The EU science diplomacy towards the Southern neighbourhood

Organised by

• Department of Economics
• Department of History
• Department of Law
• Max Weber Programme for Postdoctoral Studies
• Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies
• Department of Political and Social Sciences
• Florence School of Transnational Governance
• Development and External Relations Service
• Crisis of Expert Knowledge and Authority

Throughout the post-volatile phase of 2014-2017, the EU implicit science diplomacy played a distinct role in the overall panoply of the EU’s employed instruments to enhance resilience and promote stability in the EU Southern Neighbourhood in general and Morocco and Tunisia in particular. Zane Sime's thesis enriches academic and policy expert thinking on the evolving understanding of science diplomacy in the EU setting by embedding it in structural diplomacy. The roles of the managers of the EU-funded projects are explored via practice theory. Since structural diplomacy and practice theory have several commonalities with most reflections on the evolving understanding of EU science diplomacy, stronger ties to these schools of thought accelerate the conceptual honing of the implicit EU science diplomacy routines and respond to the earlier call for the theory on the European Neighbourhood Policy to become multiperspectival.

Eight articles forming a constituent part of this thesis offer a nuanced and multifaceted response to the research question of how research cooperation helps to achieve the overarching goals of the EU Southern Neighbourhood Policy and the European Research Area. The EU-funded projects serve as temporary institutions that translate the evidence-informed and research-intense resilience-building and tackling of socio-economic challenges into sustainable and concrete actions. Thereby, projects make the EU geopolitical benevolence felt on the ground and across a wide range of beneficiaries in Europe and the Southern Neighbourhood.

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