Abstract

Science is an increasingly globalized activity. Not only is science performed in a growing number of settings, but the make-up of the international scientific community has become more diverse in recent decades as globalizing processes have increased flows of people and knowledge across national borders. And yet, despite repeated claims about the impending erosion of national borders, there are similarly insistent counter-arguments that the state still matters to and for science. This chapter analyses the politics of academic science, that is, activities that takes place in institutions with an academic research mission, including universities, research institutes and other related organizations. The constrasting institutional logics of scientific globalism and scientific nationalism are employed as a useful theoretical frame for the chapter. Through a study of 20 national science policies, examining established, emerging and evolving economies in all parts of the world, this chapter identifies the tensions that arise when scientific globalism intersects with scientific nationalism. While scientific nationalism remains the pervasive logic, it is continuously negotiated and shaped by the interplay of diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas.