Autocrats and the Academy: How Dictatorship Shapes Scientific Output

• In Event: Outputs of Autocracy: Policy and Inequality

Abstract

How is science and higher learning affected by dictatorship? 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 (research). We study how dictatorships differ from democracies in terms of scientific production across 12 different scientific fields. We combine publication data from the ISI Web of science 1950-2019 with information on universities and regime variation, to explore how dicatorships shape scientific output. We find that dictatorships depress production in specific fields, such as social science, while they remain unrelated to other fields such as mathematics. We utilize a researcher-level database on scientific output in universities in Turkey, 1989-2018 to explore mechanisms.

Authors

• Tore Wig, University of Oslo

• Sirianne Dahlum, Peace Research Institute Oslo

• Haakon Gjerløw, Peace Research Institute Oslo