9: A new era for STI policy? De-coupling, technological sovereignty and international research collaboration (Andrew James, Kieron Flanagan, Jakob Edler, Dr Henning Kroll)
The last five decades have been characterised by the globalisation of the production of manufactured goods and the emergence of complex global value chains (Gerrefi et al, 2005). The consequence has been a growth in technology flows across borders and increasing global interdependencies. Few technologies today are developed within the boundaries of a single nation, and few complex, technologically dependent products are not the result of global value chains. In the same way (but perhaps receiving less attention) scientific knowledge production has shifted from a loosely co-ordinated ensemble of strong national research systems to a highly globalised science system characterised by intense international co-authorship and exchange networks, on the one hand, and large formal state-to-state collaborations, on the other (Wagner, 2008). China emerged as a source of components and raw materials critical to manufactured goods in the West, and, as it has sought to upgrade technologically and reduce dependence on foreign supplied technologies it has increased emphasis on research power. China is now not just a scientific powerhouse terms of volume of outputs produced but also as measured by raw citations (Wagner, Zhang, Leydesdorff, 2022). China’s most frequent research collaborations, as measured by co-publication, are with other leading scientific nations such as the US and UK. China is also a significant source of students and doctoral researchers in many leading science systems, indirectly underpinning the strengths of those systems but also raising fears about knowledge leakage and espionage. In the current geopolitical climate, initiatives aimed at the “de-coupling” of the United States and China and the “on-shoring” and “friend-shoring” of critical components and raw materials are challenging global value chains. In Europe, the United States and China there is growing policy debate about “technological sovereignty” (Edler et al, 2023). De-coupling combined with a renewed emphasis on research security are having implications for US-China research collaboration (Nature, 2020; Nature, 2021; Postiglione, 2021; Tang et al, 2021; MIT, 2022; Wagner and Cai, 2022; OECD, 2023). There are some indications of similar developments in UK-China research collaboration but this has been the subject of less attention (the two main studies are Johnson et al, 2021 and RAND, 2022).
The proposed track will explore whether a new era is emerging for STI policy; an era increasingly characterised by technology sovereignty considerations, in particular conscious efforts at de-coupling in the context of systems competition between China and advanced economies of the "Western" world and thus, the more challenging environment for research collaboration especially with China. Specifically, the track will address the following research questions:
• What decoupling and technological sovereignty policies are being discussed or enacted in European countries and how are they justified and enacted?
• What impacts are they having on patterns of technological development and scientific knowledge production?
• What impacts are they likely to have on the nations enacting them?
• What lessons can be learned from analysing earlier waves of decoupling and sovereignty concerns, such as the Cold War?
Keywords: STI policy, Decoupling, Technological sovereignty, International research collaboration