Ideas and instruments in public research funding

Ideas and instruments pervade public policies. Ideas are cognitive and emotional beliefs about the direction of policies and goals, while instruments are the means to realize ideas. Both, however, evolve through a deep process of reciprocal influence, a phenomenon also seen in public research funding (PRF). Decades of evolution from the “old social contract for science” to new contracts evaluating performance demonstrate how new ideas (what PRF should achieve) and new instruments (funding approaches) become adopted. This chapter examines this relationship by using public policy literature to define ideas and instruments; it also shows how PRF instruments are not just neutral, goal-oriented means but also political devices for specific policy preferences. Historical instruments are institutions that constrain the behaviour of decisionmakers and scientists because they have “value per se”; consequently, new ideas and instruments cannot create a common template due to the intrinsic mix of policy paradigms in PRF.