Autocrats and Academia: How Dictatorship Affects Science

• In Event: Education, Civil Society, and Autocracy

Abstract

It is commonly assumed that universities and science operate differently in dictatorships than in democracies. Yet, little systematic evidence has been brought to bear on this question. While much historical work documents how autocratic regimes crack down on institutions of higher learning, we know little about the general patterns linking autocracy to universities and their output (scientific research). We study how dictatorships differ from democracies in terms of how they approach universities and scientific production. We combine information on universities and regime variation between 1789 and 2018, and also look at patterns of scientific production (using the entire ISI Web of Science) from 1960 until today. We find that autocracies build fewer universities and have significantly lower scientific output than democracies. We also explore the type of science produced in dictatorships, finding that they produce less social science and humanistic academic work than democracies. We explore a range of additional questions, looking at the type of articles produced, the location of elite universities, and how different kinds of autocracies affect scientific output differently.

Authors

• Tore Wig, University of Oslo

• Sirianne Dahlum, Peace Research Institute Oslo

• Haakon Gjerløw, Peace Research Institute Oslo