Policy path dependence of a research agenda: the case of Chile in the aftermath of the student revolt of 2011

Abstract

The rapidly shifting higher education policy agenda in the aftermath of the students' movement of 2011 in Chile and its mismatch with Chile's research capacities in the field of higher education studies are analyzed to illustrate how research is path dependent on policy. I argue that a stable policy environment, where change is only marginal or incremental, begets research problems and questions squarely situated within the boundaries of the established rules of the game. Conversely, whenever policy swerves considerably off its expected path, knowledge may not be available to illuminate policy-making. The motif of disassociation between the policy field in the making with the availability of knowledge to support it is probed via the analysis of two policy proposals currently in Chile's new government agenda: introducing tuition-free higher education and assuming greater state oversight of teacher education programs.

Keywords:

• path-dependency
• institutional economics
• policy analysis
• institutional change
• scholarly communities
• research policy

Acknowledgment

This work was supported by the Chile's Consejo Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica (CONICYT) under Grant number CIE-01.

Notes

1. The search was done using the following field codes: AFFILCOUNTRY(chile) AND TITLE-ABS-KEY(“higher education”). The results were then filtered to exclude papers where higher education was not topical, and manually classified into groupings based on the articlés title. The thematic groupings were defined by me and do not correspond to Scopus groupings.

2. The centers' websites are: CICES, http://www.usach.cl/cices; CPCE, www.cpce.cl and CEPPE, www.ceppe.cl.