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Policy Knowledge: Universities
Policy Knowledge: Universities Michael Hoelscher, Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. This article is a revision of the previous edition article by D. Court, volume 17, pp. 11605–11608, Ó 2001, Elsevier Ltd.
Abstract In the knowledge society, political decisions increasingly have to be based on scientific results to be seen as legitimate. Governments increasingly hold universities accountable for providing such applicable knowledge. The article analyses (1) the current context, (2) the setup of this policy–research nexus, as well as (3) its epistemic impact on legitimate knowledge within science, and (4) the organizational consequences for universities and the social and behavioral sciences. One conclusion is that an increased openness toward policy-relevant issues has to be combined with research’s independence from external influences to secure one of its most important contributions, namely a legitimate critical reflection on policy and society.
Introduction One of the few unambiguously perceived trends of modern societies is the growing importance of knowledge, often described as the emergence of a knowledge society or knowledge economy. This process of scientification is defined by Weingart as “a process whereby the use of and claim to systematic and certified knowledge produced in the spirit of ‘truth-seeking’ science becomes the chief legitimating source for activity in virtually all other functional subsystems” (Weingart, 1997: 610). One of these subsystems is the political realm. Political decisions are, and have to be to gain legitimacy, increasingly based on scientific knowledge. However, this also has important repercussions for academia as the most important producer of this kind of knowledge (e.g., Boaz et al., 2008). While universities always generated useful and applicable knowledge as well as graduates well prepared for jobs in government, the administration, and the labor market more generally, current developments put much more pressure on higher education institutions to produce ‘value for money.’ Changes in the mode of knowledge distribution in the past decades, characterized by a smooth shift from supply- to demand-led knowledge production, resulted in a substitution, or at least complementation, of universities’ traditionally claimed autonomy by a growing accountability toward the needs of government, society, and economy. The following paragraphs will analyze the research–policy linkages from two perspectives and on two levels. First, looking outward, it will ask what kind of knowledge is needed in the policy realm and how it is transferred from academia into the
policy realm. Looking inward, it will describe some implications of an increasingly demand-driven knowledge regime for the social and behavioral sciences. At least as important as the growing dependence of political decisions on scientific knowledge is, second, a resulting growing demand for scientific literacy of citizens. Therefore, the topic of ‘policy knowledge: universities’ not only is understood as knowledge that is produced within universities and then used by governments to formulate policies but also incorporates the university-taught knowledge needed by responsible citizens to critically evaluate these policies. Taking this viewpoint results in two different levels of analysis within universities and their generation of policy-relevant knowledge: research and teaching (see Figure 1). The structure of the article is as follows: In a first step, the relevant political and social context for today’s universities is outlined. The next two sections discuss the implications of these trends for appropriate forms of knowledge and for the organizational setup of universities. The Section The Transfer of Knowledge from Universities into the Policy Realm discusses how knowledge is transferred between universities and policy. Then the Section Implications for the Social and Behavioral Sciences outlines some potential implications for the social and behavioral sciences. Finally the article ends with some conclusions and an outlook. Before describing the current context, though, one caveat has to be mentioned. The situation is very heterogeneous across the world. However, this article is concentrating on the (though still very heterogeneous) situation in the developed countries, mainly from the OECD.
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A model of knowledge transfer.
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The Political and Social Context for Universities in the Twenty-First Century Although universities as one of the oldest still existing institutions worldwide have always followed their own logic to some extent, they also have been influenced by their social, political, and economic contexts through the centuries. This paragraph outlines some transnational trends that are of special importance to the relationship between policy and universities, while acknowledging that national and regional developments are also relevant. Consequences of these trends will be discussed in the following sections of this article. One of the most important developments is the worldwide expansion of participation in higher education during the past decades (Schofer and Meyer, 2005), turning universities from elite- to mass institutions (Trow, 1972) in many countries. This results in a need for additional funding and more generally in an increased importance of university’s role in society. Another important trend is the emergence of what is often called the ‘knowledge society’ or ‘knowledge economy’ (Delanty, 2001). Interestingly, this trend was also made popular by Bell’s “The coming of post-industrial society” (1973) at the same time as Trow published his observations on expansion in higher education. Within the economy, knowledge has become ever more important, and at least in the developed countries it is sometimes seen as the dominant means of production, as increasingly industrial production sites are moved to countries with cheaper labor costs. Within modern societies, the process of constant ‘rationalization,’ as already described by Max Weber, calls for ever more information as the basis for decision-making on different levels (national, organizational, individual). Especially the political realm calls for information to legitimate and justify its decisions, so that it is able to deliver what is often called evidencebased policy-making. Universities contribute to this in two ways: by producing ‘human capital’ through educating students and by producing new knowledge through their research function (e.g., Jasanoff, 1990). Globalization is a third trend influencing universities (Hoelscher, 2012; Scott, 1998). Growing flows of money, goods, people, and ideas across national borders open up opportunities, but also put pressure on higher education institutions. Eased exchange of ideas and researchers allows for transnational learning processes and creative innovations. However, as a corollary of globalization, one also finds increased competition and market orientation in the field of research and education (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). These three trends are probably the most important reasons for an increased interest of policy in universities as well as academia’s “expansion of interest in policy and application,” mentioned already in the introduction to the first edition of this Encyclopedia: National governments as well as international organizations today see universities, main providers of human capital and of research-based innovation, as crucial for establishing or keeping a good position in the international economic competition. As a result, governments increasingly call on universities to provide the means to this end, with implications for the organizational setup of universities as well as for the appropriate forms of knowledge (e.g., Pawson, 2006: 2).
Implications for Appropriate Forms of Knowledge Academics in many universities increasingly feel a pressure to produce directly applicable knowledge and educate graduates with regard to the labor market, and many criticize this as political and economic appropriation and exploitation of academia. Instead, they endorse the disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge and claim that the academic freedom, whose basis was already laid out to some extent in the Authentica Habita as early as 1155 and which, for example, in Germany until today is guaranteed in the Basic Constitutional Law, is a necessary prerequisite of scientific progress as well as the basis for the critical engagement with existing social norms and values. Additionally, independence and autonomy of teaching in higher education is seen as important contribution to democracy and consequently as civil right (Dahrendorf, 1965). While these critics are probably right in many points, one has to keep in mind that universities always educated their graduates to be able to fill their positions in society (Rüegg, 1992–2011). Already in the Middle Ages, the universities trained their graduates in the traditional fields of philosophy, theology, medicine, and law for certain professions. While the traditional task of the university was to preserve the culture and knowledge by passing it on to future generations, the modern university with a strong focus on research and innovation, which was until then often concentrated in the academies, began to evolve only in the eighteenth century and became extremely successful in many countries during the nineteenth century. This went along with a differentiation of taught disciplines. In this context the foundation of empirical social sciences was mainly based in the need of the modern state to acquire in-depth knowledge of its citizens. More recently, still, many institutions took social problems as their starting point for their successful and inspiring research, for example, the Chicago School of urban sociology. Two founders of the modern idea of the university, Humboldt and Newman, both had occupational positions, especially positions that one could label as policy related, in mind when formulating their (different) approaches: Humboldt wanted the university to train independent scholars by promoting the unity of research and teaching, as he was convinced that such scholars were best prepared to later become civil servants for the Prussian State. For Newman, universities’ task was to educate (then only) Gentlemen to become future leaders within the Commonwealth. The interesting twist, however, is, that both saw more or less independence of universities from the state/ church, the teaching of nonvocational subjects and the fostering of a liberal intellectual culture as the best way to reach these aims. At least since the end of the Second World War, and additionally fostered through the student revolts during the 1960s, the idea of the university was crucially based on this dual task of independent research on relevant societal problems and the education of knowledgeable and critical-reflexive citizens. But how do the developments described above impact on the research and teaching function of higher education? With regard to teaching, the expansion of higher education participation has raised questions of skills, competencies, and
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knowledge needed for being successful in the labor market. While citizenship education is still an explicit aim at least in some countries, there is a tendency in many countries to make curricula much more directly applicable and in line with the demands of employers. The European Bologna Reform of Higher Education is an often criticized example for this shift. A possible reaction to this pressure is a diversification of higher education systems, with a top layer of universities still following the traditional ideal and a majority of higher education institutions educating more or less applied subjects preparing their graduates directly for the labor market. However, at least with regard to policy knowledge, it is still debated whether such knowledge can be directly taught in an applied way, or if it does not need to be carefully developed through fostering reflexive and contextual thinking, as was the aim in the traditional university. This refers to the broader discussion of a distinction between experts, solving specific problems through the narrow application of scientific knowledge, and intellectuals, developing larger meta-narratives and even utopian thinking and interpreting society and the world through these lenses (already Chomsky, 1967; Merton, 1945). With regard to research, especially the rise of the knowledge society has led to the formulation of new requirements for larger parts of scientific knowledge production, which go beyond the divide between applied and basic research. One prominent concept in this context, covering the most important aspects of this shift, is called Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994). In a critical review, Weingart points out the following aspects as being central for proponents of the approach: Knowledge is seen as becoming increasingly problem based and has to be produced within concrete contexts of application. As these complex problems and contexts cannot be grasped by one scientific discipline alone, research has to be transdisciplinary. Additionally, the research output and results not only are evaluated by scientific peers within academia any more but also have to convince those actors that are involved in the specific problem or situation. Thereby, “knowledge-production becomes socially accountable and reflexive” and “comes under new pressures of legitimation” (Weingart, 1997: 593). While the concept of Mode 2 knowledge production has been criticized for being exaggerated, it highlights important current trends with interesting epistemic implications. Mode 2 is as much about practical knowledge (techné/sέcnh in Aristotle’s terminology) as about theoretical knowledge (episteme/ἐpissῄmh), and even includes aspects of beliefs and opinions (doxa/dóxa) as well as, at least in the case of social sciences, wisdom or intelligence (phronesis/4rónhsi2) (e.g., Flyvbjerg, 2001). Scientific results increasingly do not only have to pass the critical assessment of the academic community but also shall prove their applicability and usefulness in domains outside science and for nonscientific audiences. This might, however, result in tensions, when for example public policy and business pose differing demands on university research. One possible reason for this might be that exploitation interests of economic actors collide with society’s interest in public availability of research results. A prominent example from the natural sciences was the race to decipher the human genome.
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Implications for the Organizational Setup of Universities The stress on knowledge and innovation by governments and in society at large and the subsequent changes in the forms of knowledge and its production also have an impact on the setup of universities. As described, the increased need for scientifically based knowledge in different parts of society, as well as increased funding for the higher education sector, results in an enhanced demand for accountability of universities by different stakeholders (Benneworth and Jongbloed, 2010). With regard to policy knowledge and the social and behavioral sciences, these stakeholders mainly stem from the political realm or civil society, but also actors from the economy are involved to a growing extent, for example, in the context of technology assessments and forecasting. On the macro level, increased accountability in many countries is just the other side of a growing (formal) autonomy of higher education institutions from the state as a result of a strange mixture of neoliberal ideology and New-Public-Management-thinking on the side of governments, and efforts to gain independence on the side of the universities (Lazzeretti and Tavoletti, 2006). The idea behind this is that universities need additional freedom to be able to partake successfully in the global competition for the best students, the best researchers, and the best innovations. This increased competition between higher education institutions on the national and international level has led to what is often called the ’Entrepreneurial university’ (Clark, 1998). One example is the distribution of additional money for research, which is increasingly project driven, allowing the government and other funders to define research topics and goals (Harman, 2010). While government funding for research in higher education and other public research institutions remained on average pretty stable at around 0.6% of GDP between 1981 and 2000 for all OECD countries, especially larger countries experienced a substantial decline (OECD, 2003: 78). Additionally, one can observe an internationally visible shift from institutional (block grants) toward project funding (especially during the 1970s and 1980s), and within project funding from academic-oriented instruments toward thematic-oriented instruments (Lepori et al., 2007). This probably leads to a greater applicability of research results. Within the context of the currently very tight budgets, there is however the danger of a certain blindness, so that research only looks at problems relevant for these funders, and that at the same time equally relevant problems of less financially potent parts of society are neglected. Therefore, it is still an open question whether the two sides of the coin, increased autonomy and accountability, actually increase the independence of academia, or if this results in new, maybe even more binding dependencies. Increased accountability has been implemented inter alia through different means of steering universities, for example, through evaluations or the introduction of quality assurance and management programs (Danish Evaluation Institute, 2003). With regard to state funding, one can observe a shift from input to output measures. For example, university budgets are often no longer assessed on the basis of numbers of
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students and scientists, but on the basis of graduates and the number of publications. Another important development on the macro level is the growing importance of additional knowledge providers besides the traditional universities, such as think tanks, NGOs, government agencies, or consulting firms. Their absolute number is negligible compared with universities, but they are gaining influence and visibility, especially in the field of policy knowledge. While they are often still dependent on the research input from universities, their advantages are a better transfer of knowledge into the policy realm and often their clear ideological position. As an effect, they might buffer universities from too strong claims for production of applicable policy knowledge, but they might also detract important research resources from them. On the organizational meso level a ‘third mission’ for universities besides teaching and research has been formulated as a consequence of the described shifts. This third mission sees active engagement of universities in transferring knowledge into society as an important task (Zomer and Benneworth, 2011). Universities are creating specific facilities to promote patenting or research collaboration with external partners, mainly relevant for the natural and engineering sciences and medicine (where they are often called ‘technology transfer offices’), but they are also trying to establish new forms of collaboration for the social and behavioral sciences, such as engagement in public science. Another important development at the university level is the establishment of inter- or even transdisciplinary centers besides the traditional departments based on scientific disciplines. With this reaction to the shift toward what was called Mode 2 knowledge production above, ever more universities establish problem-oriented centers, which are often built around policy-relevant topics, such as the ‘Heidelberg Center for the Environment,’ and frequently include external funding, for example, like the ‘INET@Oxford’ with money from a New York-based nonprofit foundation. Another important characteristic is the common collaboration between researchers from the social and behavioral sciences and researchers from the natural and life sciences. On the micro level of the single researcher, the developments lead to important tensions that have to be solved creatively. As academia is still mainly organized along the traditional disciplinary lines, it is rational for each researcher trying to follow an academic career to become a specialist in her field and to orient his research toward inner-scientific research problems, as it is still difficult to publish applied research results with the best journals. On the other hand, the additional efforts needed to establish cooperation with partners from outside the university and to get engaged with the ‘real’ world, sometimes on the expense of scientific rigor, could result in increased funding. While there are always people on both extremes of these dimensions, handling this balancing act might secure certain academic standards for applied research in most cases. However, increased competition and a growing dependence on external research funding present the danger that applied research results are more and more aligned with the expectations of the external funders. This, in turn, would decrease the utility of this kind of knowledge to policy, as it would be unreliable and therefore potentially misleading.
In general, one can observe growing diversification within universities as well as within whole higher education systems. The shift toward a knowledge economy and toward growing competition between and within institutions has led to very different reactions on the various levels of academia. While the above-described trends toward more accountability, Mode 2 knowledge and interdisciplinary cooperation are an important facet of current developments, at the same time a growing specialization within disciplinary fields and a concentration on inner scientific quality measures can be observed. Interestingly, it seems that those institutions with the highest academic prestige also possess the highest reputation in the policy realm. Whether this is because of their superior performance or due to the seemingly larger legitimacy they give to policies supported by them, as many sociological neoinstitutionalists would argue, cannot be decided here.
The Transfer of Knowledge from Universities into the Policy Realm A growing interest for scientific knowledge in the policy realm and a growing awareness of such a demand within the universities is, however, not enough to guarantee successful knowledge transfer. A general problem for the research–policy nexus is that scientific knowledge is always to a certain extent preliminary. Following Karl Popper, science is a constant process that is not able to prove or verify a natural law, let alone other theories and hypotheses, finally. Researchers can only make their theories stronger by trying to test or falsify them and being unsuccessful in this endeavor. Additionally, Thomas Kuhn has shown how different paradigms within science replace each other. The current need to base political decisions on the newest research available to secure the legitimacy of these decisions has the paradoxical effect that the research findings are often still controversial: “The ever more intense recourse to knowledge on which to base decisions also reveals ever more clearly the state of ignorance” (Weingart, 1997: 606). As a result, policy can neither wait nor expect final words of wisdom from academia. This is not to say that scientific knowledge is always relative and cannot claim high validity. However, especially with regard to very new and very complex topics, there is always a certain uncertainty, which leaves room for discussion and even abuse (e.g., Collingridge and Reeve, 1986), a situation sometimes labeled as postnormal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This makes the reliance of policy-making on scientific knowledge, while necessary, for politicians and their advisors quite risky and difficult. An interesting example of such an abuse is the renouncement of anthropogenic climate change. While a seldom found consensus within scientific research on the topic states that climate change can be traced back to human influences (see the IPCC as a representative of this consensus), financially potent interest groups successfully block political decisions by claiming the incertitude of these findings under a scientific disguise (e.g., McCright and Dunlap, 2010). With regard to social and behavioral sciences, the reflexive reactivity of its research objects is another problem for a smooth knowledge transfer from these disciplines into the
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policy realm. While the weather does not change due to weather forecasts, a prognosis that many people will die because of obesity might lead to a change in peoples’ eating behavior, in the provision of food by the economy, and in the political framework, thereby refuting the original prediction. Besides such general problems, different contextual factors can hamper or foster policy–research linkages in a more direct way. These can be categorized into three streams of explanation: supply-side accounts, demand-led explanations, and sociopolitical thinking on knowledge utilization (Maxwell and Stone, 2005: 2 ff.). Important factors on the supply side might be, for example, the lack of a proper research infrastructure in the first place, a missing interest of researchers in transferable and policy-relevant knowledge, or an absent awareness of research output’s potential usefulness. Corresponding factors on the demand side might be ignorance of politicians with regard to the existence of such knowledge, or an incapability or even the missing preparedness to use such knowledge to inform policy. The category of sociopolitical thinking comprises different aspects, for example, questions of who the ‘user’ is, on how valid and reliable the knowledge actually is, and on what can be known anyway. Illuminative in this last respect are discussions around what has been labeled as ‘Science wars’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 1 ff.). Broadly one can differentiate between at least three channels through which knowledge can flow from universities into the policy realm: the first is depersonalized information in the form of research reports, and so on, the second are organizations, and the third are individuals. The depersonalized transfer of information seems to be pretty straightforward at first sight, but has some prerequisites. First, with reference to the just mentioned factors on the supply side, the relevant information has to be supplied, and supplied in a way that is understandable for the policy side. In recent years, a growing share of research projects has become aware of this and produces policy-related research briefings on top of their normal research reports. On the policy side some receptor units able to absorb the scientific information and make it available for politicians are needed. Government agencies, ministries, and parties are establishing smaller research units to fulfill this function. Additional intermediary organizations would be the already mentioned think tanks. With regard to people, one can further differentiate between graduates starting a job for example in a governmental organization, established scientists moving from university into the political sphere, and politicians or civil servants joining academia for a certain period of time. The state is still one of the most important employers for higher education graduates in many countries overall, and holding a university degree increasingly becomes a prerequisite for joining the political elite, as is the case with economic elites. To foster knowledge transfer through this channel, it is important to equip these graduates with research-based, and therefore most up-to-date knowledge in their fields of study, to teach them how to apply this knowledge in praxis, and to engage them in lifelong learning. In some countries, certain academic institutions are especially successful in placing their graduates in high political positions (or rather people with such ambitions choose these institutions). For example,
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6 out of the last 10 presidents of the United States hold a degree from either Yale or Harvard, and 8 out of the 11 British Prime Ministers since 1945 studied at Oxford University. It is obvious from these figures that certain academic institutions are better positioned for knowledge transfer than others. The exchange of personnel is another mechanism for knowledge transfer well known from innovation studies. However, the amount of exchange between the political and the academic realm differs widely, depending on the openness of the two systems and the attractiveness of such a change for the individuals. In many cases, the exchange is not organized through a radical shift from one realm to the other, but through cooperation or cooptation, for example, in advisory boards. However, again large national differences exist. There are certain advantages of the knowledge transfer through people over the mere exchange of information. The exchange of people results in an overlap of the two realms, opening up the opportunity for longer term cooperation as well as an easier flow of knowledge in both directions, both helping to “create[.] common understandings and identities” (Maxwell and Stone, 2005: 5). Additionally, there is a tacit dimension to knowledge, which cannot easily be transferred into formal information (Polanyi, 1967).
Implications for the Social and Behavioral Sciences The current trends offer opportunities as well as threats for the social and behavioral sciences. The older democratic mass university was the natural realm of the social and behavioral sciences (Delanty, 2001). However, most of these disciplines lost importance in the entrepreneurial university since the 1980s, as the natural and engineering sciences are easier applicable and easier to commodify (Zomer and Benneworth, 2011). Keywords would be patenting, the emergence of science parks, or the cooperation with economically potent partners from the industry more generally. The social benefits of social and behavioral sciences’ research are often much more diffuse and less visible, especially when the valorization of knowledge is narrowly understood in monetary terms. In many universities, social and behavioral sciences are therefore under pressure to prove their usefulness vis-à-vis the natural and engineering sciences. However, to restrict the social and behavioral sciences to a mere mechanistic problem-solving science, trying to imitate the harder sciences, is probably no option. Much of social and behavioral sciences’ research refers to questions of values, power, and culture. To increase its impact, it has to develop a reflexive and dialogical approach, nevertheless based on sound and reliable empirical research, thereby contributing to “society’s capacity for value-rational deliberation and action” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 167). The current situation offers many opportunities for this road. The knowledge produced by social and behavioral sciences is needed in the reflexive modernity more than ever: For example, many of today’s societal problems, such as the aging of populations, migration, growing inequality, or environmental pollution, cannot be solved by merely technical solutions. Governments and international organizations have reacted to this for example by funding or even
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initiating new large-scale data projects in the past few years (e.g., the European Social Survey or the PISA studies) or by supporting the development of new and more comprehensive indicators, for example, for well-being, complementing traditional measures (e.g., the Gross Domestic Product). Additionally, possibilities for the application of scientific innovations (e.g., genetic engineering; nanotechnology, the Internet) have to be analyzed with regard to their wider societal contexts and ramifications. The growing opportunities for interdisciplinary work within universities allows to account for social and behavioral sciences’ theoretical and methodological tools to approach these and other pressing problems. However, this demands an openness or even the positive will to collaborate with other disciplines as well as with people from outside academia. A severe problem, though, is the ongoing shift toward project-driven funding, as much of it is exclusively related to issues stemming from outside academia and affirmative in perspective. There is the threat that the social and behavioral sciences increasingly only contribute to effective technocratic interventions to problems formulated by others, instead of questioning the aims of these others. However, social and behavioral sciences need capacities to criticize the state, the economy, and society effectively and search for alternatives, as this is part and parcel of its task of applied research and positive impact.
Some Conclusions and Outlook In the emerging knowledge society, political decisions increasingly have to be based on scientific results to be seen as legitimate. This has led to a shift from a supply to a demanddriven knowledge production. Governments and society at large increasingly hold universities accountable for providing such applicable knowledge. With regard to organizational consequences, these trends are often discussed under the label of universities’ third mission, referring to the universities’ preparedness of transferring their knowledge into different realms of society. The concept of Mode 2 knowledge production, instead, emphasizes more the epistemic changes within what is seen as useful scientific knowledge. Research, it is claimed, has to become more interdisciplinary, problemcentered, contextualized, and assessed by practitioners from the field of application. This calls for improved ways of knowledge transfer between the realms of academia and policy. Researchers and universities as a whole are increasingly aware that they have to prepare their findings in ways that are accessible not only to peer academics, but to the broader society, the media, politicians, and the economy. Political organizations, on the other hand, have developed different means, such as own smaller research units, that are able to absorb these informations. Besides this exchange of information, the exchange of personnel is a much more direct way of knowledge transfer from one realm to the other. In most countries, one can find a growing number of additional organizations, for example, think tanks, moderating and influencing this transfer. The processes of a ‘politicization of science’ (Weingart, 1997: 606) and of a ‘scientification of policy’ are probably
self-reinforcing, especially under the condition of ever more citizens holding a higher education degree, making them ever more literate with regard to scientific findings. This situation opens up opportunities as well as risks for the social and behavioral sciences and the university as a whole. With regard to impact, an opportunity is that it allows science to become more influential than ever. However, a crucial question here is whether political decisions are really based on the state of the art of scientific knowledge, or if the latter is just selectively used to legitimize the former. Science and its research findings are always preliminary. This insecurity makes it difficult for researchers to develop clear guidelines, and for politicians to use research findings in a straightforward way. Additionally, political decisions gain legitimacy from different sources, for example, from voters’ demands, and often have to be a compromise with regard to different claims (and research findings). Actually, providing solutions to diverging claims is one of the key tasks of policy. All these put the direct policy impact of research into perspective. Nevertheless, in sum the increase of educated citizens, the rationalization of the world and growing research capacities will probably increase the reliance of policy on research and science in the decades to come remarkably. A risk for university and science is the loss of its traditional autonomy due to political demands for knowledge. Important proponents of the idea of a university, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt in Germany or John Henry Newman in the United Kingdom, have unambiguously argued that universities can best fulfill their functions when they are independent from state, church, and other influences. The current increase in project funding in most established higher education systems can be seen as a sign of decreasing autonomy. In many developing countries, however, governments deliberately found new universities to provide expertise as well as experts for the administration. Another big risk is a narrow commodification of research. If research will be confined to those aspects that pay off in monetary terms or that help to manage society in a mere technical way to follow the ideas of the government only, the social and behavioral sciences will loose one of their most important functions, namely the critical reflection on society. It is a future task for all researchers to solve the ostensible paradox of combining independence from governmental and economic organizations with an increased engagement with/openness toward policy-relevant issues or the policy relevance of their research. As social scientists, we should however be aware that ‘scientific expertise’ as well as the increasing claims to it are no ‘overwhelming force’ (Stehr, 1992: 136), but are socially constructed and therefore can also be influenced by society.
See also: Applied Social Research, History of; Attitudes, Political and Public Opinion; Data Bases and Statistical Systems: Applied Social Research; Evidence-Based Practice; Forecasting; Higher Education Market; Higher Education Research; Implementation Science; Intellectuals: History of the Concept; Knowledge (Explicit, Implicit and Tacit): Philosophical Aspects; Knowledge Society, History of; Knowledge, Sociology of; Legitimacy, Sociology of; Modernity; Modernization,
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Sociological Theories of; Objectivity of Research: Ethical Aspects; Objectivity: Philosophical Aspects; Participatory Action Research in Environmental and Ecological Studies; Participatory Action Research in Social Research; Policy Analysis: Evidence Based Policy-Making; Policy Analysis; Policy Knowledge: Foundations; Policy Knowledge: New Liberalism; Policy Process: Nonprofit Institutions in the United States; Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94); Practical Reasoning: Philosophical Aspects; Quality of Government; Science Communication; Science and Media; Science and Politics: Value Neutrality; Science and The State; Science, Public Engagement with; Scientific Controversies; Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of; Social Science and Universities; Social Scientists as Experts and Public Intellectuals; Societal Impact Assessment; Technology Transfer; Think Tanks; Universities and Science and Technology: Europe; Universities and Science and Technology: United States; Weber, Max (1864–1920).
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Funtowicz, Silvio O., Ravetz, Jerome R., 1993. The emergence of post-normal science. In: Schomberg, René von (Ed.), Science, Politics, and Morality: Scientific Uncertainty and Decision Making. Kluwer, Dordrecht, pp. 85–123. Gibbons, Michael, Limoges, Camille, Nowotny, Helga, Schwartzman, Simon, Scott, Peter, Trow, Martin, 1994. The New Production of Knowledge: The Dynamics of Science and Research in Contemporary Societies. Sage, London. Harman, G., 2010. Funding of university research. In: Peterson, P., Baker, E., McGaw, B. (Eds.), International Encyclopedia of Education, third ed. Elsevier, Oxford, pp. 279–285. Hoelscher, Michael, 2012. Universities and higher learning. In: Anheier, Helmut K., Juergensmeyer, Mark (Eds.), Encyclopedia of Global Studies. SAGE, London, et al., pp. 1713–1718. Jasanoff, Sheila, 1990. The Fifth Branch. Science Advisers as Policymakers. Harvard University Press, Cambridge. Lazzeretti, Luciana, Tavoletti, Ernesto, 2006. Governance shifts in higher education: a cross-national comparison. European Educational Research Journal 5 (1), 18–37. Lepori, Benedetto, van den Besselaar, Peter, Dinges, Michael, Potì, Bianca, Reale, Emanuela, Slipersæter, Stig, et al., 2007. Comparing the evolution of national research policies: what patterns of change? Science and Public Policy 34 (6), 372–388. Maxwell, Simon, Stone, Diane, 2005. Global knowledge networks and international development. Bridges across boundaries. In: Stone, Diane, Maxwell, Simon (Eds.), Global Knowledge Networks and International Development. Bridges across Boundaries. Routledge, London, pp. 1–17. McCright, Aaron M., Dunlap, Riley E., 2010. Anti-reflexivity: the American conservative movement’s success in undermining climate science and policy. Theory, Culture & Society 27 (2–3), 100–133. Merton, Robert K., 1945. Role of the intellectual in public bureaucracy. Social Forces 23, 405–415. OECD, 2003. Governance of Public Research. Toward Better Practices. OECD, Paris. Pawson, Ray, 2006. Evidence-Based Policy. A Realist Perspective. Sage, London, et al. Polanyi, Michael, 1967. The Tacit Dimension. Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Rüegg, Walter, 1992–2011. A History of the University in Europe, 4 vols. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, et al. Schofer, Evan, Meyer, John W., 2005. The worldwide expansion of higher education in the twentieth century. American Sociological Review 70 (6), 898–920. Scott, Peter (Ed.), 1998. The Globalization of Higher Education. SRHE and Open University Press, Buckingham. Slaughter, Sheila, Rhoades, Gary, 2004. Academic Capitalism and the New Economy: Markets, State, and Higher Education. Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore, et al. Stehr, Nico, 1992. Experts, counsellors and advisers. In: Stehr, N., Ericson, R.V. (Eds.), The Culture and Power of Knowledge. Inquiries into Contemporary Societies. de Gruyter, Berlin and New York, pp. 107–155. Trow, Martin, 1972. The expansion and transformation of higher education. International Review of Education 18 (1), 61–84. Weingart, Peter, 1997. From ‘finalization’ to ‘mode 2’: old wine in new bottles? Social Science Information 36 (4), 591–613. Zomer, Arend, Benneworth, Paul, 2011. The rise of the university’s third mission. In: Jürgen, Enders, et al. (Eds.), Reform of Higher Education in Europe. Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp. 81–101.
Abstract In the knowledge society, political decisions increasingly have to be based on scientific results to be seen as legitimate. Governments increasingly hold universities accountable for providing such applicable knowledge. The article analyses (1) the current context, (2) the setup of this policy–research nexus, as well as (3) its epistemic impact on legitimate knowledge within science, and (4) the organizational consequences for universities and the social and behavioral sciences. One conclusion is that an increased openness toward policy-relevant issues has to be combined with research’s independence from external influences to secure one of its most important contributions, namely a legitimate critical reflection on policy and society.
Introduction One of the few unambiguously perceived trends of modern societies is the growing importance of knowledge, often described as the emergence of a knowledge society or knowledge economy. This process of scientification is defined by Weingart as “a process whereby the use of and claim to systematic and certified knowledge produced in the spirit of ‘truth-seeking’ science becomes the chief legitimating source for activity in virtually all other functional subsystems” (Weingart, 1997: 610). One of these subsystems is the political realm. Political decisions are, and have to be to gain legitimacy, increasingly based on scientific knowledge. However, this also has important repercussions for academia as the most important producer of this kind of knowledge (e.g., Boaz et al., 2008). While universities always generated useful and applicable knowledge as well as graduates well prepared for jobs in government, the administration, and the labor market more generally, current developments put much more pressure on higher education institutions to produce ‘value for money.’ Changes in the mode of knowledge distribution in the past decades, characterized by a smooth shift from supply- to demand-led knowledge production, resulted in a substitution, or at least complementation, of universities’ traditionally claimed autonomy by a growing accountability toward the needs of government, society, and economy. The following paragraphs will analyze the research–policy linkages from two perspectives and on two levels. First, looking outward, it will ask what kind of knowledge is needed in the policy realm and how it is transferred from academia into the
policy realm. Looking inward, it will describe some implications of an increasingly demand-driven knowledge regime for the social and behavioral sciences. At least as important as the growing dependence of political decisions on scientific knowledge is, second, a resulting growing demand for scientific literacy of citizens. Therefore, the topic of ‘policy knowledge: universities’ not only is understood as knowledge that is produced within universities and then used by governments to formulate policies but also incorporates the university-taught knowledge needed by responsible citizens to critically evaluate these policies. Taking this viewpoint results in two different levels of analysis within universities and their generation of policy-relevant knowledge: research and teaching (see Figure 1). The structure of the article is as follows: In a first step, the relevant political and social context for today’s universities is outlined. The next two sections discuss the implications of these trends for appropriate forms of knowledge and for the organizational setup of universities. The Section The Transfer of Knowledge from Universities into the Policy Realm discusses how knowledge is transferred between universities and policy. Then the Section Implications for the Social and Behavioral Sciences outlines some potential implications for the social and behavioral sciences. Finally the article ends with some conclusions and an outlook. Before describing the current context, though, one caveat has to be mentioned. The situation is very heterogeneous across the world. However, this article is concentrating on the (though still very heterogeneous) situation in the developed countries, mainly from the OECD.
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The Political and Social Context for Universities in the Twenty-First Century Although universities as one of the oldest still existing institutions worldwide have always followed their own logic to some extent, they also have been influenced by their social, political, and economic contexts through the centuries. This paragraph outlines some transnational trends that are of special importance to the relationship between policy and universities, while acknowledging that national and regional developments are also relevant. Consequences of these trends will be discussed in the following sections of this article. One of the most important developments is the worldwide expansion of participation in higher education during the past decades (Schofer and Meyer, 2005), turning universities from elite- to mass institutions (Trow, 1972) in many countries. This results in a need for additional funding and more generally in an increased importance of university’s role in society. Another important trend is the emergence of what is often called the ‘knowledge society’ or ‘knowledge economy’ (Delanty, 2001). Interestingly, this trend was also made popular by Bell’s “The coming of post-industrial society” (1973) at the same time as Trow published his observations on expansion in higher education. Within the economy, knowledge has become ever more important, and at least in the developed countries it is sometimes seen as the dominant means of production, as increasingly industrial production sites are moved to countries with cheaper labor costs. Within modern societies, the process of constant ‘rationalization,’ as already described by Max Weber, calls for ever more information as the basis for decision-making on different levels (national, organizational, individual). Especially the political realm calls for information to legitimate and justify its decisions, so that it is able to deliver what is often called evidencebased policy-making. Universities contribute to this in two ways: by producing ‘human capital’ through educating students and by producing new knowledge through their research function (e.g., Jasanoff, 1990). Globalization is a third trend influencing universities (Hoelscher, 2012; Scott, 1998). Growing flows of money, goods, people, and ideas across national borders open up opportunities, but also put pressure on higher education institutions. Eased exchange of ideas and researchers allows for transnational learning processes and creative innovations. However, as a corollary of globalization, one also finds increased competition and market orientation in the field of research and education (Slaughter and Rhoades, 2004). These three trends are probably the most important reasons for an increased interest of policy in universities as well as academia’s “expansion of interest in policy and application,” mentioned already in the introduction to the first edition of this Encyclopedia: National governments as well as international organizations today see universities, main providers of human capital and of research-based innovation, as crucial for establishing or keeping a good position in the international economic competition. As a result, governments increasingly call on universities to provide the means to this end, with implications for the organizational setup of universities as well as for the appropriate forms of knowledge (e.g., Pawson, 2006: 2).
Implications for Appropriate Forms of Knowledge Academics in many universities increasingly feel a pressure to produce directly applicable knowledge and educate graduates with regard to the labor market, and many criticize this as political and economic appropriation and exploitation of academia. Instead, they endorse the disinterested pursuit of truth and knowledge and claim that the academic freedom, whose basis was already laid out to some extent in the Authentica Habita as early as 1155 and which, for example, in Germany until today is guaranteed in the Basic Constitutional Law, is a necessary prerequisite of scientific progress as well as the basis for the critical engagement with existing social norms and values. Additionally, independence and autonomy of teaching in higher education is seen as important contribution to democracy and consequently as civil right (Dahrendorf, 1965). While these critics are probably right in many points, one has to keep in mind that universities always educated their graduates to be able to fill their positions in society (Rüegg, 1992–2011). Already in the Middle Ages, the universities trained their graduates in the traditional fields of philosophy, theology, medicine, and law for certain professions. While the traditional task of the university was to preserve the culture and knowledge by passing it on to future generations, the modern university with a strong focus on research and innovation, which was until then often concentrated in the academies, began to evolve only in the eighteenth century and became extremely successful in many countries during the nineteenth century. This went along with a differentiation of taught disciplines. In this context the foundation of empirical social sciences was mainly based in the need of the modern state to acquire in-depth knowledge of its citizens. More recently, still, many institutions took social problems as their starting point for their successful and inspiring research, for example, the Chicago School of urban sociology. Two founders of the modern idea of the university, Humboldt and Newman, both had occupational positions, especially positions that one could label as policy related, in mind when formulating their (different) approaches: Humboldt wanted the university to train independent scholars by promoting the unity of research and teaching, as he was convinced that such scholars were best prepared to later become civil servants for the Prussian State. For Newman, universities’ task was to educate (then only) Gentlemen to become future leaders within the Commonwealth. The interesting twist, however, is, that both saw more or less independence of universities from the state/ church, the teaching of nonvocational subjects and the fostering of a liberal intellectual culture as the best way to reach these aims. At least since the end of the Second World War, and additionally fostered through the student revolts during the 1960s, the idea of the university was crucially based on this dual task of independent research on relevant societal problems and the education of knowledgeable and critical-reflexive citizens. But how do the developments described above impact on the research and teaching function of higher education? With regard to teaching, the expansion of higher education participation has raised questions of skills, competencies, and
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knowledge needed for being successful in the labor market. While citizenship education is still an explicit aim at least in some countries, there is a tendency in many countries to make curricula much more directly applicable and in line with the demands of employers. The European Bologna Reform of Higher Education is an often criticized example for this shift. A possible reaction to this pressure is a diversification of higher education systems, with a top layer of universities still following the traditional ideal and a majority of higher education institutions educating more or less applied subjects preparing their graduates directly for the labor market. However, at least with regard to policy knowledge, it is still debated whether such knowledge can be directly taught in an applied way, or if it does not need to be carefully developed through fostering reflexive and contextual thinking, as was the aim in the traditional university. This refers to the broader discussion of a distinction between experts, solving specific problems through the narrow application of scientific knowledge, and intellectuals, developing larger meta-narratives and even utopian thinking and interpreting society and the world through these lenses (already Chomsky, 1967; Merton, 1945). With regard to research, especially the rise of the knowledge society has led to the formulation of new requirements for larger parts of scientific knowledge production, which go beyond the divide between applied and basic research. One prominent concept in this context, covering the most important aspects of this shift, is called Mode 2 knowledge (Gibbons et al., 1994). In a critical review, Weingart points out the following aspects as being central for proponents of the approach: Knowledge is seen as becoming increasingly problem based and has to be produced within concrete contexts of application. As these complex problems and contexts cannot be grasped by one scientific discipline alone, research has to be transdisciplinary. Additionally, the research output and results not only are evaluated by scientific peers within academia any more but also have to convince those actors that are involved in the specific problem or situation. Thereby, “knowledge-production becomes socially accountable and reflexive” and “comes under new pressures of legitimation” (Weingart, 1997: 593). While the concept of Mode 2 knowledge production has been criticized for being exaggerated, it highlights important current trends with interesting epistemic implications. Mode 2 is as much about practical knowledge (techné/sέcnh in Aristotle’s terminology) as about theoretical knowledge (episteme/ἐpissῄmh), and even includes aspects of beliefs and opinions (doxa/dóxa) as well as, at least in the case of social sciences, wisdom or intelligence (phronesis/4rónhsi2) (e.g., Flyvbjerg, 2001). Scientific results increasingly do not only have to pass the critical assessment of the academic community but also shall prove their applicability and usefulness in domains outside science and for nonscientific audiences. This might, however, result in tensions, when for example public policy and business pose differing demands on university research. One possible reason for this might be that exploitation interests of economic actors collide with society’s interest in public availability of research results. A prominent example from the natural sciences was the race to decipher the human genome.
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Implications for the Organizational Setup of Universities The stress on knowledge and innovation by governments and in society at large and the subsequent changes in the forms of knowledge and its production also have an impact on the setup of universities. As described, the increased need for scientifically based knowledge in different parts of society, as well as increased funding for the higher education sector, results in an enhanced demand for accountability of universities by different stakeholders (Benneworth and Jongbloed, 2010). With regard to policy knowledge and the social and behavioral sciences, these stakeholders mainly stem from the political realm or civil society, but also actors from the economy are involved to a growing extent, for example, in the context of technology assessments and forecasting. On the macro level, increased accountability in many countries is just the other side of a growing (formal) autonomy of higher education institutions from the state as a result of a strange mixture of neoliberal ideology and New-Public-Management-thinking on the side of governments, and efforts to gain independence on the side of the universities (Lazzeretti and Tavoletti, 2006). The idea behind this is that universities need additional freedom to be able to partake successfully in the global competition for the best students, the best researchers, and the best innovations. This increased competition between higher education institutions on the national and international level has led to what is often called the ’Entrepreneurial university’ (Clark, 1998). One example is the distribution of additional money for research, which is increasingly project driven, allowing the government and other funders to define research topics and goals (Harman, 2010). While government funding for research in higher education and other public research institutions remained on average pretty stable at around 0.6% of GDP between 1981 and 2000 for all OECD countries, especially larger countries experienced a substantial decline (OECD, 2003: 78). Additionally, one can observe an internationally visible shift from institutional (block grants) toward project funding (especially during the 1970s and 1980s), and within project funding from academic-oriented instruments toward thematic-oriented instruments (Lepori et al., 2007). This probably leads to a greater applicability of research results. Within the context of the currently very tight budgets, there is however the danger of a certain blindness, so that research only looks at problems relevant for these funders, and that at the same time equally relevant problems of less financially potent parts of society are neglected. Therefore, it is still an open question whether the two sides of the coin, increased autonomy and accountability, actually increase the independence of academia, or if this results in new, maybe even more binding dependencies. Increased accountability has been implemented inter alia through different means of steering universities, for example, through evaluations or the introduction of quality assurance and management programs (Danish Evaluation Institute, 2003). With regard to state funding, one can observe a shift from input to output measures. For example, university budgets are often no longer assessed on the basis of numbers of
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students and scientists, but on the basis of graduates and the number of publications. Another important development on the macro level is the growing importance of additional knowledge providers besides the traditional universities, such as think tanks, NGOs, government agencies, or consulting firms. Their absolute number is negligible compared with universities, but they are gaining influence and visibility, especially in the field of policy knowledge. While they are often still dependent on the research input from universities, their advantages are a better transfer of knowledge into the policy realm and often their clear ideological position. As an effect, they might buffer universities from too strong claims for production of applicable policy knowledge, but they might also detract important research resources from them. On the organizational meso level a ‘third mission’ for universities besides teaching and research has been formulated as a consequence of the described shifts. This third mission sees active engagement of universities in transferring knowledge into society as an important task (Zomer and Benneworth, 2011). Universities are creating specific facilities to promote patenting or research collaboration with external partners, mainly relevant for the natural and engineering sciences and medicine (where they are often called ‘technology transfer offices’), but they are also trying to establish new forms of collaboration for the social and behavioral sciences, such as engagement in public science. Another important development at the university level is the establishment of inter- or even transdisciplinary centers besides the traditional departments based on scientific disciplines. With this reaction to the shift toward what was called Mode 2 knowledge production above, ever more universities establish problem-oriented centers, which are often built around policy-relevant topics, such as the ‘Heidelberg Center for the Environment,’ and frequently include external funding, for example, like the ‘INET@Oxford’ with money from a New York-based nonprofit foundation. Another important characteristic is the common collaboration between researchers from the social and behavioral sciences and researchers from the natural and life sciences. On the micro level of the single researcher, the developments lead to important tensions that have to be solved creatively. As academia is still mainly organized along the traditional disciplinary lines, it is rational for each researcher trying to follow an academic career to become a specialist in her field and to orient his research toward inner-scientific research problems, as it is still difficult to publish applied research results with the best journals. On the other hand, the additional efforts needed to establish cooperation with partners from outside the university and to get engaged with the ‘real’ world, sometimes on the expense of scientific rigor, could result in increased funding. While there are always people on both extremes of these dimensions, handling this balancing act might secure certain academic standards for applied research in most cases. However, increased competition and a growing dependence on external research funding present the danger that applied research results are more and more aligned with the expectations of the external funders. This, in turn, would decrease the utility of this kind of knowledge to policy, as it would be unreliable and therefore potentially misleading.
In general, one can observe growing diversification within universities as well as within whole higher education systems. The shift toward a knowledge economy and toward growing competition between and within institutions has led to very different reactions on the various levels of academia. While the above-described trends toward more accountability, Mode 2 knowledge and interdisciplinary cooperation are an important facet of current developments, at the same time a growing specialization within disciplinary fields and a concentration on inner scientific quality measures can be observed. Interestingly, it seems that those institutions with the highest academic prestige also possess the highest reputation in the policy realm. Whether this is because of their superior performance or due to the seemingly larger legitimacy they give to policies supported by them, as many sociological neoinstitutionalists would argue, cannot be decided here.
The Transfer of Knowledge from Universities into the Policy Realm A growing interest for scientific knowledge in the policy realm and a growing awareness of such a demand within the universities is, however, not enough to guarantee successful knowledge transfer. A general problem for the research–policy nexus is that scientific knowledge is always to a certain extent preliminary. Following Karl Popper, science is a constant process that is not able to prove or verify a natural law, let alone other theories and hypotheses, finally. Researchers can only make their theories stronger by trying to test or falsify them and being unsuccessful in this endeavor. Additionally, Thomas Kuhn has shown how different paradigms within science replace each other. The current need to base political decisions on the newest research available to secure the legitimacy of these decisions has the paradoxical effect that the research findings are often still controversial: “The ever more intense recourse to knowledge on which to base decisions also reveals ever more clearly the state of ignorance” (Weingart, 1997: 606). As a result, policy can neither wait nor expect final words of wisdom from academia. This is not to say that scientific knowledge is always relative and cannot claim high validity. However, especially with regard to very new and very complex topics, there is always a certain uncertainty, which leaves room for discussion and even abuse (e.g., Collingridge and Reeve, 1986), a situation sometimes labeled as postnormal science (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1993). This makes the reliance of policy-making on scientific knowledge, while necessary, for politicians and their advisors quite risky and difficult. An interesting example of such an abuse is the renouncement of anthropogenic climate change. While a seldom found consensus within scientific research on the topic states that climate change can be traced back to human influences (see the IPCC as a representative of this consensus), financially potent interest groups successfully block political decisions by claiming the incertitude of these findings under a scientific disguise (e.g., McCright and Dunlap, 2010). With regard to social and behavioral sciences, the reflexive reactivity of its research objects is another problem for a smooth knowledge transfer from these disciplines into the
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policy realm. While the weather does not change due to weather forecasts, a prognosis that many people will die because of obesity might lead to a change in peoples’ eating behavior, in the provision of food by the economy, and in the political framework, thereby refuting the original prediction. Besides such general problems, different contextual factors can hamper or foster policy–research linkages in a more direct way. These can be categorized into three streams of explanation: supply-side accounts, demand-led explanations, and sociopolitical thinking on knowledge utilization (Maxwell and Stone, 2005: 2 ff.). Important factors on the supply side might be, for example, the lack of a proper research infrastructure in the first place, a missing interest of researchers in transferable and policy-relevant knowledge, or an absent awareness of research output’s potential usefulness. Corresponding factors on the demand side might be ignorance of politicians with regard to the existence of such knowledge, or an incapability or even the missing preparedness to use such knowledge to inform policy. The category of sociopolitical thinking comprises different aspects, for example, questions of who the ‘user’ is, on how valid and reliable the knowledge actually is, and on what can be known anyway. Illuminative in this last respect are discussions around what has been labeled as ‘Science wars’ (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 1 ff.). Broadly one can differentiate between at least three channels through which knowledge can flow from universities into the policy realm: the first is depersonalized information in the form of research reports, and so on, the second are organizations, and the third are individuals. The depersonalized transfer of information seems to be pretty straightforward at first sight, but has some prerequisites. First, with reference to the just mentioned factors on the supply side, the relevant information has to be supplied, and supplied in a way that is understandable for the policy side. In recent years, a growing share of research projects has become aware of this and produces policy-related research briefings on top of their normal research reports. On the policy side some receptor units able to absorb the scientific information and make it available for politicians are needed. Government agencies, ministries, and parties are establishing smaller research units to fulfill this function. Additional intermediary organizations would be the already mentioned think tanks. With regard to people, one can further differentiate between graduates starting a job for example in a governmental organization, established scientists moving from university into the political sphere, and politicians or civil servants joining academia for a certain period of time. The state is still one of the most important employers for higher education graduates in many countries overall, and holding a university degree increasingly becomes a prerequisite for joining the political elite, as is the case with economic elites. To foster knowledge transfer through this channel, it is important to equip these graduates with research-based, and therefore most up-to-date knowledge in their fields of study, to teach them how to apply this knowledge in praxis, and to engage them in lifelong learning. In some countries, certain academic institutions are especially successful in placing their graduates in high political positions (or rather people with such ambitions choose these institutions). For example,
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6 out of the last 10 presidents of the United States hold a degree from either Yale or Harvard, and 8 out of the 11 British Prime Ministers since 1945 studied at Oxford University. It is obvious from these figures that certain academic institutions are better positioned for knowledge transfer than others. The exchange of personnel is another mechanism for knowledge transfer well known from innovation studies. However, the amount of exchange between the political and the academic realm differs widely, depending on the openness of the two systems and the attractiveness of such a change for the individuals. In many cases, the exchange is not organized through a radical shift from one realm to the other, but through cooperation or cooptation, for example, in advisory boards. However, again large national differences exist. There are certain advantages of the knowledge transfer through people over the mere exchange of information. The exchange of people results in an overlap of the two realms, opening up the opportunity for longer term cooperation as well as an easier flow of knowledge in both directions, both helping to “create[.] common understandings and identities” (Maxwell and Stone, 2005: 5). Additionally, there is a tacit dimension to knowledge, which cannot easily be transferred into formal information (Polanyi, 1967).
Implications for the Social and Behavioral Sciences The current trends offer opportunities as well as threats for the social and behavioral sciences. The older democratic mass university was the natural realm of the social and behavioral sciences (Delanty, 2001). However, most of these disciplines lost importance in the entrepreneurial university since the 1980s, as the natural and engineering sciences are easier applicable and easier to commodify (Zomer and Benneworth, 2011). Keywords would be patenting, the emergence of science parks, or the cooperation with economically potent partners from the industry more generally. The social benefits of social and behavioral sciences’ research are often much more diffuse and less visible, especially when the valorization of knowledge is narrowly understood in monetary terms. In many universities, social and behavioral sciences are therefore under pressure to prove their usefulness vis-à-vis the natural and engineering sciences. However, to restrict the social and behavioral sciences to a mere mechanistic problem-solving science, trying to imitate the harder sciences, is probably no option. Much of social and behavioral sciences’ research refers to questions of values, power, and culture. To increase its impact, it has to develop a reflexive and dialogical approach, nevertheless based on sound and reliable empirical research, thereby contributing to “society’s capacity for value-rational deliberation and action” (Flyvbjerg, 2001: 167). The current situation offers many opportunities for this road. The knowledge produced by social and behavioral sciences is needed in the reflexive modernity more than ever: For example, many of today’s societal problems, such as the aging of populations, migration, growing inequality, or environmental pollution, cannot be solved by merely technical solutions. Governments and international organizations have reacted to this for example by funding or even
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initiating new large-scale data projects in the past few years (e.g., the European Social Survey or the PISA studies) or by supporting the development of new and more comprehensive indicators, for example, for well-being, complementing traditional measures (e.g., the Gross Domestic Product). Additionally, possibilities for the application of scientific innovations (e.g., genetic engineering; nanotechnology, the Internet) have to be analyzed with regard to their wider societal contexts and ramifications. The growing opportunities for interdisciplinary work within universities allows to account for social and behavioral sciences’ theoretical and methodological tools to approach these and other pressing problems. However, this demands an openness or even the positive will to collaborate with other disciplines as well as with people from outside academia. A severe problem, though, is the ongoing shift toward project-driven funding, as much of it is exclusively related to issues stemming from outside academia and affirmative in perspective. There is the threat that the social and behavioral sciences increasingly only contribute to effective technocratic interventions to problems formulated by others, instead of questioning the aims of these others. However, social and behavioral sciences need capacities to criticize the state, the economy, and society effectively and search for alternatives, as this is part and parcel of its task of applied research and positive impact.
Some Conclusions and Outlook In the emerging knowledge society, political decisions increasingly have to be based on scientific results to be seen as legitimate. This has led to a shift from a supply to a demanddriven knowledge production. Governments and society at large increasingly hold universities accountable for providing such applicable knowledge. With regard to organizational consequences, these trends are often discussed under the label of universities’ third mission, referring to the universities’ preparedness of transferring their knowledge into different realms of society. The concept of Mode 2 knowledge production, instead, emphasizes more the epistemic changes within what is seen as useful scientific knowledge. Research, it is claimed, has to become more interdisciplinary, problemcentered, contextualized, and assessed by practitioners from the field of application. This calls for improved ways of knowledge transfer between the realms of academia and policy. Researchers and universities as a whole are increasingly aware that they have to prepare their findings in ways that are accessible not only to peer academics, but to the broader society, the media, politicians, and the economy. Political organizations, on the other hand, have developed different means, such as own smaller research units, that are able to absorb these informations. Besides this exchange of information, the exchange of personnel is a much more direct way of knowledge transfer from one realm to the other. In most countries, one can find a growing number of additional organizations, for example, think tanks, moderating and influencing this transfer. The processes of a ‘politicization of science’ (Weingart, 1997: 606) and of a ‘scientification of policy’ are probably
self-reinforcing, especially under the condition of ever more citizens holding a higher education degree, making them ever more literate with regard to scientific findings. This situation opens up opportunities as well as risks for the social and behavioral sciences and the university as a whole. With regard to impact, an opportunity is that it allows science to become more influential than ever. However, a crucial question here is whether political decisions are really based on the state of the art of scientific knowledge, or if the latter is just selectively used to legitimize the former. Science and its research findings are always preliminary. This insecurity makes it difficult for researchers to develop clear guidelines, and for politicians to use research findings in a straightforward way. Additionally, political decisions gain legitimacy from different sources, for example, from voters’ demands, and often have to be a compromise with regard to different claims (and research findings). Actually, providing solutions to diverging claims is one of the key tasks of policy. All these put the direct policy impact of research into perspective. Nevertheless, in sum the increase of educated citizens, the rationalization of the world and growing research capacities will probably increase the reliance of policy on research and science in the decades to come remarkably. A risk for university and science is the loss of its traditional autonomy due to political demands for knowledge. Important proponents of the idea of a university, such as Wilhelm von Humboldt in Germany or John Henry Newman in the United Kingdom, have unambiguously argued that universities can best fulfill their functions when they are independent from state, church, and other influences. The current increase in project funding in most established higher education systems can be seen as a sign of decreasing autonomy. In many developing countries, however, governments deliberately found new universities to provide expertise as well as experts for the administration. Another big risk is a narrow commodification of research. If research will be confined to those aspects that pay off in monetary terms or that help to manage society in a mere technical way to follow the ideas of the government only, the social and behavioral sciences will loose one of their most important functions, namely the critical reflection on society. It is a future task for all researchers to solve the ostensible paradox of combining independence from governmental and economic organizations with an increased engagement with/openness toward policy-relevant issues or the policy relevance of their research. As social scientists, we should however be aware that ‘scientific expertise’ as well as the increasing claims to it are no ‘overwhelming force’ (Stehr, 1992: 136), but are socially constructed and therefore can also be influenced by society.
See also: Applied Social Research, History of; Attitudes, Political and Public Opinion; Data Bases and Statistical Systems: Applied Social Research; Evidence-Based Practice; Forecasting; Higher Education Market; Higher Education Research; Implementation Science; Intellectuals: History of the Concept; Knowledge (Explicit, Implicit and Tacit): Philosophical Aspects; Knowledge Society, History of; Knowledge, Sociology of; Legitimacy, Sociology of; Modernity; Modernization,
Policy Knowledge: Universities
Sociological Theories of; Objectivity of Research: Ethical Aspects; Objectivity: Philosophical Aspects; Participatory Action Research in Environmental and Ecological Studies; Participatory Action Research in Social Research; Policy Analysis: Evidence Based Policy-Making; Policy Analysis; Policy Knowledge: Foundations; Policy Knowledge: New Liberalism; Policy Process: Nonprofit Institutions in the United States; Popper, Karl Raimund (1902–94); Practical Reasoning: Philosophical Aspects; Quality of Government; Science Communication; Science and Media; Science and Politics: Value Neutrality; Science and The State; Science, Public Engagement with; Scientific Controversies; Scientific Knowledge, Sociology of; Social Science and Universities; Social Scientists as Experts and Public Intellectuals; Societal Impact Assessment; Technology Transfer; Think Tanks; Universities and Science and Technology: Europe; Universities and Science and Technology: United States; Weber, Max (1864–1920).
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