Science Policy in Portugal: The Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica (INIC)

Like many of its European counterparts, the Portuguese Scientific System went through a radical transformation throughout the 20th Century. To a limited extent, these changes were a response to some internal pressures (Higher Education and Colonial Enterprises) and in tune with the international/European tendency for the development of transnational policies and practices. These transformations accelerate from 1976 onwards, with the Carnation Revolution (1974), when the country transitioned from the Estado Novo fascist regime to a democratic system. These transformations were shaped by a plethora of State Institutions with distinct missions and objectives (often overlapping or conflicting) through a very dynamic and complex process which ran parallel with the maturation of the Portuguese democratic political system. In my dissertation, I follow one of these institutions, the Instituto Nacional de Investigação Científica (INIC), that, in light of the Actor-Network Theory Framework can be seen, not as a mere intermediary, like current historiography portrays it but, as an influential mediator, deeply entangled and influential in the complex institutional dialogue from which the present Portuguese Scientific Research System emerged.