The Power of Rankings in Economics and Research Organizations

Discourses around research excellence and quality are predominant within the economic sciences, with various forms of ranking playing a central role. They make "excellence" in research and teaching visible, but they also create hierarchical orders between researchers, institutions, publication outlets and countries.

Autorentext

Stephan Pühringer is a socio-economist and Deputy Head of the Institute for Comprehensive Analysis of Economy (ICAE) at the University of Linz, Austria, and is heading the Socio-Ecological- Transformation Lab there.

Jens Maesse is Senior Researcher (PD Dr habil) in the Department of Sociology at the University of Giessen (Germany).

Thierry Rossier is Senior Researcher at the Life Course and Inequality Centre (LIVES) of the University of Lausanne and Visiting Fellow in the Department of Sociology, London School of Economics.

Inhalt

Introduction 1. The power of rankings in economics and research organizations: an introduction Part I: Rankings and the formation of social hierarchies 2. Why are economists obsessed with rankings? An empirical and theoretical exploration of a field-specific preoccupation 3. Varieties of Truth Games: how economists produce different forms of true knowledge between ranking evaluations and political expertise 4.The Network Determinants of Publishing in Top 5 Journals. Evidence from the Swiss Field of Economics Professors (1991-2020) 5. Gendered Competitive Practices in Economics. A Multi-Layer Model of Women's Underrepresentation PART II: Rankings and their impact on paradigmatic hegemony 6.On the relationship between society, metrification, and paradigmatic monism in economics 7. "Cream of the crop" A prosopographical analysis of the top 150 economists in the RePEc ranking 8. Rankings in relation to mathematical modeling and scientific understanding in economics PART III: Excellence policies and regulations through rankings: Critical Approaches 9. Evaluating research organisations: Public policy and the search for excellence in the trajectory of the Portuguese Science and Technology system 10. Organizers and promoters of academic competition? The role of (academic) social networks and platforms in the competitization of science 11. What are the disciplines of excellence?The case of the French Excellence Initiatives. 12. A Field Theory Approach to the Critical Study of Global University Rankings