DFG Research Group Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences

Subproject 3: The Framework Programmes of the European Union: Gaining Importance through De-Economization? (ca. 1980-2002)

Principal Investigator: Prof. Dr. Kiran Klaus Patel
Researcher: David Irion, M.A.

Part of the LMU research group "Cooperation and Competition in the Sciences" funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), spokesperson: Prof. Dr. Kärin Nickelsen.

Today, the European Union is a research policy player of global importance. The enormous successive growth in research funding is often presented as a narrative of progress, but this tends to obscure rather than illuminate the factors that shape it. Against this background, the project investigates the emergence and development of European research policy on the basis of the history of the Framework Programmes (FP) of the European Union and the European Community as its predecessor. The project focuses on the initial phase from the early 1980s until the beginning of the 6th Framework Programme in 2002, thus contributing substantially to the understanding of scientific governance at the European level in a historical perspective.

The analysis of the multiple interrelationships between cooperation and competition offers important explanations for the increased importance of the Framework Programmes. Both terms represented central points of reference in European research policy and defined horizons of interpretation that guided political action. With regard to the question of economization, the project argues that a hitherto overlooked form of partial de-economization shaped the development of the Framework Programmes, primarily through new programmes that evaded a purely economic marketing logic and instead pursued other goals, such as social stability. But even in these projects a market logic remained inscribed.