Technology sovereignty as an emerging frame for innovation policy. Defining rationales, ends and means

Abstract

In recent years, global technology-based competition has not only intensified, but become increasingly linked to a more comprehensive type of competition between different political and value systems. The globalist assumptions of the post-Cold War era that reliable mutually beneficial agreements could be reached with all nations, regardless of ideology, have been shattered. A previously less visible, mostly political, risk dimension has been brought to the fore by recent geopolitical and geo-economic developments. Against this background, the notion of technology sovereignty has gained prominence in national and international debates, cutting across and adding to established rationales of innovation policy. In this paper, we propose and justify a concise yet nuanced concept of technology sovereignty to contribute to and clarify this debate. In particular, we argue that technology sovereignty should be conceived as state-level agency within the international system, i.e. as sovereignty of governmental action, rather than (territorial) sovereignty over something. Against this background, we define technology sovereignty not as an end in itself, but as a means to achieving the central objectives of innovation policy - sustaining national competitiveness and building capacities for transformative policies. By doing so, we position ourselves between a naive globalist position which largely neglects the risks of collaboration and the promotion of near autarky which disregards the inevitable costs of creating national redundancies and reducing cooperative interdependencies. We finish by providing a set of policy suggestions to support technology sovereignty in line with our conceptual approach.