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Research for Growth: The Ideational Foundations of Research Policy in Postwar Europe

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Abstract

This chapter traces the roots of a particular conception of the relations between science and the state, strongly driven by economic considerations, and draws attention to the central role that the OECD played in the early 1960s in the proliferation of this very much American idea in Western Europe. It describes how “research policy” was quickly embraced by European governments as a tool to increase economic growth and competitiveness, in part as a response to a perceived “technology gap” between the United States and Europe. The chapter introduces the ideational framework that determined the further debates and decisions on the European Community’s—and later the European Union’—activities in research.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Stephen J. Purdey, Economic Growth, the Environment and International Relations, The Growth Paradigm (London and New York: Routledge, 2010), 3–4.

  2. 2.

    Ibid., 63.

  3. 3.

    Alan Milward, The European Rescue of the Nation State (London and New York: Routledge 2000): 27.

  4. 4.

    Ibid., 27.

  5. 5.

    “[T]he growth paradigm is a world order in which the role played by ideas has taken precedence over the role played by either material capabilities or institutions, both of which can be conceived as expressions of, or at least as compatible with, the dominant ideational feature of the era, as originally expressed in the Enlightenment conception of progress.” Purdey, Economic Growth, 87. For a more recent study on the emergence of the growth paradigm, see: Matthias Schmeltzer, “The growth paradigm: History, hegemony, and the contested making of economic growthmanship,” Ecological Economics, 118 (2015): 262–271. See also Matthias Schmeltzer, The Hegemony of Growth. The OECD and the Making of the Economic Growth Paradigm (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016).

  6. 6.

    Purdey, Economic Growth, 26, 66, 73–75.

  7. 7.

    Robert M. Collins, More. The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), xi.

  8. 8.

    The first country to make maximizing the growth rate a political goal was actually the Soviet Union. Decisive growth policies were practiced also by the European fascist governments that promoted technological modernization and showed remarkable creativity in designing institutions for the management of the economy for the purpose of growth. Volkmar Lauber, “Ecology Politics and Liberal Democracy,” Government and Opposition, 13 (1978): 210.

  9. 9.

    Milward, The European Rescue, 129.

  10. 10.

    Moses Abramovitz, Thinking About Growth and Other Essays on Economic Growth and Welfare (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 11.

  11. 11.

    Quoted in David W. Ellwood, “The Marshal Plan and the Politics of Growth,” in Explorations in OEEC History, ed. Richard T. Griffiths (Paris: OECD, 1997), 104.

  12. 12.

    Collins, More, xi.

  13. 13.

    Ibid., 10–25, 49; David W. Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe. Western Europe, America, and Postwar Reconstruction (London and New York: Longman, 1992), 223.

  14. 14.

    Abramovitz, Thinking About Growth, 9–10. The basics of Schumpeter’s theory of innovation can be found in Joseph A. Schumpeter, The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry Into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, and the Business Cycle (Cambridge M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1934—first published in 1911). On the evolution of Schumpeter’s ideas on innovation, see John Hagedoorn, “Innovation and Entrepreneurship: Schumpeter Revisited,” Industrial and Corporate Change, 5 (1996): 883–896. On Schumpeter’s life and thinking in more general, see Wolfgang F. Stolper, Joseph Alois Schumpeter: the Public Life of a Private Man (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994); Elias G. Carayannis and Christopher Ziemnowicz (eds.), Rediscovering Schumpeter (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Thomas K. McCraw, Prophet of Innovation: Joseph Schumpeter and Creative Destruction (Cambridge M.A.: Belknap Press, 2010).

  15. 15.

    Purdey, Economic Growth, 76.

  16. 16.

    Schmeltzer, “The Growth Paradigm,” 268.

  17. 17.

    David Edgerton, “‘The Linear Model’ Did Not Exist: Reflections on the History and Historiography of Science and Research in Industry in the Twentieth Century,” in The Science–Industry Nexus: History, Policy, Implications, eds. Karl Grandin and Nina Wormbs (New York: Watson, 2004): 32.

  18. 18.

    Vannevar Bush, Science, the Endless Frontier, A report to the President by Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of scientific research and development (Washington D.C., United States Government Printing Office, 1945).

  19. 19.

    Although coining the concept of “basic research,” Bush was not the first person making this differentiation that has deep roots in the Western tradition of science and philosophy. Most effectively, the separation between the two categories of research was instrumentalized in the nineteenth-century Germany, where universities devoted to investigation of “pure” science, and Technische Hochschlen (technically oriented higher education institutions) and industrial research institutes conducting applied research, constituted an influential system that strongly inspired Americans. Donald E. Stokes, Pasteur’s Quadrant. Basic Science and Technological Innovation (Washington D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 1997), 2–4, 36–39.

  20. 20.

    Bruce L. R. Smith, American Science Policy since World War II (Washington D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1990): 38–39.

  21. 21.

    Ellwood, “The Marshal Plan and the Politics of Growth,” 99–105.

  22. 22.

    Mark H. Haefele, “Walt Rostow’s Stages of Economic Growth: Ideas and Action,” in Staging Growth, Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War, eds. David C. Engerman et al. (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003), 81–103.

  23. 23.

    Latham, Michael E, “Introduction: Modernization, International History, and the Cold War World,” in Staging Growth, Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War, eds. David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003): 2.

  24. 24.

    Jacqueline McGlade, “From Business Reform Programme to Production Drive, The Transformation of US Technical Assistance to Western Europe,” in The Americanisation of European Business the Marshall Plan and the Transfer of US Management Models, ed., Ove Bjarnar and Matthias Kipping (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 30–31.

  25. 25.

    Quoted in: Ellwood, Rebuilding Europe, 226–227.

  26. 26.

    Ibid., 227. On the arrival of American consumer culture, see also Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance Through Twentieth-Century Europe (Cambridge, M.A.: Belknap Press, 2005).

  27. 27.

    Tony Judt, Postwar, A History of Europe since 1945 (London: Vintage Books 2010), 353.

  28. 28.

    John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge M.A.: MIT Press, 2006), 3.

  29. 29.

    The inclusion of science in Marshall Aid was advocated, for instance, by the Research and Development Board led by Vannevar Bush, who regarded strong scientific capacity as necessary for sustained economic growth in Europe. Ibid., 16, 30–31.

  30. 30.

    Benoît Godin, “The Value of Science: Changing Conceptions of Scientific Productivity, 1869 to Circa 1970,” Social Science Information, 48 (2009): 547–586. Of course, the OECD was not alone dealing with these questions. The problem of science and growth was also studied in other international organizations, such as UNESCO, which in 1960 adopted a “Ten-Year-Plan” in exact and natural sciences with the explicit aim of assisting member countries to raise their scientific level and extend the applications of science to their economic growth. Jean-Jacques Salomon: “International Scientific Organisations,” in Ministers Talk About Science, 57, 64–65. The OECD, however, very soon assumed the role as the leading international institution in this field, while UNESCO’s activity gradually diminished. As Peter Tindemans has noted, “UNESCO’s impact on the development of the organization and policies for science in Europe has never come near the influence of the OECD and virtually disappeared in the 1970s.” Peter Tindemans, “Post-war Research, Education and Innovation Policy-Making in Europe,” in European Science and Technology Policy, Towards Integration or Fragmentation? Eds. Henri Delanghe, Ugur Muldur, and Luc Doete (Cheltenham and Northampton: Edward Elgar, 2009), 10.

  31. 31.

    Benoît Godin, “The Making of Statistical Standards: The OECD and the Frascati Manual, 1962–2002. Project on the History and Sociology of STI Statistics,” Working Paper No. 39 (2008): 3, 5, 15, 51.

  32. 32.

    Emmanuel G. Mesthene, “Introduction,” in Ministers Talk About Science, ed. Emmanuel G. Mesthene (Paris: OECD, 1965): 27; Schmeltzer, “The Growth Paradigm,” 267.

  33. 33.

    King, Alexander, “Science in the OECD,” in Ministers Talk About Science, ed. Emmanuel G. Mesthene (Paris: OECD, 1965): 19–20.

  34. 34.

    Ibid., 23–24.

  35. 35.

    Mesthene, “Introduction,” 27–28.

  36. 36.

    Muriel Le Roux and Girolamo Ramunni, “L’OECD et les politiques scientifiques. Entretien avec Jean-Jacques Salomon,” La Revue pour l’histoire du CNRS, 3 (2000).

  37. 37.

    “The clear conclusion is that a large measure of economic growth in advanced countries is the result of new knowledge produced by scientific research, and of the material capital that embodies it.” OECD, Science and the Policies of Governments (Paris: OECD, 1963), 27.

  38. 38.

    Mesthene, Ministers Talk About Science, 132.

  39. 39.

    OECD, Science and the Policies of Governments.

  40. 40.

    Procès verbal de la Conférence Ministérielle sur la Science, Paris, le 3 et 4 octobre 1963, BAC 3/1978-786/3-4, Historical Archives of the European Union, Florence (hereafter HAEU).

  41. 41.

    Alexander King, “Scientific Concerns in an Economic Environment: Science in OEEC–OECD,” Technology in Society, 23 (2001): 343.

  42. 42.

    Mesthene, Ministers Talk About Science, 27–28.

  43. 43.

    King, “Scientific Concerns,” 343.

  44. 44.

    Julie Bouchard, Commet le retard vient aux Français: analyse d’une rhétorique de la planification de la recherche 1940–1970 (Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses de Universitaires du Septentrion, 2008), 218; King, “Scientific Concerns,” 343.

  45. 45.

    Quoted in Benoît Godin, Measurements and Statistics on Science and Technology: 1930 to the Present (London: Routledge, 2005): 224. See also Pierre Gognard, “Recherche scientifique et indépendance,” Le Progrès Scientifique, 76 (1964): 1–15.

  46. 46.

    Lorenza Sebasta, “Un nuovo strumento politico per gli anni sessanta. Il technological gap nelle relazioni euro-americane,” Nuova Civiltà delle Macchine, 67 (1999): 11–23.

  47. 47.

    Godin, Measurements and Statistics, 223.

  48. 48.

    OCDE: Conférence Ministérielle sur la Science. Procès-verbal de la Conférence réunie au Château de la Muette, à Paris le jeudi 3 octobre et le vendredi 4 octobre 1963, BAC 3/1978-786/3–4, HAEU.

  49. 49.

    Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Le défi américain (Paris: Denoël, 1967).

  50. 50.

    John W. Young, “Technological Cooperation in Wilson’s Strategy for EEC Treaty,” in Harold Wilson and European Integration: Britain’s Second Application to Join the EEC, ed. Oliver J. Daddow (London: Frank Cass, 2003), 105.

  51. 51.

    For the pervasiveness of the declinist debate, see Richard English and Michael Kenny, “British Decline and the Politics of Declinism,” British Journal of Politics and International Relations, 1 (1999): 252–266.

  52. 52.

    David Edgerton, Science, Technology and the British Industrial ‘Decline’ 1879–1970 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 1–2.

  53. 53.

    Jim Tomlinson, “Inventing ‘Decline’: The Falling Behind of the British Economy in the Postwar Years,” The Economic History Review, 49 (1996): 732.

  54. 54.

    Matthew Godwin, Jane Gregory, and Brian Balmer, “The Anatomy of the Brain Drain Debate, 1950–1970s: Witness Seminar,” Contemporary British History, 23 (2009): 35–60.

  55. 55.

    Bouchard, Commet le retard vient aux Français, 35–36.

  56. 56.

    Edgerton, Science, Technology, 2.

  57. 57.

    Bouchard, Commet le retard vient aux Français, 52–53.

  58. 58.

    Godin, “The Value of Science,” 3–4.

  59. 59.

    As in the later declinist debate often was the case, also these images were partially exaggerated, particularly in the first half of the twentieth century: although in some sectors, especially in steel industry, Americans had gained a leading position by that time, the United States was the world leader neither in science nor in the use of science-based technologies. Richard R. Nelson and Gavin Wright, “The Rise and Fall of American Technological Leadership: The Postwar Era in Historical Perspective,” Journal of Economic Literature, 30 (1992): 1931–1964.

  60. 60.

    David W. Ellwood, The Shock of America: Europe and the Challenge of the Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 2. This is of course not to say that comparisons would not have been made also between European countries. Especially in Britain from the 1950s, continental Europe was increasingly seen as natural point of comparison, a tendency greatly strengthened by the movement toward economic union and the possibility of British participation in this project. Tomlinson, “Inventing ‘Decline,’” 743.

  61. 61.

    Thomas P. Hughes, American Genesis (New York: Viking, 1989), 1–11.

  62. 62.

    Adas, Michael, “Modernization Theory and the American Revival of the Scientific and Technological Standards of Social Achievement and Human Worth,” in Staging Growth, Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War, eds. David C. Engerman, Nils Gilman, Mark H. Haefele, and Michael E. Latham (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2003): 25, 30, 33.

  63. 63.

    Even without military spending, the difference continued to be important. Jean-Jacques Sorel (Jean-Jacques Salomon), “Le retard technologique de l’Europe,” Esprit, 365 (1967): 765.

  64. 64.

    Sorel (Salomon), “Le retard technologique de l’Europe,” 902.

  65. 65.

    As a concept, however, “big science” was established only in the 1960s. I am thankful to Geert Somsen for pointing this out.

  66. 66.

    On the history of the concept of “big science,” see Helmuth Trischler, “Das bundesdeutsche Innovationssystem in den ‘langen 70er Jahren’: Antworten auf die ‘amerikanische Herausforderung,’” in Innovationskulturen und Fortschrittserwartungen im geteilten Deutschland, eds. Johannes Abele, Gerhard Barkleit, and Thomas Hänseroth (Köln: Böhlau, 2001), 58. See also Lew Kowarski, “Psychology and Structure of Large-Scale Physical Research,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 5 (1949): 186–204; Alvin M. Weinberg, Reflections on Big Science (Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 1967); Derek J. de Solla Price, Little Science, Big Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963).

  67. 67.

    Peter Galison, “The Many Faces of Big Science,” in Big Science, The Growth of Large-Scale Research, eds. Peter Galison and Bruce Hevly (Stanford, C.A.: Stanford University Press, 1992), 1–4.

  68. 68.

    Henry R. Nau, National Politics and International Technology, Nuclear Reactor Development in Western Europe (Baltimore and London: The John Hopkins University Press, 1974), 44, 50.

  69. 69.

    Nelson and Wright, “The Rise and Fall of American Technological Leadership,” 1931–1964.

  70. 70.

    Mark Mazower, Dark Continent. Europe’s Twentieth Century (New York: Vintage Books, 1998), 292–298.

  71. 71.

    Bouchard, Commet le retard vient aux Français, 135.

  72. 72.

    Helmut Trischler and Hans Weinberger, “Engineering Europe: Big Technologies and Military Systems in the Making of 20th Century Europe,” History and Technology, 21 (2005): 64.

  73. 73.

    Schmeltzer, “The Growth Paradigm,” 266.

  74. 74.

    Geir Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe since 1945. From “Empire” by Invitation to Transatlantic Drift (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 113; Hubert Zimmermann, “Western Europe and the American Challenge: Conflict and Cooperation in Technology and Monetary Policy, 1965–1973,” Journal of European Integration History, 6 (2000): 85–110.

  75. 75.

    In 1950 the US investment stood at 1.7 billion dollars representing about one-seventh of US investment abroad. By 1970 it has grown to 24.5 billion, which was about one-third of total US investment abroad. Lundestad, The United States and Western Europe since 1945, 112.

  76. 76.

    Ibid., 134.

  77. 77.

    Bouchard, Commet le retard vient aux Français, 137.

  78. 78.

    Edgerton, Science, Technology, 68–69.

  79. 79.

    Quoted in Judt, Postwar, 353.

  80. 80.

    Stephen H. Graubard, “A New Europe?” Daedalus, 94 (1964): 543–566.

  81. 81.

    Richard R. Nelson, “World Leadership, the Technology Gap and National Science Policy,” Minerva, 9 (1971): 386–399.

  82. 82.

    OECD, Science and the Policies of Governments, 13.

  83. 83.

    Godin, “The Value of Science,” 182.

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    Veera Mitzner

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Mitzner, V. (2020). Research for Growth: The Ideational Foundations of Research Policy in Postwar Europe. In: European Union Research Policy. Europe in Transition: The NYU European Studies Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-41395-8_2

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