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As part of the Lisbon Strategy (2000–“2010), the project of a European Research Area (ERA) was modeled on a market expected to provide a competitive environment to its actors, the "researcher-entrepreneurs." Far from excluding the public authorities, proponents of the ERA have produced a normative and prescriptive discourse on how best to run the "national innovation systems", recommending the use of management know-how to optimize their organizational performance. This paper aims to identify the underlying rules behind this art of government as outlined in the ERA programmatic documentation produced throughout the last decade. It examines the political technology that governs the coordination of science policies at European, national and regional levels. JEL codes: D7, D8, E61, F15, F21, F42, F5, G38, H1, H5, H7, H83, I23, I28, L5, M1, O3, P1