The Swedish national research programs are thematic research programs centred around important social challenges. They are broad and long-term research programs that are posed somewhere half-way between undirected, bottom-up research, and “mission-driven” research focused on specific targets and aims. Hence, the exact content and effects of these programs depend very much on their specific implementation, both at the level of national funders, and among researchers.
I leverage the fact that such research programs have been distributed among three different government research funding agencies, and that these agencies work with very different modes of implementing them. Differences include, for example, who has the final say about funding calls within the programs, who is invited to take part in the specific formulation of the strategic research agendas, to what extent researchers are obliged to cooperate with non-academic organisations, and what leeway administrators at the agencies have in forming the programs.
Questions of loyalty, power and identities are raised in such research programs. The questions I raise in my project include both why different funders differ so much in their approach, and what effects this has for the kind of research that is afforded.
