For decades now, the European Union (EU) has been trying to build up its own capacity to act as a global and regional power. This has proved to be a difficult endeavour. To date, the hard power of the EU remains limited, both with regards to its Member States' military capacity and to the EU's Common Foreign and Security Policy infrastructure. Not least for that reason, the EU has therefore devoted considerable effort to developing and deploying its soft power, but the embracement of such a soft power approach has not yet resulted in a clear and comprehensive soft power strategy. Hence the need to formulate a soft power vision and strategy, including the setting out of pathways to achieve the defined strategic goals. The EL-CSID project studies how the EU could use Cultural, Science and Innovation Diplomacy as major soft power tools.
Cultural and science diplomacy have indeed played an increasing role in the European diplomatic story in recent years, and the EU has made a major start articulating the relevance of cultural and science for its external relations. As yet however, an evolving strategy for the development of science and cultural diplomacy remains to be fully articulated, as do the longer-term implications of the continued development of cultural and science diplomacy in today’s fast changing multipolar and digitised world. Moreover, as innovation policy has come to be an increasingly decisive ingredient in the wider policy decisions made by countries and the world’s regions, it should be recognised as part of any conversation about science and cultural diplomacy. In this context, it becomes essential to make explicit the assumptions underpinning much of the EU’s cultural, science and innovation diplomacy activities and practices.
The EL-CSID project has the ambition to codify and articulate the relevance of cultural, science and innovation diplomacy for EU external relations as part of a systematic and strategic approach. The project aims to identify how the Union and its member states might collectively and individually develop a good institutional and strategic policy environment for extra-regional cultural and science diplomacy.
The overarching objectives of this project are threefold:
1) To detail and analyse the manner in which the EU operates in the domains of cultural and science diplomacy in the current era,
2) To examine the degree to which cultural, science and innovation diplomacy can enhance the interests of the EU in the contemporary world order,
3) To identify a series of mechanisms and platforms to raise awareness among relevant stakeholders of the importance of culture, science and innovation as vehicles for enhancing the EU's external relations.
Together, these objectives should not only contribute to a strengthening of EU policy towards the use of science, culture and innovation in its wider diplomacy, but also to a deepening of scholarly understanding of diplomacy as an abiding, if changing, institution. The research will generate both scholarly work and policy-oriented output which will be disseminated through an extensive and targeted dissemination programme.
