European Union

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This is what Prime Minister, Theresa May, said about Brexit and Scotland back in April last year, when she was Home Secretary and (allegedly) pro-Remain:

“..if Brexit isn’t fatal to the European Union, we might find that it is fatal to the Union with Scotland. The SNP have already said that in the event that Britain votes to leave but Scotland votes to remain in the EU, they will press for another Scottish independence referendum.

“And the opinion polls show consistently that the Scottish people are more likely to be in favour of EU membership than the people of England and Wales.

“If the people of Scotland are forced to choose between the United Kingdom and the European Union we do not know what the result would be.

“But only a little more than eighteen months after the referendum that kept the United Kingdom together, I do not want to see the country I love at risk of dismemberment once more.

“I do not want the people of Scotland to think that English Eurosceptics put their dislike of Brussels ahead of our bond with Edinburgh and Glasgow.

“I do not want the European Union to cause the destruction of an older and much more precious Union, the Union between England and Scotland…

“We should remain in the EU.”

• Theresa May’s speech against Brexit – full text 25 April 2016 

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Olivier Bégin-Caouette

In the Europe of Knowledge, there are strong pressures on national governments to increase funding for research; one of Europe 2020’s headline indicators is to increase combined public and private investment in R&D to the equivalent of 3% of the GDP (see graph below). Beyond the amount of resources invested, it appears critical for both scholars and policymakers to question whether funding coming from different sources or taking different forms have a similar impact.

Progress towards investing 3% of GDP in research and development in EU member states. Source: European Commission

 

Focusing our analysis on four Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden), public funding and research produced in academic settings, we have attempted to analyze the impact of four funding streams, according to the perspectives of actors located within different levels of the higher education systems. Complementing studies based on bibliometric data, our actor-centered approach aimed at grasping the multifaceted and complex phenomenon of research production in a holistic manner. Part of a lager study (see also Bégin-Caouette, 2016), our recent article ‘The perceived impact of research funding streams on the level of scientific knowledge production in the Nordic higher education systems’ published in Science and Public Policy (Bégin-Caouette, Kalpazidou Schmidt, and Field, 2017) relied on a MANOVA processed on 456 questionnaires and a thematic analysis processed on 56 interview transcripts to explore how actors perceived the impact of four funding streams, defined as the funding flows at the actor level including various instruments and consisting in an intermediary layer between public authorities and researchers (Lepori et al., 2007): block funding, competitive funding, excellence funding and strategic funding.

 

The quality, equity and efficiency of funding streams

Analyzing the average survey scores obtained by the four funding streams, we noted that all streams obtained positive scores, but that, in all countries, competitive funding (defined as funding allocated to researchers based on “traditional” a peer-review process) was perceived as having the greatest impact. On the contrary, strategic funding (defined as a stream stimulating research in specific predefined areas) obtained the lowest scores in all countries but Sweden where it tied with excellence funding (defined as long-term peer-reviewed funding to groups of researchers).

 

Funding arrangements in Nordic countries have for long being characterized by a large block funding, and participants from all countries and at all levels confirmed it contributed to an equitable distribution of funding, and that equity was linked to the quality of the research produce since no funding body can know in advance where groundbreaking discoveries will occur (Öquist and Benner, 2012). Block funding based on performance measures would also increase research production in an efficient way since the small premium would create a signaling effect and generate symbolic capital for high achievers (Bloch and Schneider, 2016).

 

The competitive stream was perceived positively across countries because it enhanced quality research in an equitable manner since researchers from all institutions and disciplines could apply. It was however also perceived as being increasingly inefficient because of the diminishing acceptance rates, the correlated ‘Matthew Effect’ (Langfeldt et al., 2013) and the burden of writing multiple applications (von Hippel and von Hippel, 2015). Participants made similar comments regarding an excellence stream, which, despite concerns over equity and efficiency, would enhance the quality of the research production by being more stable, facilitating further grant applications (Bloch and Schneider, 2016) and fostering a critical mass of researchers (Bloch and Sorensen, 2015). Whether commenting on the block, competitive or excellence streams, participants made an association between an equitable allocation of resources and efficiency in research production. Strategic funding, although at the core of multiple recent policy initiatives, was still perceived at the periphery of traditional academic research systems, becoming a niche for emerging areas with less academic prestige (Benner and Sörlin, 2007).

 

Differences between the four Nordic countries

The MANOVA comparing survey scores by countries revealed some small but significant differences. Finnish participants attributed less importance to block funding than their Danish and Swedish counterparts. Swedish participants, for their part, attributed less importance to excellence funding than their Finnish and Norwegian counterparts. Like previously noted by Öquist and Benner (2012), Swedish participants considered research funding as being decentralized, complex and contradictory. In Denmark, actors attributed significantly higher scores to the block stream, which does represent a higher percentage of their country’s HERD than in other countries. Our thematic analysis is consistent with Välimaa’s (2005) observation that Danish policymakers were more concerned about supporting basic research than innovation, and with Öquist and Benner’s (2012) remark that the Danish National Research Foundation had channeled a massive increase of funding into the excellence streams, thus contributing to the increase in publications and citations.

 

In Norway, the excellence stream mitigated the negative impact of a scattered competitive stream by stabilizing the research system, fostering strong interdisciplinary centers and allowing promising scholars to attract sufficient funding for path-breaking discoveries (Asknes et al., 2012). It is finally interesting to note that, although the strategic stream is particularly important in Finland and could accelerate the innovation process, participants did not think it had a strong positive impact on the level of academic research produced.

 

Implications

This study provides concrete example of how different funding arrangements intertwine with existing academic traditions and are interpreted differently by actors located in different contexts. Streams’ adequacy to countries’ culture, history, national environment, industrial R&D and military development could have as much impact as the amount of funding or the specificities of the instrument developed. Despite shortcomings regarding national nuances and differences in actors’ perceptions, our article suggests that funding streams are perceived to have the most impact when they are consistent with academic traditions and the norms regarding an open, equitable and meritocratic competition between scholars.

 

 

Olivier Bégin-Caouette, former Canada-Vanier Scholar, is a postdoctoral research at the Inter-University Center for Research on Science and Technology (CIRST), based at the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQÀM). He also holds a PhD in higher education (comparative, international and development education) from at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. His research focuses on interactions between political-economic structures and academic research production. He also held the position of visiting scholar at HEGOM (University of Helsinki) and the Danish Centre for Studies on Research and Research Policy (Aarhus University).

 

Evanthia Kalpazidou Schmidt is an associate professor and research director at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University, Denmark. Kalpazidou Schmidt´s research interests include European science policy and evaluation, science and society studies, higher education studies, and gender equality in science. She has been involved in a number of European Union funded projects and has frequently been engaged as expert in the evaluations of projects funded by the European Union.

 

Cynthia Field is a doctoral candidate in higher education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE), at the University of Toronto. Her research interests include institutional differentiation, academic drift, sessional faculty and the academic profession.

 

References

Asknes, D., Benner, M., Borlaug, S.B., Hansen, H.F., Kallerud, E.K., Kristiansen, E., Langfeldt, L., Pelkonen, A. and Sivertsen, G. (2012) ‘Centres of excellence in the Nordic countries’. Working Paper 4/2012. < http://www.nifu.no/publications/963610> accessed Jan 25 2017.

Bégin-Caouette, O. (2016). Building comparative advantage in the global knowledge society: Systemic factors contributing to academic research production in four Nordic higher education systems. In C. Sarrico, P. Texeira et al. (Eds).  Global Challenges, National Initiatives, and Institutional Responses: The Transformation of Higher Education, Edition: 9 (pp. 29-54). Netherlands: Sense Publisher.

Bégin-Caouette, O., Kalpazidou-Schmidt, E. & Field, C. (2017). The perceived impact of research funding streams on the level of scientific knowledge production in the Nordic higher education systems. Science and Public Policy. Doi: 10.1093/scipol/scx014.

Benner, M. and Sörlin, S. (2007). ‘Shaping strategic research: Power, resources and interests in Swedish research policy’. Minerva, 45(1): 31-48.

Bloch, C. and Schneider, J.W. (2016). ‘Performance-based funding models and researcher behavior: An analysis of the influence of the Norwegian Publication Indicator at the individual level’. Research Evaluation, 47(1): 1-13.

Bloch, C., Sørensen, M.P. (2015). ‘The size of research funding: Trends and implications’. Science and Public Policy, 42(1): 30-43.

Evans, L. (2015) ‘What academics want from their professors: Findings from a study of professorial academic leadership in the UK’. In U. Teichler and W. Cummings (eds.), Forming, Recruiting and Managing the Academic Profession, pp. 51-78. Dodrecht, the Netherlands: Springer.

Frølich, N. (2011). ‘Multi-layered accountability. Performance-based funding of universities’. Public Administration, 8(3), 840-859.

Langfeldt, L., Borlaug, S.B., Asknes, D., Benner, M., Hansen, H.F., Kallerud, E., Kristiansen, E., Pelkonen, A. and Sivertsen, G. (2013) ‘Excellence initiatives in Nordic research policies’. Working Paper 10/2013. <https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitstream/handle/11250/2358609/NIFUworkingpaper2013-10.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y> accessed Jan 25 2017.

Lepori, B., van den Besselaar, P. Dinges, M. Poti, B. Reale, E., Slipersæter, S., Thèves, J., and B. van der Meulen (2007), ‘Comparing the Evolution of National Research Policies: What Patterns of Change?’, Science and Public Policy: 34(6), July, pp. 372-388.

Öquist, G. and Benner, M. (2012) Fostering breakthrough research: A comparative study. Stockholm: Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

The Economist (2011) ‘Academic publishing: Of goats and headaches; One of the best media businesses is also one of the most resented’. Economist, 399(8735), 69. <http://www.economist. com/node/18744177> accessed Jan 22 2017.

Välimaa, J. (2005) ‘Globalization in the context of Nordic higher education’. In: A. Arimoto, F. Huang, and K. Yokoyama (eds.). Globalization and Higher Education, pp. 93-114. Higashi-Hiroshima, Japan: Research Institute for Higher Education and Hiroshima University.

Von Hippel, T., von Hippel, C. (2015) ‘To apply or not to apply: A survey analysis of grant writing costs and benefits’. PLoS One 10(3): doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0118494.

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Today’s big news is that Northern Ireland could get a special relationship with the EU to enable no-border with Ireland.

It’s being called “regulatory alignment” between Northern Ireland and the EU. Nobody is yet sure what that means.

But in any other name, it might be called staying in the EU Single Market.

Or in two words: the ‘Norway option’.

Of course, nothing about Brexit can be simple or straightforward. We will need to await further clarification (not just about this, but about all of Brexit. Nobody knows what Brexit means).

But on the face of it, it seems that the proposal is that Northern Ireland will have a ‘special relationship’ with the EU, but the rest of the UK won’t.

Immediately Nicola Sturgeon, the First Minister of Scotland, Tweeted to say:

‘If one part of UK can retain regulatory alignment with EU and effectively stay in the single market (which is the right solution for Northern Ireland) there is surely no good practical reason why others can’t.’

She later Tweeted:

‘If it’s not some kind of Norway status for whole UK, it must mean some kind of special deal for NI. Has to be one or the other. And if latter, why not also for Scotland, London & Wales (if it wants it)?’

Sadiq Khan, Mayor of London, Tweeted:

‘Huge ramifications for London if Theresa May has conceded that it’s possible for part of the UK to remain within the single market & customs union after Brexit. Londoners overwhelmingly voted to remain in the EU and a similar deal here could protect tens of thousands of jobs.’

The BBC’s Political Editor Tweeted,:

‘Scotland and Wales will be looking v. v. closely too – if NI can have special deal why can’t they?’

But the DUP – upon whom the Tory government relies upon to stay in power – were having none of it. They said it “will not accept” a deal on the Irish border being brokered by Prime Minister, Theresa May.

Arlene Foster, the DUP leader, ruled out accepting any move “which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom”.

She added:

“We have been very clear. Northern Ireland must leave the EU on the same terms as the rest of the United Kingdom.

“We will not accept any form of regulatory divergence which separates Northern Ireland economically or politically from the rest of the United Kingdom.

“The economic and constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom will not be compromised in any way.”

Brexit is unravelling. We knew it would, because it simply doesn’t make sense. It has not been thought through with any measure of forethought or intelligence.

To maintain an open border between Northern Ireland and Ireland almost certainly means that Northern Ireland would have to stay in the EU Single Market in all but name.

Tory Brexiters believe that a hard border could be avoided by the use of clever technology. But that is unlikely to be acceptable (or even achievable).

If Northern Ireland maintains a ‘special relationship’ with the EU, then why not Scotland, Wales, London – everywhere, with perhaps the exception of Boston, Great Yarmouth and Cornwall?

Either Brexit breaks up, or the United Kingdom breaks up. It seems now that it may come down to one, or the other.

There is an alternative, of course.

Let’s get back to normal. Let’s keep our Union of the United Kingdom intact, and our membership of the European Union intact.

Just think how much money we’ll save by just stopping this madness. Were things really so bad before 23 June 2016?

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EU Ministers for Transport, Infrastructure, and Communications meet on 4 and 5 December 2017 in Brussels to agree their position on an updated mandate for the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communication (BEREC). Ministers also look at the progress made on a proposal on ePrivacy and discuss draft rules on the free flow of non-personal data. On Tuesday, the Council takes stock of the progress made on the mobility package proposals relating to market access and social aspects and discusses the road charging proposals. Ministers look at the progress made on the proposal to safeguard competition in air transport. The Council is also due to adopt three sets of conclusions.

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EU Finance Ministers of the eurozone meet on 4 December 2017 in Brussels in two formats - the first part is a regular meeting of the euro area ministers, while the second part is a meeting of the ministers of 27 EU member states with the aim of preparing the December Euro Summit.

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EU Finance Ministers meet on 5 December 2017 in Brussels to discuss adoption of an EU list of non-cooperative jurisdictions for taxation matters, as well as digital taxation, VAT on electronic commerce and a number of banking proposals.

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Beijing wants to expand its "New Silk Road" and plans to invest roughly three billion Euros in infrastructural projects in Southeast Europe. A key goal is to speed up the transport of Chinese goods delivered via the Greek port of Piraeus to Central Europe. Journalists believe the cooperation could have drastic consequences for Europe and the existing world order.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on US President Trump's inner circle in the investigation into alleged Russian influence in Washington. Trump's former security adviser Michael Flynn admitted on Friday that he lied about his contacts with Russia. In the meantime media have reported that Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner encouraged Flynn to seek contact. What do these developments mean for US politics?

A trial in which the Turkish-Iranian businessman Reza Zarrab is testifying opened on 30 November in New York. Right at the start of the proceedings Zarrab gave evidence that compromises Turkish President Erdoğan and some of his close confidantes, claiming that they benefited or at least approved of transactions that were carried out in violation of the sanctions against Iran. The trial could prove dangerous for Turkey in several respects, commentators stress.

The nationalists have won a clear victory with 45.36 percent of the vote in the first round of the island's territorial election. The French president's La République En Marche! party dragged far behind with just 11.26 percent. If the nationalist alliance also wins the second round next Sunday it plans to secure an unprecedented level of autonomy for the island. Europe's press takes a closer look at the situation in Corsica.