Salter, George RB; (2025) A science and technology superpower? A study on the role of science, innovation and technology in United Kingdom foreign policy and the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (2020-24). Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Science, innovation and technology (SIT) are increasingly salient as objects of foreign policy in the 21st Century. The security, wealth creating and problem-solving potentialities of science and technological change drive novel policy initiatives, often bracketed under the contested notion of ‘science diplomacy’, designed to engage with and leverage the globalised contours of these phenomena. However, the activation of these policy initiatives in both the official discourses of states and in the microsociological context of professional practice are both under-studied and under-theorised. This thesis addresses this gap by taking the case of the United Kingdom and the government’s recent attempts to mobilise an international agenda oriented around SIT under the Conservative administration (2020-24). Beginning with a review of the literature on science diplomacy and highlighting deficits in this scholarship provokes three guiding questions. (RQA) Firstly, how do foreign policy elites rationalise and legitimate the UK’s involvement in this overarching foreign policy domain? (RQB) Secondly, how do professionals within the state’s foreign policy bureaucracy make sense of this agenda? (RQC) Thirdly, how is this agenda brought to life out in the field in diplomatic practice? Inspired by scholarship from the ‘Copenhagen School’ in International Relations the thesis takes a dual approach to these questions. In the first instance, the analytical lens of state identity and discourse analysis is used to address (RQA) and unravel the elite discursive configurations underwriting the state’s engagement with globalised SIT. For (RQB) and (RQC), following the ‘practice-turn’ in International Relations, the analytical focus turns to professional practice within the organisational lifeworld of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO). In particular, the thesis analyses the activities of the UK’s Science and Innovation Network (SIN) at the FCDO. From the perspective of discourse and foreign policy the thesis finds a heightened elite focus on the geoeconomic and geopolitical potential of SIT. This focus is supported by narrative techniques which draw on the notions of hierarchy, teleology, and agency. Such a grand reformulation of state identity contrasts against the micro-sociological dynamics which bring foreign policy to life in practice through science diplomacy. From a practice perspective the thesis explores the tensions between sensemaking styles deployed by UK foreign policy professionals to enact ambitions for SIT in organisational practice. It also unpacks the practice of science diplomacy conducted by attachés embedded at diplomatic postings across the globe. It examines the multifaceted and hybrid expertise supporting this professional practice, highlighting the requirement to work across diverse organisational contexts and the dynamic interplay between knowing how and knowing what which supports this work.

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