1

CFP - ECPR 2016 section on 'Politics of Higher Education, Research, and

Innovation'

Margarida Chagas Lopes – SOCIUS/CSG – ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics

and Management, Universidade de Lisboa (www.gmail.com)

“The politicization of knowledge policies – the Portuguese case”

Abstract

The evolution of the Portuguese process of knowledge development in modern times

has been sharply influenced by institutions responsible for education, their design, and

the ideology which embed them. Despite radical changes regarding the conception of

the role of knowledge, science, and research, in society, as well as the definition and

launching of relevant public policies, these institutions and their lasting inertia have

been hampering knowledge development in Portugal. Now that a new democratic

government has been elected, for which knowledge and research are seen as social

assets that are to be democratically redistributed and shared, it is important to assess

how far the inertia of these institutions is, or is not, being redressed. This is especially

important with regards to the persistence of traditional values and culture through which

institutional lobbies attempt to maintain their previous influence.

Key words: knowledge development; new internal and external challenges; the role of

institutions; inertia; Portugal.

J.E.L. Classification: I23; O32; O33; O38.

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1. Introduction: A brief historical review in which ideology and institutions

became prominent…

1.1.- The heritage of the Estado Novo

The democratic revolution of 1974 put an end to four decades of an authoritarian,

conservative, and mono-party regime - the Estado Novo, which condemned large parts

of the Portuguese population to obscurity and illiteracy. Under very strong ideological

pressure, the education system was segmented into “high schools” (Liceus), for the

education and permanence of the elite, and “technical schools”, for all the remaining

children.

By 1970, just 4 years before the democratic revolution took place, 26% of the

Portuguese population was illiterate (PORDATA). Likewise, unsurprisingly, one of the

main goals of the new democratic government, which was legitimized by the

Constituição da República Portuguesa (Constitution of the Portuguese Republic (CPR))

of 1976, was related to education: in Article No. 43 of the Constitution, regarding the

“Freedom of Learning and Teaching” (Liberdade de Aprender e Ensinar), the CPR

explicitly established that the government “should not plan education and culture in

accordance to any philosophical, aesthetic, political, ideological, or religious principles”,

and also that public teaching would not be religious.

This apparently ultra-aseptic concept of education was the immediate reaction to the

strongly ideological commitment of the preceding period. Now, it was possible to benefit

from some of the very positive educational experiences that the intellectuals had

learned during their years in exile in Europe. New educational theories were then

tested, and alternative forms of organization were implemented in schools, and a great

diversity of educational projects havebeen launched. This experimental phase led to

important national debates on education which lasted for about 10 years, up until the

adoption of the National Statutes for the Educational System (Estatuto Nacional do

Sistema Educativo) in 1986.

Among the leading changes in the educational system which accompanied the

instauration of democracy was the abolishment of technical-vocational education.

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Behind this decision was the ideological objective of ending the previous discrimination

between this kind of education, and that of the elites, which was provided by the Liceus.

Nevertheless, the technical, scientific, and educational goals of the technical-vocational

education were not taken into consideration, and this kind of education remained being

even further underdeveloped than “regular education”. This is one of the main reasons

why engineering and other scientific-technological areas developed so modestly in

Portugal over a large period of time.

In the meantime, the first Portuguese Agency for Science and Technology (Junta

Nacional para a Investigação Científica e Tecnológica) was launched in 1967, which

was replaced by the National Institute for Scientific Research (Instituto Nacional de

Investigação Científica) in 1977, which, for most researchers, marks the beginning of

Science and Technology (S&T) policies in Portugal (Ruivo,1995). Besides serving as an

advisory board to the government about what had to do with the very incipient scientific

and technological policies and its coordination, this Institute was in charge of the

supervision and funding of the very few public university research institutions. Most of

its work had to do with the evaluation of the eligibility of PhD candidates for public

grants, and it had almost nothing to do with any decisive progress in the design of

scientific and technological policies.

The universities entitled to carry out research and development during the Estado Novo

dictatorship had not developed enough critical research, nor had they established sound

partnerships with national, let alone international universities. Therefore, at the

beginning of the democratic regime, these universities suffered from the generalized

economic and social crisis and the scarcity of funding. Most of all, no trace of a true

knowledge strategy could be evidenced at this time.

The percentage of graduates in tertiary education among the Portuguese population

progressed very slowly: in 1970 only 0.9% of Portuguese women and men aged 15

years and over had completed a tertiary degree, the corresponding value for 1981 being

2.4%, and 8.4% for 2001 (PORDATA). By 2009, at the time of the creation of the

European Monetary Union, which Portugal joined right at the beginning, the country

exhibited the lowest share of graduates among the population from 55 to 64 years old

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within an OECD 36-countries group, which included Brazil, Turkey, and Mexico (OCDE

2011).

In 1982, the global share of researchers (FTE) involved in R&D activities was no higher

than 0.4/1000, being a value which rose to 0.7/1000 in 2001, and then fell to less than

0.4/100 in 2009. Research and Development remained mostly exclusively a task and a

duty for higher education professors and researchers, as well as for State-run

laboratories and departments. In either case, few research contacts were established

with the business sector, and international research projects in which the country took

place were but a few.

1.2. A critical core of intellectuals and the upsurge of modern knowledge

policies

In the meanwhile, a very rich “human capital” was developing, which had been mainly

educated in other European countries and which had established a very beneficial

recognition from important international universities and research centers. This was the

seed for the development of modern knowledge policies in Portugal. Among these

intellectuals, José Mariano Gago stands out, who had been president of INIC from 1986

to 1989, and then became Minister of Science, Technology and Higher Education. He

remained in this post for more time that any other minister, during the Portuguese

Socialist governments between 1995 and 2002, and 2005 and 2011.

Indeed, by the mid/end of the 90´s, two important factors contributed to what may be

called the upsurge of the modern phase of knowledge development in Portugal: the

Socialist government and the first cabinet of Mariano Gago as Minister for Science,

Technology and Higher Education; and also the Bologne Reform.

One of the most striking decisions of the Socialist minister and his cabinet was the

adoption of the Manifest for Science (Manifesto para a Ciência em Portugal), for which

he had been one of the co-authors some years before, which was a guideline for action

in the domain of science, research, and development. The Manifesto especially stated

that:

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(…) only throughout the generalization of a social debate on the development of

the scientific culture could the large delay of the scientific process in Portugal become

evident (…).

The Manifesto proposed the leading lines for scientific development process, which

would rely on the renewal of the education system, the foundation of a scientific culture,

and the breakout from the preceding scientific isolationism. Taking science as a social

challenge, the document aimed to promote a truly well-informed social and democratic

dialogue. In the Minister’s words, there was an absolute need to “give open access to

non-scientists for the main scientific methodologies and results” (Candeias, 2016).

Accordingly, the defense and re-implementation of experimental learning, the building of

a modern scientific system, the development and renewal of the higher education sub

system, the launching of a set of systematic S&T and R&D policies, the struggle

towards the internationalization of the Portuguese research and scientific processes,

together with the deeply rooted conception of science and knowledge as being truly

public and social assets, which are indispensable for the deepening of the democratic

process, all remain among the landmarks of this Socialist minister’s legacy (Rodrigues

& Heitor org., 2015).

As a consequence, the Portuguese government budget allocations for R&D relative to

GDP increased by 50% between 1995 and 2002, and the global expenditure in R&D

activities increased 2.22 times during the same time interval. At the same time, the

number of researchers in R&D per thousand of the active population increased by 1.5

times, the number of scientific publications per 1,000 inhabitants more than doubled,

and international co-authorship studies took off - more than tripling in the case of British

and Spanish researchers and research institutions between 1995 and 2002. A major

determinant of this performance has been the new policy for allocation of public grants

for the development of R&D projects and for PhD students; this new emphasis on an

educational and research social policy happened during a moment when the Bologne

Reform was imposing the development of 2nd and 3rd Cycles in higher education, on

account of the shortening and social devaluation of the 1st Cycle.

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The above results also reflect the important increase in funding which the Portuguese

government received from the European Union during the 1990’s, but the true revolution

had to do with universities: in 1997, the Minister for Science, Technology, and Higher

Education reformed the previous INIC, and founded FCT – the Portuguese Agency for

Science, Technology, and Innovation – whose mission and values promised:

“the systematic advancement of scientific and technological knowledge in Portugal,

towards the highest international quality and competitiveness standards in all the

scientific domains (…) as well as the diffusion of the corresponding results throughout

society as a whole, and the productive structure (Fundação para a Ciência e

Tecnologia, 1997), (http://www.fct.pt/fct/).

To achieve its purposes, FCT regularly launched peer-evaluated public contests for the

attribution of grants and the funding of research contracts, and the funding of eligible

projects and competitive research centers, as well as for basic scientific infrastructures.

After a brief period of a Social Democratic government, between 2002 and 2005,

Socialist governments were again elected to power, and with them came the previous

cabinet for science, technology, and innovation, which returned to duty from 2005 to

2011. During this period, the global number of publically-funded PhD scholarships

provided by FCT increased by 36%: 26% for Engineering and Technologies, 36% for

Social Sciences, 44% for Health Sciences, and 65% for Humanities, among other

scientific domains (PORDATA). The share of the public budget allocated to education

increased by 7% per capita, but remained stable at 4.5% as a percentage of GDP. Still

during the period of 2005-2011, the number of completed PhDs per 100,000 inhabitants

increased by 54%, and among them, the number of those that were obtained abroad

increased by 70% during the same period.

The results in terms of S&T were also very encouraging: the global number of scientific

publications more than doubled, as well as the number of those in co-authorship with

other countries’ researchers. The global number of researchers in FTE increased by

2.09, with the corresponding breakdown by scientific area being 2.89 times higher for

Health Sciences, 2.39 for Engineering and Technologies, and 2.35 for Social Sciences

and Humanities (PORDATA). Nevertheless, the main result to be noticed has to do with

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the deep change in the breakdown of the number of FTE researchers by sector: from

2005 to 2011, the number of FTE researchers in the business sector increased 2.61

times, and by about 2.18 times in higher education, whilst in the public sector, there was

a reduction of about 30%. This trend follows a natural and positive evolution, as

government progressively gave way to research and businesses, although provided that

it does not neglect its role as the leading actor in the process of regulation of the

national education and knowledge processes.

In 2011, a coalition between the Social Democratic and Christian Democratic parties

won the elections in Portugal, after three years of economic and social crisis. As a

consequence of the latter, the country was about to face bankruptcy, and a troika

composed of the IMF, the European Commission and the European Central Bank

intervened openly. For several reasons, this put an end to the previous development of

research and knowledge policies, as we will refer to in the next section.

2. Crisis and neo-liberalism versus knowledge development

When the economic crisis hit the country in 2008, there were already signs that the

previous very positive progress towards a democratic conception of knowledge

development was about to face important obstacles.

2.1. – Globalization and competitiveness

One of these obstacles had to do with the hyper-bureaucratization and increased

competitiveness that the Bologne Reform was imposing on universities and research

centers. There was certainly a strong need for social accountability and a systematic

evaluation of publically-funded universities, for which procedures were still in their

infancy. However, with the reinforcement of globalization and international

competitiveness, both accountability and evaluation became more and more redesigned

and shaped according to the dominant conception of research and knowledge that is

embraced by the neo-liberal wave.

On one hand, universities were obliged to internationalize – which is, of course, a very

positive feature – in order to be able to correspond to the increasing international

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mobility of students, researchers, and teaching staff alike. However, the very principles

of this internationalization soon became subverted, as, for example, when national

languages were progressively substituted by generalized teaching in English.

Competition to attract students from abroad obliged this change, and progressively

national values and culture also became subsumed to the “transferrable and credited

knowledge”, that is to say, the official neo-liberal knowledge (Apple, M.W., 2014).

Critical thinking in Portuguese universities – but also in another countries’1 - had to

comply with dominant knowledge, or else international markets and competitiveness

would not validate the production of Portuguese universities. Accreditation and Quality

Control with international organizations completed the picture – by the American

AACSB, for instance.

With regards to Portuguese research centers, international but also national

competitiveness also became the overall rule. On account of the economic restrictions

imposed by the crisis, and the even more restrictive intervention imposed by the

“Troika”, the Portuguese right-wing government - as an “obedient student” – started to

launch pro-cyclical policies in almost all public domains. The scarcity of funding severely

affected both universities and research centers.

2.2. – When the Public Agency subverts scientific and democratic truth

FCT, the already referred-to Portuguese Agency for Science and Technology, now

became one of the leading instruments for these pro-cyclical policies with regards to

advanced studies, and research and development. Eligibility criteria for access to public

funding became hyper-bureaucratized, were always changing, and were not clearly

applied. One or two public contests were launched by FCT between 2011 and 2014,

which were later considered to be illegal, and they had to be repeated after general

disproval by researchers and research centers.

Furthermore, on one hand, scarcity of funding led to an ever-increasing competitiveness

among research institutions, making it totally impossible to attempt any cooperation

There is being a strong criticism by students towards some official U.K. Universitary curricula, as BBC, for instance, is broadcasting.

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between them, at odds with the true scientific culture. On the other hand, FCT’s policy

pursued a true hierarchization of scientific domains, by means of according priority to

funding for projects in partnership with the “hard” scientific domains – such as

Engineering – and also the large multinational corporations. As social sciences and

humanities are not so likely to produce marketable outputs, these were systematically

sub-funded during several public contests.

Actually, there was no need for such substantial funding support for the partnerships

between universities or research centers, government, and large business. The “triple

helix” (Etzkowitz & Leydesdorff, 2000) had worked well in Portugal since the ‘80s, with

the upsurge of some very dynamic startups at universities such as the University of

Aveiro, and the Technical and New Universities of Lisbon, amongst others. This does

not mean that such a good relationship translated into a democratic appropriation of the

knowledge process and output, but rather, as a matter of fact, there was not a true

development strategy for which the main regulator – the government – could supervise

the entire system and act towards the open socialization of the process of knowledge

development. Therefore, the easiest way to act as a “regulator, was through FCT, by

means of selective funding referred to above.

Besides FCT, other public institutions and policies severely contributed to the setback of

the previous process of knowledge development. Some of the leading institutions in this

process, namely the Ministry for Education and the Ministry for Science, Technology,

and Higher Education, were kept apart and were not able to act collaboratively on a

retention basis for which knowledge development could be developed sustainably. The

Ministry for Education drastically restricted grants and allowances for both higher

education and advanced studies. Accordingly, dropout rates in Portuguese Tertiary

Education took off, now that most students and families had to face an increasing

budgetary burden: with the social devaluation of the compacted 1st Cycles brought

about by the Bologne Reform, whereby attending and completing 2nd and 3rd Cycles

education became mandatory. However, no social policy was launched to compensate

students and families for these accrued costs and spending.

How great was the damage? Let us consider briefly some very telling indicators.

Firstly, the trend in the global share of R&D expenditures by institutional sector:

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Figure 1:

The upsurge of R&D development becomes quite obvious from Figure 1, especially since

2005. From this year onwards, the effort made by the business sector – Enterprises –

clearly surpassed universities’, most of which were subject to public funding. Soon

afterwards, in 2009, the effects of the crisis were felt: cuts to R&D activities in business

started to increase, and the global effort of this institutional sector fell in 2014 to a value

comparable to that achieved 8 years earlier, in 2006. Severe restrictions in funding were

also imposed for R&D in universities and their research centers, as well as for

government-run laboratories of the sector, for which retrograded by about 17 years due to

a decrease in funding.

Nevertheless, some of the leading outputs of the R&D process, such as the number of

scientific publications per 100,000 inhabitants, continued to increase (albeit at a more

moderate rate), especially in the areas of Health, Engineering, and other “Exact Sciences”.

The number of researchers (FTE) per institutional sector showed a very varied pattern: it

decreased systematically in the government sector, and by 2014 its value was even less

than the corresponding one for the initial year of the statistical series - 1982! In the

business sector the evolution oscillated considerably, but in 2014 the overall decrease

seemed to have been reverted. In higher education, it almost stagnated between 2008

and 2012, and has demonstrated an oscillating trend since then. We must emphasize that

Portuguese researchers have not only suffered from unemployment, but especially from

very unstable and highly deteriorated work contractual conditions, a feature which the

newly-elected Socialist government has as a high priority in its agenda.

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Accordingly, there is a reason to state that Portuguese researchers are not only very

resilient, but are especially highly qualified, whose performance carried on increasing,

despite economic and ideological restrictions.

In higher education and advanced studies, the trend has been quite negative. The

percentage of 1st Cycle grant-assisted students decreased sharply between 2009 and

2012, both in public and private universities.

Figure 2 very efficiently describes the situation regarding PhD grants, showing that the

number of PhD grants allocated has decreased to a value close to that of 2004,

representing a setback of about 8 years:

Figure 2:

As a consequence of such a policy, the number of graduates of the 1st and 2nd Cycles in

Portuguese higher education notably decreased: by 4.7% for the 1st Cycle in public

universities, and 18.8% in private universities, from 2012-2013 to 2013-2014; and the

average global number of Masters graduates decreased by about 8.8% during the same

period. The corresponding average decrease for all PhD programmes was about 5%

(DGEEC 2016).

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3. A tentative theoretical explanation

So far, we believe that we have shed enough light on the importance of the role played by

Portuguese public institutions in the process of knowledge development. Neo-institutional

theories can help us explain some of the more striking features of this influence.

Contrary to what is mostly taken for granted, the institutions governing education are

contingent and are subject to criticism. They do not – or should not – evolve following an

isomorphic pattern, rather they should redefine and readjust their mission and working

methodologies in order to retain their efficiency in the changing and unstable frameworks

that we face nowadays. Accordingly, there is no design of an institution can maintain its

level of performance forever.

With regards to institutions governing education and research in Portugal, inertia

characterizes some of the most important institutional factors. That is the case, for

example, of the lasting separation between the Ministry for Education and the Ministry for

Science, Technology, and Higher Education, which is mostly a result of a persistent model

of staff organization which is no longer adequate. In the old days of very high illiteracy

rates, such as in the 70´s and 80’s, there was a reason for keeping the Ministry of

Education autonomous, however, after the positive evolution which we have described

above, the adequate institutional design should now consider the integration of the

different institutions for skills development and knowledge building. This same

organizational inertia, in parallel with different models and sources of funding, is also

responsible for the partition of responsibilities relative to apprenticeship in vocational

education among the Ministries of Education, Economy, and Labour. We could advance

numerous other examples which illustrate the main obstacles to the development of a true

knowledge strategy in Portugal.

According to neo-institutional theorists, institutional design must be checked against the

successive challenges that institutions have to face. For two among of these challenges

facing the institutions governing research are especially important to meet, namely:

increasing accountability, towards national and international (mostly EU) commitments,

and diversity of research institutions Meyer& Rowan (2006) and their agents. Increased

competitiveness and accountability requirements impose the adoption of adequate

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accountability rules and the launching of scientifically irreproachable public research

contests, whose evaluation processes need to be subject to highly qualified peer-review

panels, amongst other factors. The diversity of research institutions and sectors –

government laboratories, research centers, universities, the business sector, and non-

profit research organizations, for instance – calls for an overall regulation process which

can be supported by a vision of the whole knowledge system and the nature of the

articulations among its composite institutions. In other words, it strongly depends on the

existence of a strategy for skills’ and knowledge’ development.

In either domain, FCT clearly failed during the previous right-wing government, as we have

described. According to neo-institutionalist authors, the evaluation of public research

institutions and their global articulation should nevertheless go beyond the performance

criteria described above. Knowledge is, actually, an arena where power and conflict of

interests are always present (Brown, M. (2015). Likewise, one should investigate which

kind of specific goals public policies and research institutions are mainly pursuing, and

which groups are more favoured by them.

As a matter of fact, the previous Portuguese government was conditioned by a neo-liberal

ideology, according to which “There Is (was) No Alternative” (TINA) to the strict control of

the public deficit. Accordingly, the latter objective suppressed the pursuit of all other social

goals, and imposed severe cuts on education and research funding and completely

distorted the equilibrium among the scientific areas, yet, of course, this strategy obediently

respected the EU rules and treaties. However, we also need to examine the other face of

the coin: by giving priority in funding to projects and research centers where engineering,

technological and health sciences predominate, FCT and public research policies clearly

favoured the marketable outputs of research, thereby reinforcing the business sector and

international business. At the same time, this contributed to marginalizing more and more

social and human sciences, that is to say, those scientific domains from where political

criticism usually comes.

Accordingly, science and knowledge development evolved inside elite groups and were

kept apart from the general population. This result derives, of course, from the

politicization of science throughout the neo-liberal ideology professed by the Social

Democratic and Christian Democratic parties which formed the government coalition and

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which pursued truly partisan politics (Jungblut, 2016). The coalition proceeded with the

adoption and reinforcement of official knowledge within universities and research centers,

being a fundamental vehicle for the submission of public institutions’ mission and values to

the whims of the market. FCT strongly contributed to this aim, as we have already

described, but did not manage to overcome the conflicts of interests which arose between

researchers’ freedom and scientific truth, and the aims of the increased competitiveness

both in national and international research settings.

4.- New developments and concluding remarks

In November 2015, a new coalition among Socialist, Communist and left-wing parties won

the elections in Portugal. The Socialist Minister for Science, Technology, and Higher

Education (MSTHE) had been the President of FCT during the Socialist governments

when Mariano Gago was the Minister. Through the constitution of his cabinet, the current

Minister is trying to recuperate most of the work previously carried out by previous

Socialist governments, and above all the conception of science and knowledge as being

truly social and democratic assets. This mission was already clearly stated in the Socialist

party’s electoral manifest which the other coalition parties supported as well.

Under the overall banner “Knowledge for All” (“Conhecimento para todos”), several

national meetings open to the public participation have been held, and the 1st Meeting of

the European Innovation Council was also hosted by Portugal recently. Among the leading

principles which guide “Knowledge for All”, one can read that:

“The access to science and knowledge becomes indispensable for the building of a society

which has to be better informed and deeply aware of the surrounding world, but has also

to be more humanised, with greater justice and democracy, and where well-being can be

accessible to everyone. The access to knowledge, together with the ensured access to

education and training, are not only fundamental rights, but also decisive factors in

enhancing social mobility and valorisation, as well as leading to democratisation factors

that are indispensable for today’s democratic societies” (MCTES 2016, own translation).

The above sentence expresses a conception of knowledge and science which is clearly at

odds with the previous government’s one.

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Still within the framework of “Knowledge for All”, the new MSTHE has launched the “Public

Participation Laboratories” (“Laboratórios de Participação Pública - LPP) programme. The

purpose of this kind of institution is to encourage people and communities to participate in

open debate about public policies for research and technology, in order for them to

become aware of their potential role in local development, as well as improving the

process of knowledge diffusion. The first LPP has been planned for the Trás-os-Montes

region, in the northeastern part of the country, and some others are about to be launched

in other regions. Very recently, and in compliment to the LPP policy, government and

research public institutions are proposing and discussing with local authorities the

possibility of developing participatory budgeting for science and research, which is an

initiative which is still in its infancy.

One of the first measures adopted by the actual MSTHE (MCTES) was the reform of FCT

and the substitution of its governing board, after an evaluation process for which involved

both national and international experts. The results of the redesign of this institution are

already evident with regards to the de-bureaucratization and clarity and rigour of the

eligibility criteria, which has thus eased the application process for researchers and

research centers for grants and public contests for funding.

Besides this initiative, other important measures are in the process of being implemented,

among which we select the following public policies and decisions:

- Commitment to Knowledge and Science (Compromisso com o Conhecimento e a

Ciência): whose mission defines the commitment to knowledge as a structural and

lasting governmental goal, to be supported by a multi-annual funding plan, the

development of autonomous and robust scientific institutions, and the forging of

scientific employment, with the aim of systematic progress towards the boundary of

knowledge, in order to be able to meet the societal, financial, and cultural challenges

that are faced by the country, and also by Europe (adapted translation);

- With regards to the new FCT eligibility criteria: these have to encompass from now

on the possibility of opening new research institutions, the reinforcement of existing

laboratories with a special emphasis on the State-owned ones, and the launching of

“collaborative laboratories”. The latter, which are a new kind of research institution,

are especially devoted to the articulation and merger between science (mostly

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engineering and technologies) and the social, productive and artistic layers of

Portuguese society, as well as with the public administration (adapted translation);

- Accountability: a new overall evaluation of research institutions is to take place in

2017. The criteria and mission of its scientific board have already been designed,

which embrace very strict and rigorous methodologies to support the participation of

invited external experts, the composition of evaluation panels, and the writing of a

final very detailed report wich will be discussed within the scientific community.

Furthermore, the process of the general evaluation of the Portuguese Scientific

System is already in place, which is controlled in partnership with the OECD and the

Portuguese MSTHE.

Let us now draw some Concluding Remarks. There is no doubt that a new conception

of the process of knowledge development has been reintroduced by the current

governmental executive. This conception is rooted in the principles of former Socialist

governments and their ideology, for which knowledge development has to be a pre-

requisite for democratic development. Accordingly, the benefits of knowledge must be

adequately diffused, in order for them to become widely-known and accessible to

society as a whole. Only by this means will it be possible to implement the progressive

appropriation of science and knowledge by all of society.

The global view of the current strategy for knowledge development appears to be

clearly defined and adhered to by the present executive. At least, this is what we can

infer from the successive initiatives in science and technology which have been

described above, although, to date, few results are already available. Those initiatives

that require articulated action between ministries, especially between the MSTHE and

the Ministry for Education, are now more frequent, and they point to the non-existence

of notable conceptual divergence between them both.

Nevertheless, institutional inertia seems to remain an important aspect of the

Portuguese knowledge system. The persisting divide between ministries and public

agencies responsible for skills and knowledge development has not been tackled yet,

mostly on account of the strong resistance and traditions of the different institutional

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cultures and values embedded in each institution. As we have seen, the institutions are

treated as one and all, rather they are compelled to re-design and re-define their

missions, values and methodologies as new challenges appear. If they do not do this,

they will no longer be efficient, but will rather become an obstacle to knowledge

development.

In our opinion, institutional change is the most important task that the MSTHE has to

carry out, as it is already beginning to happen with FCT. Inertia in organization models

and personal seniority leads to very resilient lobbies within ministries and other public

departments, together with the permanence of a heritage of ill-defined career and

retirement policies, which all contribute to delaying the modernization of institutions, and

a deep change in invested group interests, which it will inevitably bring about.

Accordingly, a lot of work has yet to be done in progressing the path towards a true and

systematic scientific culture, which is a key foundation for the process of knowledge

democratization.

References

Apple, M.W. (2014, 3rd. Ed.). Official Knowledge – Democratic education in a

conservative age. New York: Routledge.

Assembleia da República (1976). Constituição da República Portuguesa.

(www.parlamento.pt).

Brown, Mark, B. (2015). Politicizing science: Conceptions of politics in science

and technology studies. Social Studies of Science, 2015, Vol 45(1), 3-30.

Candeias, A.F. (2016). Mariano Gago, um fazedor de pontes. Arquivo de Ciência

e Tecnologia da Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, 2016 (www.act.fct.p).

Direcção Geral de Estatísticas de Educação e Ciência (2016). Expenditure in

R&D by Sector of Performance. (www.dgeec.mctes.pt).

Direcção Geral de Estatísticas de Educação e Ciência (2016). Estatísticas da

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