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

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.