Public accountability and the politicization of science: The peculiar journey of Czech research assessment

Marcela Linková and Tereza Stöckelová

Science and Public Policy, 2012, vol. 39, issue 5, 618-629

Abstract: In recent decades, research has undergone major changes, resulting in radical shifts in patterns of governance. In this process, external forms of research assessment have developed as a proxy for researchers' and research institutions' accountability to society. In this paper we focus on the developments of research assessment in the Czech Republic. First, we trace the trajectory of accountability measures in the socio-historical contexts of post-socialist science as a tool of not only evaluating but also de-politicizing and re-politicizing research. Second, we focus on the active participation of scientists in the introduction of research assessment into national research policy. Closely related is our third concern, namely the emergence of and clashes between two different accountability frameworks in/of science: (internal) professional accountability and (external) managerial accountability. Our findings underscore the ambiguous, messy and fluid nature of research assessment and the inability to totalize its effects. Copyright The Author 2012. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com, Oxford University Press.

Date: 2012
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/scipol/scs039 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:scippl:v:39:y:2012:i:5:p:618-629

Access Statistics for this article

Science and Public Policy is currently edited by Nicoletta Corrocher, Jeong-Dong Lee, Mireille Matt and Nicholas Vonortas

More articles in Science and Public Policy from Oxford University Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().