Subproject 3: The European Union’s Framework Programs: Gaining Importance through De-Economization? (ca. 1980-2002)

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

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 contributes 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.