IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/srbeha/v42y2025i3p702-712.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Political and economic instrumentalisation of science: Towards an extended concept of corruption

Author

Listed:
  • Krešimir Žažar
  • Steffen Roth

Abstract

Popular perception holds that science has been distorted by the pressure of expectations of economic utility or political desirability. Grounded in Niklas Luhmann's system theory, this paper examines the interplay of the political, economic and scientific subsystem of society to scrutinise the idea that science has been corrupted by economy and politics. To this end, we extend the notion of corruption beyond the common, predominantly legal meaning. As a result, we identify organisations as loci of corruptions that can occur at the interfaces of economy, politics and law as much as at the interfaces of science, education and economy or science, politics and health. We conclude that further conceptual and empirical research on these and similar cases of corruption is a worthy scientific goal.

Suggested Citation

  • Krešimir Žažar & Steffen Roth, 2025. "Political and economic instrumentalisation of science: Towards an extended concept of corruption," Systems Research and Behavioral Science, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 702-712, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:srbeha:v:42:y:2025:i:3:p:702-712
    DOI: 10.1002/sres.3001
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/sres.3001
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/sres.3001?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:srbeha:v:42:y:2025:i:3:p:702-712. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/1092-7026 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.