Convergence and dissimilarity: centralisation of power, but variationin practices in STEM in academia cross-nationally

This paper is concerned with providing an analytical understanding of the way decision-making power works in higher level education and research institutes cross-nationally. It draws on documentary and interview data from a purposive sample of twenty-five people involved in power structures in academic organizations in Ireland, Turkey and Italy. Drawing particularly on Lukes’ (2005, 1974) work it looks first at the centralization of power at the level of strategy and resource allocation. It then identifies three kinds of practices that obscure that centralization: ‘talking shops’; loyalty to positional power holders and the absence of alternatives. In contrast to the similarities existing cross-nationally in the centralization of power, there was evidence of some local variation in such practices. Local variation also existed in the perceived legitimacy of power in general, with Irish women being most likely to make visible gendered power in particular.