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Political Science and the Gross Intellectual Product

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2014

Kenneth Minogue
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Extract

BRITISH POLITICAL SCIENTISTS HAVE RECENTLY AWAKENED from their pragmatic slumbers to discover a dragon loose among them: the dragon of evaluation. The University Grants Committee has just been grading the quality of research in university departments, and some have been found ‘below average’. (To be merely ‘average’ hardly seems much better.) How were these gradings arrived at? We do not know, but we do know that among the documents available to the committee was a paper by Ivor Crewe analysing the publications record of all British departments of politics over a six-year period from January 1978. (It will be published in Political Studies next year.) Professor Crewe's paper reveals, to no one's surprise, that there are immense differences in publication rate both between individuals and between different departments; his revelation will not enhance his popularity. But it is clear that these events are just the beginning. The dragon of evaluation is on the loose and there's no St George in sight.

Type
Articles
Information
Government and Opposition , Volume 21 , Issue 4 , 01 October 1986 , pp. 396 - 405
Copyright
Copyright © Government and Opposition Ltd 1986

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References

1 Times Higher Education Supplement, 18 July 1986.

2 I take the phrase from p. 28 of a draft report for an OECD group on University Research by Michael Gibbons and Luke Georghiou of the University of Manchester. It is a very superior example of the genre, and I hope this citation does them some good.