by Jelena Branković and Norbert Šabić 

The recent publication of the Centre for Education Policy deals with current trends and insights from the field of scientific research. The aim behind the study was to provide an informative comparison of policy developments, financing and performance in the three countries which were once part of the former Socialist Federative Republic of Yugoslavia: Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia.

It explores extensively the degree to which financing as a policy instrument is conducive to the development of scientific research within these countries.

The book offers empirical data on research policy, funding and performance, which can be of use for future policymaking in the three countries, as well as useful for international institutions and organisations approaching or seeking to enhance their understanding of the research systems under study.

Differing relationship between the state and research organisations

Using the principal-agent model as the analytical framework, the authors conclude that even though the studied countries had the same departure point – the one of the former Yugoslavia, today, the relationship between the state and research organisations in these countries demonstrate different characteristics. While the Slovenian government has handed over the role of the principal to an independent agency and Croatia is beginning to follow suit, Serbia still operates a basic delegation model, which enables a direct relationship between the policy maker and the research providers.

Converging research policy

The study also reveals that in the decade after 2000, scientific research in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia followed a convergence trajectory with regard to their main policy lines. This trend is most notably a result of European integration which leads to an increasing emulation of the EU-level policies, but also the result of the recognition that science plays an important role in economic growth. However, path dependency remains an important element of policy development, and therefore the regulatory frameworks of these countries represent a mixture of the Yugoslav socialist legacy and experimentation with new solutions, described as a result of policy learning.

Research funding – public or private?

With regards to financing, Serbia and Croatia are still extracting most of their research resources from the government and higher education sector, while Slovenia increasingly relies on the business sector. A similar pattern is observed when it comes to the sector in which R&D is performed, and here Slovenian businesses are the most research active, while Croatian and, even more so, Serbian businesses, are lagging behind both Slovenia and the EU average.

When it comes to the non-business sector, in all three countries the state is still the dominant funding provider, which makes it very difficult for researchers in public organisations to avoid being instrumentalised by the state as the principal. The authors, therefore, argue that the role of the state is as big as the resources coming from it are. The less it directly contributes, while stimulating other potential principals’ entering the stage, the more responsive researchers should become, given that this would intensify their interaction with a diverse set of principals, each one of them having a different agenda. Slovenia is the only one of the three countries which marked a considerable growth in research investment in the previous decade (notable rise in GERD per capita, in current PPP$), yet neither of the two other countries marked an overall drop in investments (either relative or absolute).

Research production on the rise

Interestingly, research productivity in terms of bibliometric indicators and number of projects in all three countries seems to be on the rise. The same goes for the internationally recognised domestic journals. Yet in relative terms, given the differences in the size of these countries, their GDP, GERD, or number of researchers, the number of publications indicates that Serbia lags behind Croatia, which, again, lags behind Slovenia – the smallest and the most scientifically productive country of the three.

However, as bibliometric data is an indicator of research activity predominantly in the non-business sector, it tells us little about outcomes, i.e. the actual effect scientific research has on countries’ economies and their growth. In this respect, Slovenia stands out as an example of a research-intensive business sector, while Serbia lies at the other extreme with very limited R&D activity financed and conducted by the business sector.

The whole book is available for  downloaded from the webpage of the Centre for Education Policy