The Science Behind Science Diplomacy
By Darci Pauser
We know that science affects diplomacy and diplomacy affects science, but how? In other words, what is the science behind science diplomacy?
Political scientists have been theorizing for decades about why and how scientific information and networks of scientific communities seem to bring countries together at the diplomatic level. Flipping the causal connection, they have also looked into why and how existing relationships between countries facilitate the spread of scientific information. Science’s effects on diplomacy and diplomacy’s effects science are mutually reinforcing, but can also be divided into separate theories on scientific networks and policy convergence.
The roots of the proposition that science strengthens diplomacy lays in the theory of international regimes — the institutions and organizations that tie countries together. Political scientist Steven Krasner penned the most widely cited definition of regimes in 1983. Regimes, he said, are “implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge”.
This description is valuable because it highlights regimes as both formal and informal, and as creating expectations. Rather than thinking of institutions as only brick-and-mortar localities where top policymakers get together, regime theorists argued that it’s more complicated than that — ideas themselves take on the power of institutions. And that’s where the so-called cognitivist knowledge-based regime theories come into play.
Knowledge-based theories argue that countries need to have a common understanding of a problem in order to solve it. Ideas shape actors’ expectations, thereby reducing uncertainty in international interactions and making cooperation safer.
Science, then, establishes a common ground of rational thought — expectations about how we should view the world, ideas about causality and the framework for means to solve problems.
What we might consider common sense in terms of rational cost-benefit calculations or scientific notions of causality we take for granted as universal. Instead, these worldviews have been shaped by iterative — or repeated — interactions that have established expectations and reputations for the world’s national governments.
These interactions have been mediated by networks of experts — or “epistemic communities,” as political scientist Ernst Haas calls them. Expert scientific networks share information with each other, which is then sought out and utilized by national governments. Shared understandings in fields directly related to the expertise of these networks then spills over into other issue areas of international relations. So, greater communication in science leads to greater communication — and diplomacy — in other areas. Taken to its furthest application, epistemic communities even prevent war.
Scientific networks improve relationships between countries by providing a common ground. But, a common ground also allows for smoother adoption of policies that support scientific endeavors. This is how diplomacy strengthens science, by providing international and transnational ties that facilitate scientific collaborations, and also create a shared understanding that science should be supported and pursued by state and non-state actors.
The policy and norm convergence literatures can help us understand how this works. Convergence occurs when governments or organizations adopt similar policies or norms, norms being “a standard of appropriate behavior for actors with a given identity,” as political scientists Martha Finnemore and Kathryn Sikkink define them. The mechanism through which they spread are not fully understood, but diplomacy does seem to play a role. For example, Finnemore found that international diplomacy at the level of the UN led states to adopt similar scientific bureaucratic organizational structures. UNESCO acted as the teacher of a norm that had already been established by the international community. Finnemore proved this link by demonstrating that countries’ science bureaucracies resemble each other. So, diplomacy not only strengthens science policy in this case. We can also extrapolate that the bureaucratic fit of scientific organizations across countries allows for greater ease of collaboration between scientists of diverse nationalities.
The harmonization of the European Union’s environmental protocols is another example of diplomacy strengthening science, since the harmonization process entails standardized deployment of environmental science prescriptions internationally. Even Turkey — which is not a member of the EU — has committed to maintaining the union’s environmental standards, welcoming funding for EU-approved projects and training of Turkish scientists by EU experts. Turkey’s connection with the EU as a member of the customs union has opened the pathway for scientific advancement and collaboration.
As we continue in our work in diplomacy, science, and a little bit of both, these theories can frame our understanding of what we actually mean when we talk about science diplomacy, and what we’re doing when we engage in it.
Darci Pauser is a Ph.D. student at Syracuse University and an aluma of the AAAS Center for Science Diplomacy’s first annual Science Diplomacy & Leadership Workshop, which took place in Washington, D.C. in September 2017.
