The making of research policies : an interpretative perspective of public action ; La fabrique des politiques scientifiques : une approche interprétative de l'action publique

Open Access

Abstract

This dissertation analyzes the making of science policies in Switzerland, with a special emphasis on the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) policy, which represents Switzerland's most important public funding agency. The dissertation is organised in two parts.The first one describes how different actors are involved in the development and legitimization of new policy tools. These instruments are designed not only to change the institutional organization of research and its purpose, but also to transform the representations of researchers. Thus, in the study of "National Centre of Competences in Research" (NCCR), established by the National Fund (SNF) in the late 1990s, we have considered this instrument as the embodiment of a normative discourse that proposes new evaluation criteria of scientific excellence. Those new criteria are not only based on the scientific quality of research activities, but also on the quality of its managerial organization. This model articulates normative logic of discovery and experimentation, on the one hand, and the logic of efficiency and productivity, on the other.A second part examines how researchers funded by this research program interpret, negotiate and translate this new interpretive framework in the context of their practices. An approach in terms of "membership categorization" is used to analyze the "mediations" between the policy of the SNF, through its "National Centre of Competences in Research" (NCCR), and the research practices of members of a laboratory funded by this program. This allows us to show that membership categories have been mobilized for the establishment, control and promotion of collectives.In our opinion, this double analytical perspective allows to account for the effectiveness of public policy instruments like the NCCR, understanding those instruments as discourse and power techniques, that is technologies of government. ; L'objectif de cette thèse est d'analyser la fabrique des politiques scientifiques en Suisse. Dans ce but, un accent ...