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When Patronage Meets Meritocracy: Or, The Italian Academic Concorso As Cockfight

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2012

David Moss
David Moss*
Affiliation:
School of Cultural Inquiry, The Australian National University, Canberra [[email protected]].
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Abstract

For more than a century the processes of making academic appointments to Italian universities have regularly made news – bad news. The charges are serious: abuses of professorial power, collusion to fix outcomes in advance, favouritism to loyal followers, tolerance of mediocrity, indifference to scholarly merit. None of the many modifications to the selection rules between 1865 and 2010 has been reckoned effective in extirpating corruption and entrenching meritocracy. Drawing on participant observation of appointment processes in anthropology, I shall question the extent to which they do indeed represent a straightforward example of corruption. In particular, by considering both the formal rules and the academic community which has to use them to reproduce itself, I shall explore the possibility that the practices branded “corrupt” might more often be interpreted as efforts to reward merit rather than as conspiracies to flout it.

Keywords

PatronageMeritocracyCorruptionItalyPatronageMéritocracieCorruptionItaliePatronageLeistungsgesellschaftKorruptionItalien
Type
Research Articles
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 53 , Issue 2 , August 2012 , pp. 205 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © A.E.S. 2012

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