Interpretations of Science Diplomacy in Russian Academic Community

The new challenges that Russian diplomats face every day, and the inability to resolve the crisis by traditional means, lead to the need for an urgent search for new methods that would resolve the existing controversial issues between Russia and the Western countries. That is why nowadays the possibilities of science diplomacy and its prospects have become widely discussed in the scientific community. The definition of science diplomacy was developed during the conference “New Horizons of Science Diplomacy” which took place in June 2009 and was organized by the Royal Society of London in cooperation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. This definition was the most common among Western researchers and officials. Scientists from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Middle East, and North and South America discussed the new role and prospects of science diplomacy in the modern world. According to the concept proposed by the two largest scientific organizations of Great Britain and the United States which was published in the report on the results of the conference, science diplomacy includes three dimensions: “science in diplomacy”; “diplomacy for science”; “science for diplomacy”. It is to this definition that both foreign and domestic experts refer and operate. Despite the fact that the term “science diplomacy” appears in the Russian Strategy for Scientific and Technological Development 2016 and is often used in the media in the publications devoted to the prospects of science diplomacy, Russian scientists and diplomats have still no clear views and consensus on what exactly includes or should include this concept, what are the goals and means of science diplomacy, what distinguishes science diplomacy from international scientific and technical cooperation and foreign policy, and how to implement science diplomacy techniques in practice. The article presents the results of a series of semi-structured interviews with Russian experts involved at the administrative level in organizing international cooperation in the field of science, and therefore involved in the process of designing science diplomacy. Respondents, including experts from the scientific foundations of the RSF and RFBR, responsible for international cooperation, employees of diplomatic educational institutions of MGIMO and the Diplomatic Academy, as well as the specialists in international relations who are directly involved in the realization of diplomatic goals of Russia, gave their definition of “science diplomacy” and also analyzed the tasks, methods and expediency of identifying three dimensions of science diplomacy by Western researchers. Interviews were built around the definition of science diplomacy tools, evaluating the effectiveness of their use and differences from scientific policy techniques, and therefore the most interesting for this study were questions relating to specific examples and practices that characterize each dimension of science diplomacy. Based on the analysis of interview results and respondents' answers, the author comes to the conclusion that the third dimension of science diplomacy – “science for diplomacy” – has the greatest practical value for Russian experts in the context of the influence and interaction of scientists and diplomats within the framework of international cooperation.

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