Deirdre McCloskey wrote: 
"It is startling to a North American to realize how heavily
bureaucratized the administration of academic life in Europe is, and has
been since the foundation of the Grands Ecoles and the University of
Berlin.  As you say, non-specialist bureaucrats make decisions about
allocation of university funds among and inside universities, as for
example in the Netherlands.  But I suggest more than expressions of
outrage, as justified as those might be.  Can't we find out what these
mad ranking schemes are and do, scientifically speaking?"


Though I agree it is important to find out what ranking schemes do (and
there is quite some literature on this, as noted in other postings), I
am less sanguine about the contrast drawn here between "heavily
bureaucratized" Europe and the apparently less bureaucratized system in
North America. To my knowledge, and as detailed in recent studies just
in our field, "non-specialist bureaucrats" at the Pentagon and in large
companies (America by Design) were and are making decisions about
allocations of resources for research with quite some consequences and
in a less transparent way than is at least suggested by some of the
bureaucratized systems in Europe. Whatever demerits journal ranking
lists have, let me note one thing ranking schemes do in my country (The
Netherlands). They protect historians and methodologists of economics in
the Netherlands from being squeezed out by economists who try to emulate
what they think is good, i.e. Chicago style, economics. An unintended
consequence indeed: most of the Dutch economists won't read our work,
but the lists keep us posted; they serve as an externalized,
quasi-objective memory that there is more to economics than Chicago.
It's never something stable though and we (as historians) have to be
constantly aware about any changes in these lists that are suggested and
seldom to the good. As I see it, suggestions to just ignore those lists
and to read one another's work (which is a good thing, but who is reading
what and why?) is ignoring the politics of science that is there anyway.

Harro Maas