Abstract
Develops a model of academic clientelism that contrasts with the universalistic model of science often identified with Robert K. Merton, who applied the term to US political machines. But universities, especially in the US, have seldom been examined from a clientelistic perspective. Such an analysis is shocking & may seem to imply corruption in deviating from the model of science where ideas reign supreme. Still, by international standards, universalism is the outlier. And after 1968, the US system moved toward clientelism. Most national university systems are enmeshed in national politics & ideological debate & are organizationally centralized on the national government. Such structural characteristics encourage academic clientelism, which is probably widespread in much of the world. As resources decline, however, horizontal mobility declines, localism rises, & clientelism grows. The US system is still an outlier, more decentralized, competitive, & universalistic than most national systems, though it lost some of this from the 1960s to the 1990s. This is attributed to the fact that it has (1) fewer resources per researcher (especially in social science), (2) less horizontal mobility, which brings (3) more localism, & (4) more clientelism. The success of Columbia sociology is used to illustrate the points.