Journal of Sociology

http://jos.sagepub.com/ A global knowledge economy? : Biopolitical strategies in India and the European Union
Hans Lofgren and Mats Benner Journal of Sociology 2011 47: 163 originally published online 8 February 2011 DOI: 10.1177/1440783310386832 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jos.sagepub.com/content/47/2/163

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A global knowledge economy?

Biopolitical strategies in India and the European Union
Hans Lofgren Mats Benner
Deakin University, Australia Lund University, Sweden

Abstract
This article critiques the notion of a cross-national convergence of institutional and policy responses to science-based technologies. The continued significance of institutional legacies is demonstrated through a comparative analysis of strategies for the biopharma industry in two radically different settings: India and the European Union (EU). Tensions are evident in both the EU high route and the mixed strategy pursued in India. State promotion of biopharma is seen in India as a pathway to economic development, framed by a vision of India as a global power. Here, the low route of cost advantages is combined with a global rhetoric of innovation, modeled on US experience, and uneven forays into advanced R&D. The pursuit of product innovation was reinforced by Indias adoption of TRIPS-mandated intellectual property rights. In the EU, the aim is an integrated policy and regulatory approach to sustain and legitimize European integration, with the ultimate intent of overtaking the USA. Keywords: biotechnology, European Union, globalization, India, knowledge economy

Pivotal debates in the social sciences centre on globalization and the knowledge economy. In the first, it is argued that previously relatively autonomous and self-reproducing social, cultural, political and economic systems are now porous and integrated, and increasingly beyond the effective reach of nation-state regulation (Slaughter, 2004). In the second debate, it is claimed that knowledge-intensive linkages, transgressing geographical
Journal of Sociology 2010 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 47(2): 163180 DOI:10.1177/1440783310386832 www.sagepublications.com

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confines, have replaced the traditional foundations of economic growth as the material basis of state-building (Asheim and Gertler, 2005). These two conceptual frameworks are juxtaposed in the discourse on the global knowledge economy, hailed as an era of much-weakened geographical, cognitive and organizational boundaries. This is a networked economy enabling a seemingly endless reconfiguration of resources to enhance innovativeness, material wealth and social development, in which the distribution of capital and technology does not necessarily follow traditional trajectories (Cooke, 2007; Etzkowitz and Leydesdorff, 2000). The rise of China, not only in manufacturing, but also in many knowledge-based sectors, apparently confirms that historical patterns of dominance can be subverted. The enthusiasm for the global knowledge economy did not wane with the financial crisis of 20089. Rather, in rapidly packaged crisis deals in the USA, Europe and Australia, knowledge-based sectors were identified as drivers of a renewed economic upswing (ARRA, 2009). It is important for sociological studies to engage with the notion of a global knowledge economy and its imagery of profound social and political change shaped by global integration, the centrality of knowledge for economic accumulation, and states weakened capacity to regulate national economies (cf. Gilding and Marjoribanks, 2007; Powell and Snellman, 2004). In this article we explore the value and limitations of the concept of the global knowledge economy through an analysis of strategies for one of its showpieces, the biotechnology and pharmaceutical (biopharma) industry, in two emerging state entities, the EU and India. This sector encompasses organizations involved in the R&D, production and marketing of medicines and related products; the bio-prefix highlights the fact that such products increasingly derive from the new biology genomics, bioinformatics and evolutionary genetics (Rose and Oakley, 2007). In contrast to the depiction of growth dynamics as shaped essentially by global relations, we assume that social struggles still matter greatly. The biopharma sector presents a pattern of variability and plasticity shaped by historical power relations, state policies and discursive strategies. While the EU is not a state in the proper sense, its recent development reflects ambitions to forge a new political mission and identity beyond its constituent members, and a distinct presence in the global system. Central to this ambition is competitiveness in knowledge-based sectors such as biopharma. A further reason for highlighting the EU is the weak or at least uneven connection between EU policies for knowledge-based industries, and social and political mobilization and public discourse within its member states, which reflects the EUs lack of a traditional political constituency and its focus on policy effectiveness as a source of social legitimacy (Scharpf, 1999). Only recently has EU policy-making been broadened to also encompass popular attitudes towards new technologies and their applications. Yet policies supporting the development of the bio-industries

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are still framed primarily as technical, rather than political, issues of relevance primarily to policy networks encompassing market actors and their bureaucratic counterparts in the European Commission. While initiatives have been taken to reduce the democratic deficit, the EU remains a predominantly judicial-technocratic political entity, strong in legally driven market deregulation but weak in devising market-shaping policies with a strong social backing. These are still under the control of member states. Hence, the structure of the European integration project limits the capacity of the European Union to develop a fully fledged strategy for the bioeconomy. The aim is, however, to create an integrated European policy and regulatory approach to sustain and legitimize European integration, with the ultimate intent of overtaking the USA in economic-technological leadership. We find that the EU is seeking to reconfigure the European innovation system to match that of the USA, the worlds bioeconomic powerhouse, and to design at least a skeleton of a pan-European system of health care and ethical regulation. India is, of course, a state, but not one historically connected with knowledge-intensive industries. Yet the government of India today identifies biopharma as a strategic and flagship industry (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 9). State promotion of this sector is seen as a route to economic development, framed by a vision of India as an emerging global power. India is at a biopolitical crossroad: it pursues a two-pronged and contradictory strategy of fostering knowledge-intensive clusters with a focus on global markets while, at the same time, capitalizing on its traditional competitive advantage of low labour costs and lax regulatory standards.

Biopharma and its regulation

Biopharma is the ideal-typical global sector. Basic research, innovation and production occur within international networks, dominated by the USA, Europe and Japan, but with participation increasingly by firms and other actors in emerging economies, particularly in Asia (Cooke, 2007). Multinational pharmaceutical companies are the hubs of these networks, indicated in the fact that such firms contribute about half of total global R&D spending in the health sector. Moreover, an estimated 97 percent of global investments in health-related R&D in 2005 occurred in high-income countries (Burke and Matlin, 2008). Manufacturing is more widely dispersed and the big pharma companies are increasing their R&D activities in emerging economies through outsourcing or direct investments. In particular, Indian firms are significant low-cost suppliers of active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) and final drugs, and India is an important location for clinical trials (Maiti and Raghavendra, 2007). While global in its operations and driven by private firms, the biopharma sector is embedded in public policy and regulatory systems. It is well

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understood that the competitiveness of firms in modern economies depends on factor and demand conditions, and also on the mobilization of soft social resources, which are irreducible to the economic and resistant to such calculation (Jessop, 2002: 109; see also Porter, 1998). Such interdependencies are conspicuous in biopharma, where the tendency is towards convergence between science and technology, capital and the state. The archetypal example is the role of the US government in fostering life-sciences-based industries through massive funding of the National Institutes of Health and accommodating intellectual property legislation and other public policies. The close connection between state, science and industry is legitimized by a discourse on innovation, in which entrepreneurial clusters in the USA provide a global model (Lundvall and Borrs, 2005). The domain of biopolitics can broadly be divided into knowledge policies, appropriation strategies and ethical regulation (Benner and Lofgren, 2007). Knowledge policies derive significance from the critical role of publicly funded and organized science. This type of state activity encompasses support for universities and the R&D system, training and education, measures to stimulate entrepreneurship and the commercialization of research results, supportive taxation arrangements and related initiatives. Knowledge policies focus most directly on the symbiotic relationship between small dedicated biotechnology firms (DBFs), universities and public research organizations, and hospitals and the broader health system (Pisano, 2006; Powell et al., 2004). Appropriation policies refer to patents and other forms of intellectual property rights (IPRs), that is, the legal framework which (in sectors such as biopharma) makes possible the transformation of (public) knowledge into marketable goods. Notwithstanding the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS), imposed globally by the World Trade Organization, differences remain in this policy field between countries and regions depending on socio-economic conditions and the strength of market actors (May and Sell, 2006). Ethical regulation, finally, comprises measures to ensure health and safety and ethical standards, but also soft measures to influence social and cultural behaviour (Benner and Lofgren, 2007). This includes the shaping of attitudes towards the scientific and commercial manipulations of life forms and the balance between scientific, economic and political interests in the intersection between nature and society (Rose, 2007). The configuration of these different strands of state activity into relatively coherent patterns can be conceived of as the outcome of strategic choices influenced by the strength of different economic and political interests and the position of a country (or region) in the global system. The ideal-typical arrangements in advanced capitalism, including the model of DBFs operating in symbiosis with big pharmaceutical companies, are not the only possible outcomes of biopolitics. For example, biopharma firms in

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developing countries, notably in India, often draw on knowledge imports and reverse investments, that is, the channeling of revenues from market activities into R&D (rather than expanding from research into commercial sales). We now turn to the explication of the biopolitical development paths of India and the EU.

Biopolitics in India: from self-reliance to global market integration

For more than 40 years independent India pursued an economic strategy of import-substitution and self-reliance. This model was weakened in the 1980s and subsequently abandoned with a shift towards liberalization, privatization and global markets. High growth rates were achieved from the late 1990s, although these were not broadly based on internal dynamics and domestic demand but rather on services exports, inflows of foreign capital and financial speculation (Sikdar, 2006). The pharmaceutical industry, along with the information technology and business outsourcing sectors, was the major success story. Agriculture experienced weak growth or deteriorating conditions for large sections of the rural population. Yet, until the onset of crisis in 20089 India was widely seen as a rapidly advancing and increasingly knowledge-intensive economy; indeed, the business and political elite began to preen themselves as the ruling class of a new economic superpower (Anonymous, 2009). The size, export-intensity and innovative capabilities of Indias bio pharma industry make it unique in the developing world. India is undispu tedly an acknowledged leader in the global pharmaceutical industry [this] industry can help India transform itself into a knowledge driven economy (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 89). A basic condition for this achievement was the infrastructure for science and technology created in the period of self-reliance. Science had been assigned high priority in Indias post-1947 national development effort. At independence, investments in research and higher education were immediately boosted, and in the 1950s and 1960s, science policy and the scientific perspective was as important as the national flag (Visvanathan, 1998). Between 1950 and 1953, eleven new national Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) laboratories were established and large investments were made in nuclear, military and space research (Sharma, 1991). In areas other than big science, the principal approach, applied with particular success in the biopharma sector, was reverse engineering and adaptive research to indigenise imported technology (Krishna, 2007). Science and technology policies in this period, in the main, later came to be assessed negatively (Bound, 2007; Sharma, 1991). The CSIR and other public sector research establishments presented a bureaucratized grid of laboratories fumbling over import substitution (Visvanathan, 1998). The

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capacity for innovation was weak, and universities in the 1990s faced deteriorating facilities, poor administration, vested interests, and an overemphasis on examinations rather than education (Rao, 1999: 1295). Yet domestic drug firms prospered from the 1970s. Their expansion was not orchestrated by a central planning agency; rather, a relatively coherent set of protectionist and nationalist policies triggered a virtuous cycle of capacity-building. Patents for pharmaceutical (and food and agrochemical) products were disallowed in the Patent Act 1970, implemented in 1972 (Chaudhuri, 2005: 37). Indian firms, supported by several CSIR laboratories, proved capable of developing alternative processes for the production of most APIs and generics, drawing on a strong chemical engineering tradition and skilled, low-cost labour. The patent legislation was complemented by foreign exchange controls, restrictions on foreign ownership and other supportive policies (Lofgren, 2009). Of critical importance was the establishment by the government, with assistance from the World Health Organization (WHO), UNICEF and the Soviet Union, of Hindustan Antibiotics Ltd and Indian Drugs and Pharmaceuticals Ltd (IDPL). IDPL in Hyderabad, set up in 1961, is considered to have triggered the emergence of the API industry cluster in that city, now encompassing around 200 firms: creating the demand for and helping the supply of inputs in the form of skilled labour, specialized capital, and other relevant services [the public sector companies] sparked industrial development in up and downstream businesses (Chaudhuri, 2005: 34). The big pharma companies established no new subsidiaries in India after 1972 and some foreign multinational companies (MNCs) abandoned the country altogether. Domestic firms first supplied the local market, then other developing countries, and since the late 1990s have exported APIs and generics to the highly regulated markets of North America and Europe. The strategy of capability-building through reverse engineering was attacked as illicit copying by big pharma and US government agencies. Yet the adaptive and incremental innovation required for reverse engineering generated technological skills which made it possible to move progressively up the value chain. According to Kale and Wield (2006: 7), [i]ndigenous capability development in the Indian pharmaceutical industry represents one of the most successful cases of self reliant development in knowledge based industries from developing countries. With the abandonment of self-reliance in the 1990s followed more outward-oriented and industry-relevant science and technology policies. R.A. Mashelkar, Director-General of CSIR (19952006) championed (with World Bank assistance) a transformation of the public research sector, inspired by the global model of innovation (Wessner and Shivakumar, 2007: 92). The CSIR laboratories (about 12,600 staff and 7,000 research students) were given the mandate of focusing on intellectual property and income generation (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, 2007).

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The biopharma industry continued to expand at a high rate. By 2007, it was considered (in volume terms) the fourth largest in the world, accounting for 8 percent of global drug production (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 1517). Indian firms supplied 70 percent of the domestic market, up from less than 20 percent in 1970. In 2005, nine of the top 10 companies in India were domestically owned, compared with just four in 1994 (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 15). Top-tier firms were increasingly oriented towards markets in the USA and Europe, and several companies (including Ranbaxy, Dr Reddys Laboratories, Wockhardt and Cadila) acquired foreign subsidiaries. For their part, the big pharma MNCs have returned to the Indian market (Lofgren, 2009). The manufacturing of chemistry-based APIs and generic drugs, drawing on skills and technologies developed through reverse engineering in the 1980s and 1990s, remains the main strength of Indian firms. But around 150 biopharma companies now report R&D activities; for the top companies R&D spending as a proportion of sales revenue is around 10 percent (compared to around 15 percent for leading MNCs) (Nair, 2009). India was also one of the first developing countries to recognize the importance of biotechnology. A coordinated biotechnology policy was initiated in 1982 with the creation of the National Biotechnology Board, which in 1986 became the Department of Biotechnology (DBT) under the Ministry for Science and Technology (Chaturvedi, 2007: 649). The DBT has since developed programs such as funding for biotechnology parks and stem cell research clusters, support for linkages between public sector research institutes and small and medium-sized enterprises, funding of Centres of Excellence within the public research sector, and an Innovative Development Fund to enable research scientists at academic laboratories to develop scientific innovations from a concept to a form that is licensable (Department of Biotechnology, 2006: 1). Several state governments also operate biotechnology support programs. Clearly India has accumulated significant production and innovative capabilities in the biopharma sector. Indeed, this is the one manufacturing industry where this country can claim to be a major international player. It is also the only industry where India leads China, at any rate in chemistry-based drugs manufacturing (China is considered more advanced in biology-based medicines). As described, the Indian biopharma industry developed within a context of favourable government policies and an explicit rejection of global conceptions of innovation and intellectual property. It was a route into the global bioeconomy premised on low-cost engineering and manufacturing skills, the leveraging of weak regulatory standards and, more recently, the provision of outsourcing services. Neglect of environmental regulation was an important factor in the take-off of API manufacturing and exports in the 1980s and 1990s. In this period, the introduction of costly environmental controls in the USA paved the way for manufacturing investments in India.

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Dirty manufacturing where the environmental cost of production is not reflected in the price of the commodity continues to thrive in many Indian locations (Vijay, 2009). In 2008, only 20 to 30 firms were reported to have complied fully with the regulatory standards of developed markets (in terms of, for example, drug quality and Good Manufacturing Practices) (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 19, 29). The low route strategy was weakened by the imposition of a global intellectual property regime under the provisions of the World Trade Organization (WTO). In 2005 the final step was taken, with the introduction of TRIPS-compliant intellectual property rights legislation. This can be seen as the decisive moment in the reorientation from national selfreliance, and a focus on domestic and developing country markets, to an imitation of an American culture of innovation (Sunder Rajan, 2006: 188). Business strategies are now premised on integration into global production and innovation networks and products that address the major diseases represented in Western markets. Pronouncements on the role of knowledge, and of science and technology, coming from departments and agencies such as the Knowledge Commission (established as a high-level advisory body in 2005), are similar to those familiar to Western students of innovation. What is the potential for Indian biopharma firms to thrive within the level playing field of global intellectual property rights? Are they on a trajectory of catch-up with the global leaders? The data suggest impressive results in some areas, including continued growth of generics exports to developed markets, capabilities in bioinformatics and in the manufacturing of biogenerics (generic versions of biological products), and in the clinical trials area. But self-assured prophesies of leading Indian firms growing into relatively autonomous, fully integrated, research-based multinationals have subsided. In the 20002005 period there were recurrent reports of the discovery of promising molecules in the laboratories of Ranbaxy, Dr Reddys Laboratories, Nicholas Piramal and other firms, said to herald a not-toodistant launch of new, innovative products. But this has not eventuated and the emphasis is now strongly on contract manufacturing, contract R&D and other outsourcing services, pointing to the reintegration of the Indian biopharma sector into global MNC networks. The focus on complementarities and partnerships with MNCs can be understood as a return, after a moment of hype and over-confidence, to a mixed strategy where low costs, rather than innovation and IPRs, remain the central source of competitiveness. But the strategy is framed by a different biopolitical discourse than pre-2005, when TRIPS was widely criticized by Indian firms. This global language of innovation and entrepreneurialism, employed in company annual reports and government policy documents, does not, however, capture the reality of an international political economy in which the predominant role of India is as a hub for outsourcing services. What had been, before TRIPS, a sector dominated by local capital,

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fostered by policies of self-reliance and import substitution, has been largely subsumed by transnational capital. In essence, the innovation system of the pre-1990 period, which created the conditions for the expansion of Indian drug companies, is being displaced by global networks and business strategies infused by a particularly American mode of globalizing free market imaginary (Sunder Rajan, 2006: 20). Notwithstanding this rhetoric, there is a sense of discomfort and uncertainty in Indian policy debates. A high-level report commissioned by the Ministry of Commerce obliquely points to dilemmas in the present biopolitical strategy. It is stated, for example, that a very liberal domestic entry regime makes Indian firms vulnerable to takeovers by larger foreign companies, as demonstrated by the 2008 acquisition of the largest of the Indian companies, Ranbaxy, by the Japanese multinational Daiichi Sankyo (Ministry of Commerce and Industry, 2008: 44).

The bioeconomy of advanced capitalism: the European Union

Science and technology were cornerstones in the efforts to bring about an ever closer union among the peoples of Europe (one of the stated aims of the EU in the Treaty of Rome). However, given the complexities of European collaboration, the member states took the lead in all but a few strategic areas, such as atomic energy, which became a symbolic case of European peaceful collaboration in a future-oriented technology (Middlemas, 1995). From the 1980s, changes in geopolitics and in European relations paved the way for a broadening of pan-European science and technology policies. While acknowledging the political necessity to complement rather than overshadow national policy-making (expressed in the amorphous term subsidiarity), the EU has become a political actor in its own right across a wide spectrum of scientific and technological development. This role became evident first with massive investments in information technology in the 1980s, subsequently extended to biotechnology and nanotechnology, and recently security and health (Borrs, 2003). Indeed, science and technology policies are central to the formation of a new European identity associated with a knowledge-intensive society, which rests on an orchestration of intellectual resources from across Europe. This vision sustains an even wider remit for the EU with the supply-side programs of the 1980s, focused on strategic knowledge production, complemented by (still rudimentary) demand-side regulation. EU initiatives increasingly focus on needs (and barriers to needs), with the objective of integrating new knowledge into markets, companies and the public sector. The Lisbon agenda emphasizes supply-side factors critical to a knowledge-based economy essentially R&D investments but there are, as shown below, mounting ambitions to formulate EU-wide policies in areas where science is closely linked to political and economic practice. One such field is clearly biopolitics.

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Throughout the EU, promotion of the biopharma sector through R&D funding, innovation programs, tax subsidies, intellectual property rights, the regulation of health and safety and ethical standards, and soft social and cultural measures (such as education and urban renewal investments), enjoy broad support across the political spectrum. Biotechnologybased commercial activities are widely received as harbingers of a new wave of economic growth. Several EU member countries have also developed consultative (and sometimes deliberative) mechanisms to deal with ethical dilemmas such as those associated with gene technology (Gottweis, 2005). Yet the predominant pattern is of relatively de-politicized exchange involving many stakeholders, managed by government agencies closely linked with business (Benner and Lofgren, 2007). In essence, advanced capitalism, particularly where welfare states are highly developed, offers robust mechanisms of absorption of and support for bio-capital and techno-science more broadly. As noted, the EU is building a role for itself as a hegemonic biopolitical actor vis-a-vis its member states. The rationale is a perceived need for concerted European policies to counteract the dominance of the USA in biotechnological research, development and business. This would seem a natural outcome of EU developments in policy coordination in areas deemed vital to the competitiveness of Europes economies in the last three decades, but it is also a contested trend. While the EU has succeeded in eradicating market barriers in Europe (negative integration), it has achieved far less in terms of policy coordination (positive integration) (Scharpf, 1999). The member states differ greatly in their respective biopolicies, especially in ethical regulation, but also in the governance of markets and health care systems. Tensions centre on the extent and nature of the political coordination of the bioeconomy in the shadow of economic restructuring. The biopharma industry in the EU holds a globally strong position. EU pharmaceutical firms employ around 615,000 people and five of the worlds ten largest pharma firms are European GlaxoSmithKline, SanofiAventis, Novartis, AstraZeneca, and Roche (Pharm Exec Staff, 2009). The industry is particularly strong in the UK, Switzerland and the Nordic countries, reflecting historical variations in institutional structures. The dedicated biotechnology sector remains relatively small in comparison with the USA. The total number of companies is equivalent to the USA an estimated 2,100 companies in the EU compared to 1,900 in the USA. US companies, however, have twice the number of employees, generate twice as much capital (through equity, venture capital and debt financing) and twice the revenue of the European industry (European Union, 2007). Even the largest European countries employ proportionally fewer people in biotechnology than the USA (about 24,000 in Germany and the UK, respectively, compared to 190,000 in the USA). European biotechnology companies also grow slower than in the USA, which is often attributed to weakly developed markets for venture capital (Ernst & Young, 2006).

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Aggregate life sciences investments in EU member countries almost match those in the USA, but linkages between different actors (in particular, large firms and the DBFs) are less developed. There are also fewer globally recognized bioregions in Europe than in the USA (Cooke, 2007). In response, EU policy aims at a greater concentration of resources for research and innovation in fewer locations. To address the problem of fragmentation and weakly developed biopharma linkages, the EU has devised initiatives to enhance coherence and integration. Notably, the bioeconomy was emphasized in the Lisbon growth agenda as a major vehicle for a reinvigorated European knowledge economy:
Life sciences and biotechnology are widely recognised to be, after information technology, the next wave of the knowledge-based economy, creating new opportunities for our societies and economies. They also raise important policy and societal issues and have given rise to a broad public debate These issues must be addressed with great care and sensitivity. In Europe, however, the relevant responsibilities fall across a broad range of policies and actors. In the absence of a shared vision of what is at stake and without common objectives and effective coordination, Europe has therefore only slowly and with difficulty addressed the challenges and opportunities of these new technologies. (cited in European Union, 2002: 7)

The objective of EU biopolitical strategies is to create an integrated knowledge infrastructure, mechanisms for the dissemination and absorption of knowledge, and a favourable social (and ethical) context for embedding research and innovation. The EU is devising programs to overcome national cleavages in respect of research priorities, business models and regulatory positions as a response to the US bioeconomic challenge, even if this might be to the detriment of some regions and may deprive some organizations of their current level of national support (for divergent interpretations, see Cooke, 2007; Foray and Van Ark, 2008). The member states, while each investing in innovation and commercial exploitation, are considered by the EU to be in need of coordinated and overarching regulatory arrangements. The (negative) alternative, implied in the quotation above, is a Europe subject to US dominance. The EUs main vehicles for addressing this challenge are the framework programmes for research and technological development and the European Technology Platforms and Joint Technological Initiatives. The 7th Framework Programme (FP7) will devote around 8 billion between 2007 and 2013 to life sciences and biotechnological development. FP7 is dedicated to pan-European networks but also supports individual scholars and research groups through the European Research Council. Investments are small by comparison with the US$30 billion-plus budget of the US National Institutes of Health, but the aim is not primarily to match the USA, but to use EU funding to achieve coordination of national efforts (Mayor, 2003). The European Technology Platforms and Joint Technological Initiatives were launched to support research networks and the commercialization of

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bioscientific knowledge. Unlike the framework programmes, their status is semi-private: originating in the private sector, they may be embraced by the EU and, if approved, assigned a policy brand as joint European efforts. Eight of the European Technology Platforms are in life sciences and biotechnology. The so-called Risk Sharing Finance Facility (RSFF), a 2 billion joint venture between the European Commission and the European Investment Bank, is another organizational innovation devoted to the supply of capital for R&D commercialization (European Union, 2005). The EU biopolitical strategy also encompasses a focus on the innovative potential of the public sector. European health care and social insurance systems generally have been pinpointed by some analysts as a competitive weakness. In a report on the Lisbon strategy, the relatively sluggish performance of the European pharmaceutical industry was blamed partly on the structure of health systems and their orientation towards cost containment (European Commission, 2007). Here a tension in EU biopolitics becomes apparent between deep-seated national health policy models and the EU ambition to integrate services markets. It has been suggested that health care innovations can be achieved through cross-border health care delivery, professional mobility and pan-European Centres of Reference for rare diseases and patient safety (High Level Group on Health Services and Medical Care, 2006). It is also often argued that biopharma products, though expensive, may contribute to cost control in financially pressured health care systems (Zika et al., 2007). In this respect, the EU holds competing positions: one suggests emulation of the US model in a pan-European health services market; another builds upon national policy variation, including protection of public funding and the provision of health care. In a similar vein, Europe is divided when it comes to public attitudes towards biotechnological applications (such as genetic testing and genetically modified foods): citizens of Finland, Spain and Portugal stand out as being very positive about industrial applications of the new biology, whereas scepticism is widespread in the Scandinavian countries and in Germany (Gaskell et al., 2006). Concomitantly, the political regulation of the life sciences and biopharma sectors remains a matter of controversy. Sweden and the UK exemplify liberal regulatory structures, whereas Germany, Austria and France have stricter controls. In rare cases, divergent perspectives have generated direct clashes between governments, for instance, when German stem cell researchers were forbidden by political fiat to collaborate with their UK counterparts on cell nuclear replacement (Gottweis and Prainsack, 2006). The EU, torn between seemingly irreconcilable positions, has tried to strike a middle path between different traditions. More generally, the EU has attempted, albeit half-heartedly and pragmatically, to bridge national disparities through public consultations on biopolitical issues (Borrs and Jacobsson, 2004). These consultative ambitions are constrained, however, by a technocratic tradition in relations between

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the EU, its member states and economic interests, conspicuous in close links with industry and in the peripheral role of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The European Commission has made attempts to align a European tradition of policy divergence and public debates on science and technology with the development and dissemination of new technologies, most recently in a report on a new socio-technical contract for Europe:
Global economic imperatives to pursue science-led innovation as quickly and efficiently as possible conflict with the inevitable frictions and demands of democratic governance. In response, we suggest that the main guide lies in trusting Europes rich democratic and scientific traditions. It is in the realisation of diversity and multiplicity, and in the robust and distributed character of publics, their capacities and imaginations, that we may justly conceive robust and sustainable pathways of technoscientific development. (Felt and Wynne, 2007: 12)

So far, such attempts have been marginal in the construction of EU growth. Instead, recent years have seen attempts to narrow the gaps between member states, and to create coherent policies in support of entrepreneurship, bio-regions and bio-industrial clusters, a common approach to ethical regulation, and public consensus on controversial issues. The aim is to build a vibrant bioeconomy which supports a challenge to the leading economic position of the USA, making the EU a global player with strong links to emerging powers such as India. But formidable hurdles are presented by nationally divergent policy trajectories based on distinct social, political and religious traditions that challenge the overriding innovation imperative.

Conclusion: the global rise and convergence of knowledge policies?

This review of biopolitical strategies in India and the EU highlights how mature and emerging regions understand and confront the global knowledge economy. The political and regulatory challenges look very different depending on the position of a country or region in the global bioeconomy. Notwithstanding the dominant role of advanced capitalist countries, the EU and its representatives have argued that the region is faced with obstacles, calling for a concerted and coherent policy response. These obstacles include cost pressures in the health sector, the consequences of new corporate structures and business strategies, and global networks where new entrants based in emerging economies such as India play a more powerful role. The biopolitical strategy of the EU is framed by policy dilemmas and tensions generated by different perspectives on institutional adjustments and the lack of forums for articulating social interests. The EU is host to leading biopharma firms and knowledge environments but these are widely considered vulnerable to the increasing dominance of US research institutions and corporations. The EU is now taking the lead in forming a unified

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European response to the USA and to the rise of powers such as India. But devising a pan-European biopolitical strategy requires the adjustment of institutional models in a wide range of policy fields, from health care provision to ethical regulation. There is no simple implementation terrain for European innovation policy as reforms impinge upon entrenched national models for regulating boundaries between nature and economy. Yet the EU and its member states may be seen as representing an emerging high-route biopolitical trajectory a string of global pharmaceutical firms, a large share of global public investments in the life sciences, and relatively market-conforming systems of public regulation. The EU is addressing what it considers the institutional flaws of its bioeconomic development model, such as the relative weakness of the DBF sector, the collision between cost containment in the health care system and incentives for the pharmaceutical industry, the fragmentation of public research efforts in the life sciences, and disparate public attitudes towards biotechnological applications. Its long-term aim is to overtake the USA in the biopharma sector, notably through investments in stem cell research and harmonization of ethical and other regulatory arrangements within the EU. Indias biopolitical strategy is not without tensions and contradictions either. The predominant strategy of Indian firms is supply of goods and services to transnational companies, coupled with a more autonomous role in certain niche markets, with a small number of companies aiming for the scientific-technological frontier. Indias catch-up strategy consists of a dual track maintaining existing low-route advantages (low costs), while simultaneously constructing capabilities similar to those in the globally leading regions, captured in a rhetorical imitation of the US model of innovation and entrepreneurship. Knowledge policies, still in a nascent phase, are mimicking those of advanced capitalism; the scientific infrastructure is still weak by global standards and biopharma firms are not in the same league as leading MNCs. The present phase is also characterized by weak and patchy ethical regulation; the process of regulatory upgrading is driven by export requirements and the necessity of meeting the standards of global innovation networks rather than as in the EU domestic consumer pressures and public opinion. In summary, biopolitics oriented towards a globalized and knowledgebased economy plays a vital role in the national development effort in India and in the formation of the EU as a legitimate and efficient supranational actor. The growing significance of biopolitics means that a large number of policy domains are becoming intertwined, although formed and framed in different circumstances and with different policy constituencies. Inevitably, biopolitics is an area of conflicting interests. In this sense, the bioeconomy is interwoven into the social and political fabric, and its evolution and its governance structures cannot be separated from the forces that surround

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it. Far from driving a global convergence of socio-economic models (with nations adapting to the logic of global networks), the bioeconomy will continue to be shaped by institutional legacies and policy adjustments that go well beyond the confines of global corporate strategies.

Acknowledgements
An early version of this paper was presented at the British International Studies Association Annual Conference, Cambridge, December 2007. The authors wish to thank Amanda Dickins, Aant Elzinga, Baogang He and Ngai-Ling Sum for valuable comments.

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Biographical notes
Hans Lofgren is Senior Lecturer at Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia. He has published widely on pharmaceutical policy and is

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o-editor of Democratising Health: Consumer Groups in the Policy c Process (forthcoming, Edward Elgar) and The New Political Economy of Drugs: Production, Innovation and TRIPS in the Global South (forthcoming, Routledge). Address: School of International and Political Studies, Deakin University, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia. [email: hans.lofgren@deakin.edu.au] Mats Benner is Professor in science policy studies at Lund University, Sweden. He has published extensively on science policy making and the governance of techno-scientific fields in journals like Research Policy, Minerva, Science and Public Policy and New Political Economy. Address: Research Policy Institute, Lund University, P.O. Box 117, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden. [email: mats.benner@fpi.lu.se]

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