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Paper short abstract

This paper examines competing normative frameworks shaping responsibility in EU science, technology and innovation policy. It analyses tensions between the “principle of innovation” and the “principle of democratisation”, and their implications for governing sociotechnical futures.

Paper long abstract

The European Union’s science, technology, and innovation (STI) policy is subject to a series of unresolved tensions regarding how responsibility is conceived and governed. Drawing on an analysis of key strategic documents, this paper identifies two competing set of approaches to responsibility. The first, categorised as the “principle of innovation”, emphasises the promotion of strategic autonomy, competitiveness, and the accelerated deployment of technologies. The second, referred to here as the “principle of democratisation” and associated with more transformative interpretations of normative proposals such as Responsible Research and Innovation (RRI) or Open Science, seeks to foster more inclusive and deliberative STI processes. The paper highlights four key features of the relationship between these two principles: i) their tense coexistence is rooted in a fundamental ideological divergence; ii) both share a critique of the dominant risk-based governance logic, albeit from opposing motivations and normative frameworks and commitments; iii) the “principle of innovation” consistently prevails over the “principle of democratisation”; and iv) the institutional assumption that inherently conflicting goals (e.g. economic growth and sustainability) can coexist harmoniously reinforces the “principle of innovation” at the expense of the “principle of democratisation”. These tensions illuminate how hegemonic normative stances within EU STI policy—which are close to the “principle of innovation”—stabilise particular socio-technical futures as desirable and plausible, while marginalising alternative trajectories centred on democratic participation and reflexive governance. It is argued that a democratic governance of STI requires acknowledging and directly confronting these tensions.