A) describe today’s Swiss science diplomacy ecosystem; (B) assess its value; and (C) identify areas that could be strengthened and the means to do so.
