Précis(1)
The European Research Area and Innovation Committee (ERAC) is the ‘EU’s strategic policy advisory committee on R&I topics…a preparatory body to the Council, and its main mission is to advise the Council (in particular the Competitiveness Council), the European Commission and EU member states’.
For almost 50 years, there has been a similar inter-ministerial committee of officials for shepherding the member states on science policy matters as well as reflecting their opinions to one another and to the Commission.(2)
At present, members include representatives from the science ministries, Commission DG R&I, as well as ‘observers’ from countries associated with the framework program (who are, I believe, invited to attend selected sessions). ERAC has six sub-groups dealing with specific topics.
As we near the date of the regular ERAC meeting (September), I felt it was time again to look at documentation on the web related to ERAC with an eye for interesting topics.
Interesting topics from ERAC*
| Topic | Date of publication or potential or proposed date of discussion |
|---|---|
| Recommendations on China | Nov 2021 |
| Implementation of the ERA Policy Agenda 2022-2024† | Sep 2022 |
| Setting the scene for the midterm evaluation: Preliminary discussion on process, themes and focus of the midterm evaluation of Horizon Europe | Sep 2022 |
| Start of discussion process for the 10th framework program | mid 2023 |
| Strategic advice on the next ERA Policy Agenda (2025-2027) | 2nd half 2023 |
| Current change in the field of Europe’s R&D&I cooperation with third countries – strategies and possible opportunities? | none given |
Commentary
I shall begin with the mid-term evaluation of Horizon Europe and discussions for the 10th framework program (which would start after 2027). The other date to keep in mind is the end of the Commission/EP term in 2024 (the replacement of Paquet at DG R&I might also be noted with his departure reportedly due next month).
On the content of all these topics, of course, we would be speculating. I shall also be skimming over the surface rather than going into the detail of texts and I will admit to not being fully informed.
Let us first, briefly, reflect back on the evaluation process for Horizon 2020, acknowledging that we are only looking at published documents not any of the internal thinking.
The H2020 mid-term evaluation was completed in-house. It started in April 2016. Publication was dated 2017.(3)
One point is that the evaluation was perhaps not done primarily against goals stated in, or evoked by, the original policy, but using generic criteria that were arguably less relevant.
I refer to the use of the ‘Better Regulation’ guidelines in the evaluation, based on five themes, namely, relevance of initial objectives, efficiency, effectiveness at achieving objectives, coherence and EU added value (p. 28).
As has been said many times concerning framework program evaluation, and of course is very well known to Commission officials, it can therefore prove difficult to analyse the links between ends and means.
The account by officials, Muldur, et al., 2007, ‘Building on experience: learning lessons from past framework programmes’ in: A new deal for an effective European research policy: the design and impacts of the 7th Framework Programme, is worth a read on this topic (click on the link, or stay with me if, you would like).(4)
While of course accepting that goals of policies shift through time, it can be useful for commentators to reflect in direct language about the initial goals and assess if they were achieved, or modified, through the delivery phase.
Citing for example an initial Commission document, COM/2011/0808 final, dated 30 Nov 2011, ‘an overarching objective of H2020’ was ‘sustainable development’ with ‘at least 60 % of the total budget related to’ the topic and ‘the vast majority of this expenditure contributing to mutually reinforcing climate and environmental objectives’ (p. 5).
Evidently there were other intentions, implied, or stated, in the policy but let us stick with this one as an example and follow it through the mid-term evaluation. In the language of the evaluation we are, in my view, therefore mainly talking about the chapter on effectiveness.
I looked for answers to such questions as how science had contributed to policies or regulatory actions that protected the environment; supported environmental clean-up; improved our knowledge of the topic of sustainability; or facilitated the development of technology that advanced that goal. What barriers were there? How were these faced?
Regrettably, the evaluation would not help us answer these questions particularly well (probably the strongest category of evidence was for technology but the other questions went unanswered). It is therefore difficult to comment, based on the evaluation, as to whether the ‘overarching objective’ was plausibly met.
Article 179 of the TFEU defines the objectives of European science and research policy as ‘strengthening scientific and technological bases by achieving a European research area’ while encouraging ‘research and technological development activities of high quality’ and the efforts of scientific institutions to cooperate with one another.
In the interests of simplification, objectives of the framework programme would logically derive from these objectives and no one would, ideally, create supplemental objectives. It would also be good to evaluate achievements in light of article 179 and not create supplemental objectives specifically for evaluation purposes.
Such a thought process generates some very intriguing questions in the mind. However, I guess it must be difficult to always follow through on the official side, not because officials had not thought about it, but because a moveable feast keeps a multilateral enterprise on the road.
Speaking as an external analyst, a straightforward and theoretically unsophisticated assessment of whether the framework program is advancing the interests of citizens who pay for it would therefore be welcome.
But, to be honest, it probably does not matter so much if the Commission keeps all its opinions on the framework program confidential or chooses to publicise some of them (it usually does the latter). Compared to many national programs the Commission is relatively transparent in evaluation (and, obviously, compared to R&D conducted in the private sector).
Rather, I would like to see reanalysis of data from an independent organization such as an NGO or think tank with a view to producing alternative mid-term reports along the lines I indicated.
Legal objectives of framework programs
| Program (years in force) | Legal objectives |
|---|---|
| FP7 (2007-2013) | Support cooperative research in applied and basic fields and key aspects of research and innovation capacities such as research infrastructures; strengthen human potential in research and technological development.* |
| Horizon 2020 (2014-2020) | Contribute to building a society and an economy based on knowledge and innovation by leveraging additional R&D&I funding; support the implementation of EU policies and the achievement and functioning of the European Research Area (ERA).† |
| Horizon Europe (2021-2027) | Deliver scientific, technological, economic and societal impact from investments in R&I so as to strengthen the scientific and technological bases of member states and foster competitiveness in industry; to tackle global challenges such as climate change; to strengthen the ERA.†† |
What can we now say about the design process for the 10th framework program? Well, I think the first question to address would be if we actually need FP10 or if we should call it a day at nine iterations.
From one perspective the EU has created an increasingly complicated and larger budget which quite outstretches an arguably dated concept originated in 1983.
Arguably, as we saw the capacity of many states to wield civilian science and technology withdrawn over the decades since (the retreat of the state as such), we also heard ambitious calls for these same states to shape productive relations through science and technology.(5) Perhaps, an example of asking more output from the worker while taking away their tools.
Over the years we have also seen an accretion of social scientific theories about the potential socio-economic impact of science and innovation investments and, indeed, academic and other forms of analysis have been dominated by these theories. But, beyond the platitude that everything is somehow connected to everything else, does innovation theory itself need radical reconstruction?
I think at this juncture it probably behooves us to consider alternative intellectual frameworks for delivering public funding for science and innovation in the EU, even if we might conclude they are politically impossible. This is, of course, done routinely in other areas of European action such as CAP where, for example, environmental groups propose alternatives.
The would-be reformer of the framework program should note there are nothing but quite vague legal strictures in the TFEU on what science and innovation the EU could undertake, hence a lot of scope for innovation.
Dramatic change would, though, be a lot to ask for the Commission. Officials have established procedures over many years. Shifting to another mode of working would be tough. There are also a few incumbents that would resist reforming zeal.
History implies the baseline expectation would therefore be a similar program, policy inertia being what it is, possibly with a slightly higher budget and slightly modified rhetoric about what is intended (Kaiser and Prange-Gstöhl, 2019, The European Union Budget in Times of Crises, pp. 137-156, offers insightful perspectives on previous negotiation processes).
As we all know, priority setting in science policy will tend to be built on assertions about the value of particular technologies and courses of action.
One of the possible advantages of the framework program as currently structured (often, though, seen as a weakness) is its negotiated aspects which mean it perhaps does not get drawn off in outré directions. This can happen to national science policies when they come under the control a small group.
(The technology missions launched by Rajiv Gandhi, the Indian prime minister, in 1987 are a famous international example of a program driven by a huge political personality. That program, of course, had significant merits. There is no rule about the best way to make investment decisions.)
Another of the often remarked advantages of the framework program, I think, is that it produces a minimal number of budget negotiations rather than lots of individual negotiations as would be implied by multiple programs.
Ex-post comments from officials on the framework programs (examples)*
| Program | Evaluation(s) | Strength(s) | Weakness(es) |
|---|---|---|---|
| FP1 | no data | no data | no data |
| FP2 | Report of the Framework Programme Review Board (1989)†; SEC(92) 675 final (1992)†† | Creation of research networks | Too many individual programs; lack of flexibility; lack of exploitation of research results; overly punctilious criteria of financial accountability |
| FP3 | no data | no data | no data |
| FP4 | Five-year assessment of the European Community RTD framework programmes (1997) | Did not come across any areas of major concern regarding the quality of the research | Lacks focus; underachieving; not flexible enough; not clearly related to EU goals and objectives |
| FP5 | no data | no data | no data |
| FP6 | no data | no data | no data |
| FP7 | no data | no data | no data |
| Horizon 2020 | Interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 (2017) | Rationale and objectives valid; on track towards building a society and economy based on knowledge and innovation | Programming at times too rigid; involvement of civil society organisations low; underfunded (oversubscribed); funding of participants from third countries declined; difficult to understand |
In the discussion phases for the putative FP10, there will probably be reference to issues such as geographical equalization of budget allocations, calls to connect sectors better, too much bureaucracy (or too little), and coordination (or not) with the cohesion policy. Commentary in the final ex-post evaluation of Horizon 2020, due in 2023, needs to be added to the mix.
I guess we could also consider discussion of crisis response and the impact of RRF, although, admittedly, crises of various types tended to gather around previous discussions.
Evidently we would benefit from a more focused account of what science and research could deliver in terms of protecting us from the dangers of the Anthropocene such as climate breakdown and pandemics.(6)
One risk, in my mind, is that we see pressure for more spending on strategic, dual use or military science and research in the EU budget. There are in principle reasons for not wanting the civilian scientific enterprise of the EU to become excessively warlike one, while also, of course, practical reasons, notably, the hazards of proliferation of such knowledge.
The European Research Area (ERA) remains a conceptual puzzle. I guess one of the barriers to a coordinated science policy is that we are talking a lot about the coordination of government activities, whereas the European single market has been primarily about the private sector.
The bigger member states, in particular, do not want to give up control of their own science policy, whereas, it seems to have proved ideologically easier, more or less, with the private sector.
So we could conclude the governments are never going to put taxpayer-funded research organizations into a common pool and let them compete with one another for the national budgets. Indeed, if such an approach were taken, it would prove financially disastrous for some of the R&D organizations in Europe, which, as national institutions, benefit from feather-bedding.
An alternative option would be a single, taxpayer-owned, pan-European R&D agency somehow combining all of the existing government research organizations. This was envisaged in the 1970s by Spinelli. In the 1990s, a variant proposal, ‘advanced European virtual institutes’, emerged, presumably referring to institutions brought together by contracts while preserving separate legal identities (Davignon, et al., op cit., pp. 29-30).
A large agency would be in a class of its own globally as an integrated civil R&D organization. It would in theory also address the weakness of many members states as actors in science and technology.
But the idea never materialized. The time-limited research project therefore remained one of the unchallenged units of the framework program (despite the TFEU indeed permitting the EU to create any legal entity it wanted to advance scientific goals).
ERA, as such, is a destination which one can never perhaps reach by rational steps or even fully visualize.
To have any chance of resolving political issues that swirl around the idea would require an extremely skilled politician. It is not an intellectual problem as much as a political one and, as far as I am aware, no completely adequate solution has ever been found.
Let us now discuss R&D&I cooperation with third countries – strategies and possible opportunities?
As the global interlocutors of the EU know very well, the EU (as opposed to the member states) will not become a significant factor in science and cooperation policy due to the field remaining a national competence.(7)
Furthermore, you can sign all the memoranda of understanding you like but without budgets to take programs forward, these documents seem mainly a symbolic science and cooperation policy.
With these ideas in mind, let us start with the recommendation on China cited in the table at the top (ERAC 1204/21, dated 5 Nov 2021). From what we can judge, the authors of the document were liberally mixing science policy with geopolitical matters (another singularity of the geopolitical EU, although perhaps best to avoid such a stark framing here).
The desired landing zone of the science policy was unclear. I found the agenda difficult to understand because rhetoric sometimes alluded to a dispensation that is not real.
China-CEEC activities in the scientific field, such as the innovation cooperation research center reported in Ningbo, are an illustration of that point. Obviously, there are also plenty of other bilateral platforms between science ministries.
Not to mention, in general, the vast multidirectional information flow in the science and research sector, as well as many commercial R&D initiatives some of which may be more or less beneficial to citizens (it is impossible to know much about the latter because neither European nor Chinese firms tend to advertise the details of their R&D).
I do not know if ERAC 1204/21 is now considered outdated. But the main risk with some of the approach as described was that we would see, almost accidentally, the EU taking positions that not only discourage top-down scientific cooperation with China but also start to damage bottom-up initiatives as well and, given the lack of overall clarity, not for much gain.
When member states, or for that matter, the rest of the world, take a warmer tone in their science and technology policy, what is the north wind to do?
The EU aims to ‘upgrade its knowledge on contemporary China’ and ‘secure long term and independent expertise on contemporary China’. A strategy that would pay dividends whatever the geopolitical weather. But the epistemic process chosen appears, as far as we can tell, to be one that treats China as an inanimate object like a galaxy.
Noting, for example, the speaker and topic line-up of the EU-KNOC conference (Sep 2021) organized by DG R&I, Chinese science policy knowledge is not obviously present (as much as it is possible to know, based on the limited information provided).
Yet, Chinese experts obviously generate a lot of useful, specific, analysis about Chinese science policy which is available in literature databases. Publications by analysts at institutions such as the National Academy of Innovation Strategy (NAIS) in Beijing, as an example, suggest China and Europe are grappling with many similar policy issues.
It would be good, therefore, to see the Commission build its capacity to take Chinese science and expertise seriously. By this I mean, an epistemic process that includes Chinese knowledge. Hopefully, this is now occurring, and my initial impression of EU-KNOC was misleading given that all the data points come from last year.
I would like to see some transversal science policy themes in any eventual cooperation mix (in the event that Commission DG R&I and MOST cooperate intensively with one another on science policy projects).
These could include historical evolution of science and innovation policy and what it means for strategy today; gender balance in science; and regional development by means of science and innovation instruments. Such themes would offer an unique form of mutual learning for both ends of the Eurasian land mass.
EU activities such as the aforementioned EU-KNOC will not have escaped the notice of Chinese science policy analysts who follow EU policy. EU policy might, though, be seen as an element of the policy of the only member state that matters in science and technology, Germany.
Given the significant role of the UK in shaping European science policy over many decades, Brexit is evidently an intellectual caesura in the conduct of that policy. I will mention a few possible impacts on science and cooperation policy (I do not mean in terms of relations with the UK).
Is there a new need, as an example, for the EU to challenge the probable Americaphilia and Anglo-centrism of the Indian scientific community?(8)
Data reported in Dua, et al., 2022, ‘Measuring and characterizing international collaboration patterns in Indian scientific research’ (analysis of publications 2011-2020) indicated by my calculation that more than 50% of Indian collaborative publications were with Anglophone countries (whereas, about 30% were with EU member states).
I do not know if this data point matters. But it would be a legitimate strategy to become the dominant international collaborator in scientific publications in countries such as India (as an indicator of information exchange).
Based on a quick glance at the H2020 projects dashboard, joint activities amounted to only about €4m of EU investment and have not systematically engaged the most prestigious Indian scientific institutions or, necessarily, the most obvious scientific topics. The budget is roughly on par with the sums expended with most of the other major Asian economies (excepting Australia).
EU science and technology interactions with major Asian economies (examples)
| Country* | Net EU contribution under H2020† | Proposed forward action(s)†† | Last publicised bilateral contact between DG R&I and cognate science ministry¶ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Australia | €12.12m | Enhance cooperation including by exploring new possibilities for closer cooperation such as association under Horizon Europe | Jul 2019 |
| Japan | €5.71m | same as Australia | May 2022 |
| China | €4.94m | Launched discussions on a joint roadmap to establish agreed framework conditions and guiding principles for cooperation | May 2022 |
| India | €4.09m | Strengthen cooperation in multilateral fora | May 2021 |
| South Korea | €2.44m | same as Australia | Feb 2022 |
| Indonesia | €2.28m | Considering EU-ASEAN approach covering science, research, technology and innovation | no data |
The EU is inevitably somewhat invisible in Indian science policy. We see thin soup in the policy documents, i.e., no concrete proposals for new collaborations have so far been made. The budget envelope seems limited.
While the European Parliament has a standing delegation for relations with the Lok Sabha, the Indian side apparently does not reciprocate (note the EP delegation is not specifically concerned with science but covers all topics).
Have the obvious remedies been tried to the fullest extent? I do not know. CORDIS contains promising pilot projects in the past decade, such as the India-EU Joint House for Innovation, but that appears not to have been picked up on a larger scale.
European governments maintain scientific footprints of various kinds in India. Germany, for example, counts DWIH, IGST and Max Weber in New Delhi and Fraunhofer and Max Planck in Bengaluru, among official entities such as diplomatic posts. Germany also has a very strong collaborative publication profile in India, second only to the USA, and indeed above England, citing Dua, et al.
This indicates that lack of visibility would be an EU issue, not a member state issue as such. It is, in my view, valuable to make this distinction in science and cooperation policy, which, as already noted, remains primarily a national competence.
Otherwise, we are mixing up conventional bilateral ties with member states, notably, Germany, instigated by German officials, and which an Indian interlocutor might recognize as fundamentally German in character, as against ties in which the interlocutor sees the relationship as primarily one with the EU.
Turning, now, south to our shared longitudes. It has been observed for decades that Western science for development policies in Africa have been chaotic and illogical.(9) Science and technology has often been identified as a key thread in colonial and, later, its offshoot, development, policy, which is germane to that observation.(10)
Through Brexit the EU detached from one of the former colonial powers (and one with a particularly bad track record). The UK also had a substantial science and technology policy in relation to development that was certainly never disinterested.
The shaping of development policy to British liking has therefore to be considered a factor at the European level and, long after Brexit, its intellectual effects will probably still be felt in policy formulation.
Around the time of British accession to the European Communities, for example, the UK international development minister, Hart, broadened the geographical reach of European development policy to include Commonwealth countries (apparently, it had previously been defined by Françafrique).(11)
Obviously, Belgium, France, Italy, Portugal (more recent) and Germany (less recent) remain member states with their own awful colonial pasts on the African continent. However, the newer EU member states have no overseas colonial legacies, although there is history from the old days of comrades, some of it quite significant.(12)
I am not sure that more science policy dialogues are needed. The issues are known. An EU policy that actually supported science and innovation strategy propounded by African governments would be an unique step forward.
A policy of this kind would, however, require an unprecedented intellectual effort on the part of the EU. Regrettably, there is not much space for such ideas to develop and so it seems unlikely other than piecemeal.
To conclude, I will touch briefly on one aspect of the ERA documents under consideration, namely, scientific workforce issues.
It is clear cut that at least half of public funds must go to female scientists. This is easy to achieve by giving at least of half of public funds to female scientists.
Science policy is, for the most part, about distribution of funds, so the problem is very much solvable. It would be the quickest way to boost European innovation performance and not one that any of Europe’s perceived competitors have done.
The other workforce issues raised in the ERA documents would perhaps seem not primarily fixable with science policy. Science is not a world apart and issues of employment conditions would need to be addressed in the general context.
For example, brain circulation sounds good but has drawbacks. The main one is that brains are attached to bodies with families, caring responsibilities, and so on.
To make brain circulation viable for more people, we would need our lives to become portable, such as through somewhat unified arrangements for pensions, social security, healthcare, school system, household registration, bank accounts, credit rating and mortgages, across all the member states. These are not science policy issues.
One aspect of brain circulation, incidentally, that rarely gets discussed (and of course is not mentioned in the documents here) is loss of expertise when staff leave the workforce such as by retirement.
Turning, finally, to the notes on preserving academic freedom. It is important to remember that the vast majority of science and research has never been conducted under such conditions.
Strengthening whistle-blower protection would extend, in contrast, across all categories of employee and clearly, also, would be more attuned to broader public interests (such as protecting citizens from the effects of falsification of scientific data).
Regrettably, whistle-blowing protections are uneven across member states. But this is another issue that is not really in the science policy wheelhouse.
History
As we are not, as far as I am aware, in possession of a history of ERAC and its predecessors, no history is presented here.
Conclusion
It is difficult to discern the range of policy manoeuvre available. We can only hope that officials take the time to find unexpected political opportunities, however small they might be, and that everyone avoids the trap of policy amnesia (having old discussions as if they were new thereby contributing to inertia).
Obviously in the above we are talking about discussions involving the Commission and science ministries. But the inevitable lack of oversight by EP of the fine details of European science policy (besides a few notable exceptions) remains a gap as the EU moves towards planning FP10.
(1) All analysis in this part of the website comprises: a précis of the report under consideration; my own commentary, having reflected on the report and the wider context of the policy problem; brief notes on what is known about the historical background of the problem and what solutions have been sought in the past (nihil sub sole novum); and a conclusion. Please be advised that the discussion is my personal views at a given point in time and typically based on very limited thought, analysis and research, and should therefore not be relied upon too much.
(2) ERAC traces its history to CREST, which was created in 1974 under the chairmanship of Günter Schuster, superseding a more limited group known as PREST that had been established in 1965: THE SCIENTIFIC AND TECHNICAL RESEARCH COMMITTEE (CREST). Its origin, role and function.
(3) Interim evaluation of Horizon 2020 (2017). The final ex-post evaluation is due in 2023.
(4) Analysts have addressed this topic, e.g., Georghiou, 1995, ‘Assessing the Framework Program: a meta evaluation’ in: Evaluation. Work associated with Technopolis Group is also notable. One difficulty I feel for analysts, even those considered close to the Commission, is objective understanding of all the internal deliberations (I guess even Commission officials might struggle given few are across everything). We must typically await many decades to see all the archival materials by which point dust settled.
(5) The argument, probably phrased in different ways, has become a commonplace. It was put more than 20 years ago (by the well-known) Grande, 2000, The Erosion of State Capacity and the European Innovation Policy Dilemma: a Comparison of German and EU Information Technology Policies (Institut für Höhere Studien). Perhaps, however, the remedies that Grande proposed no longer seem apt (I do not know). But they definitely merit greater thought.
(6) One other topic I would like to see discussed is effort to renovate science and research capacity across the regions of greatest untapped potential in eastern Europe (a kind of Die Wende version 2.0). In the hope that armed conflict had ceased, countries in scope would include neighborhood, namely, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and western Balkans. The lack of EU science policy to develop agricultural science, research and extension services in an ecological direction in Europe’s breadbaskets such as Ukraine, was the subject of a previous report on this website (my investigation was done before the conflict). Ukrainian agricultural scientists, for example, reported being ready and willing to act on decarbonization and other environmental priorities but could not take steps due to lack of basic laboratory equipment. The, as yet to be fully tapped, scientific potential of the Western Balkans was explored in another of my reports.
(7) Science and cooperation policy is a national prerogative, thereby hampering the development of new kinds of EU thinking, and this seems unlikely to change, citing point 16 of ERAC 1203/21: ‘the bulk of international cooperation activities is designed and implemented by the members states and associated countries, which also needs to be reflected’. Prange-Gstöhl, 2019, ‘The EU’s approach to Transatlantic science and research relations: between “laissez faire” and “science diplomacy”‘ in: European Foreign Affairs Review, provides insightful discussion on this point in regard to the USA.
(8) I would like to thank Dr. Kapil Subramanian for raising a related point with me during our conversation on EU-India scientific cooperation.
(9) A pithy summary of the issue, written more than 30 years ago, is provided by Kipré, 1986, ‘Science, technique et developpement en Afrique Noire’, in: Décolonisations et nouvelles dépendances: Modèles et contre-modèles idéologiques et culturels dans le Tiers-Monde, p. 269.
Notes 10-12 are a holding point for potentially useful information.
(10) I very gradually try to assemble a reading list. Anker, 2001, Imperial Ecology; Bocking-Welch, 2020, British civic society at the end of empire: Decolonisation, globalisation, and international responsibility; Bonneuil, 2000, Development as Experiment: Science and State Building in Late Colonial and Postcolonial Africa, 1930-1970, in: Osiris; Bonneuil, 1991, Des savants pour l’empire : la structuration des recherches scientifiques coloniales au temps de “la mise en valeur des colonies françaises” 1917-1945; Bonneuil and Petitjean, 1997, Science and French Colonial Policy. Creation of the ORSTOM: From the Popular Front to the Liberaton via Vichy; Bose and Burnell, 1991, Britain’s Overseas Aid Since 1979: Between Idealism and Self-interest; Castelo, 2012, Investigação científica e política colonial portuguesa: evolução e articulações, 1936-1974, in: História, Ciências, Saúde-Manguinhos; Clarke, 2018, Science at the End of Empire: Experts and the Development of the British Caribbean, 1940-62; Clarke, 2006, Experts, Empire and development: fundamental research for the British Colonies, 1940-1960; Clarke, 2005, Experts, Empire and Development; Frisch, 2008, The European Union’s development policy: A personal view of 50 years of international cooperation; Morgan-Hodge, 2007, Triumph of the Expert; Tilley, 2011, Africa as a Living Laboratory; Seddon, 2005, British and Japanese overseas aid compared, in: Japan’s Foreign Aid: Old Continuities and New Directions; Worboys, 1981, Science and British colonial imperialism, 1895-1940.
(11) Hewitt and Whiteman, 2018, The Commission and development policy, in: EU Development Policy. Also informative are Kent, 1992, Internationalization of Colonialism: Britain, France, and Black Africa 1939-1956; and Hanson and Jonsson, 2014, Eurafrica: The Untold History of European Integration and Colonialism. The Middle East Supply Centre (MESC) is the signal historical illustration of sophistication of British science and technology policy in this field (citing, among other sources, Mejcher, 2017, Der Nahe Osten im Zweiten Weltkrieg; and Heydemann, 2000, War, Institutions, and Social Change in the Middle East).
(12) Muehlenbeck, 2015, Czechoslovakia in Africa, 1945-1968; Schwenkel, 2014, Traveling Architecture. East German Urban Designs in Vietnam; Slobodian, 2015, Comrades of Colour: East Germany in the Cold War World
Science Think Tank 