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Science policy narratives in Flanders and Wallonia: The interplay of characters and ideas
Charlier, Nathan
2015SCIENCE SHAPING THE WORLD OF TOMORROW Scientific Imagination and Development of Society
 

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Keywords :
science policy; policy narrative; research and innovation
Abstract :
[en] Both in Europe and in the United States, scientific research and science, technology and innovation (STI) policies have undergone profound changes in the last thirty years. In the literature, these transitions are often framed along dichotomous lines : an 'old regime' characterized by strong public funding, independent academia and a linear conception of innovation has supposedly been replaced by a 'new regime' in which research and innovation are conceived in systemic terms, regarding their economic and societal relevance (Rip 2000). These conceptions have been criticized regarding their historical accuracy, or regarding their (un)political-reading of those evolutions (Pestre, 2003). More broadly, Nowotny has recently emphasized the fact that the political understanding of science has been black boxed in STS (Nowotny, 2014). My proposal aims at investigating the multiple political conceptions of science in a regional context: what value is attributed to science? What are its aims? How should it be organized and funded? More specifically, this paper relies on an analytical framework based on the notion of "policy narratives" for science to examine how coexisting, and sometimes competing narratives are embedded in situated discourses, policies and practices. Policy narratives include the following elements (Jones & McBeth, 2010): A context, a plot (a sequence with a beginning, a middle and an expected end: Roe, 1992), characters that have a role and intervene in the plot, and some kind of 'moral' of the story advanced as a policy solution. As narratives help actors to make sense of things and orient their actions, they are both descriptive and performative. Hence, they relate to the notion of imaginary in a very concrete sense: narrative are related to actual institutions, and emerging policy narrative can serve as rationale for change. In this paper, narratives like, e.g., the "Knowledge-based Economy", the "Grand societal Challenges", "Science, the endless Frontier", are studied. Each attribute a different public value to science: improving economic growth, tackling specific issues such as cancer or ageing population, or increasing knowledge as a good in itself. Each also propose a specific organization for the STI system, and assign a specific role to the various stakeholders (the scientists, the university authorities, policy makers, industrialists and entrepreneurs, etc.). In order to understand how these global policy narrative are locally articulated, and thereby grounded in regional STI policymaking, my research is based on interviews with a range of stakeholders in Wallonia: biotech lab leaders, members of university boards, and representatives of labor and employers' organizations in regional advisory boards. In the analysis, a particular attention is paid to the various narratives used by the stakeholders when answering broad questions, with regards to their position. More specifically, the way stakeholders depict and scenarize their own role(s) and their relations with other actors is highly political and hence should be assessed. A main thesis of the paper is that one narrative does not constitute the only resource of a (group of) actor(s). Actors refer to different narratives regarding the context and regarding the evolution they promote.
Research center :
Spiral
Disciplines :
Sociology & social sciences
Political science, public administration & international relations
Author, co-author :
Charlier, Nathan ;  Université de Liège > Département de science politique > Anal. et éval. des politiques publ.-Méthod. de sc. politique
Language :
English
Title :
Science policy narratives in Flanders and Wallonia: The interplay of characters and ideas
Publication date :
March 2015
Event name :
SCIENCE SHAPING THE WORLD OF TOMORROW Scientific Imagination and Development of Society
Event organizer :
UCSIA - University of Antwerp
Event date :
18-20 mars 2015
Audience :
International
Funders :
F.R.S.-FNRS - Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique [BE]
Fondation Roi Baudouin. Fonds David-Constant [BE]
Available on ORBi :
since 15 April 2015

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