What do academic metrics do to political scientists? Theorizing their roots, locating their effects

This article argues that it is pertinent to situate academic metrics (journal, institutions and individual scholars’ rankings and ratings) within the broader logic of neoliberal government, in order to better identify and understand the impact of these metrics on political scientists’ perceptions, behaviours and identities. The results of a pilot survey conducted among political scientists in the United Kingdom and Belgium are used in order to further expose this impact. More precisely, we claim that although metrics are widely seen as a core element of a broader and undesirable political agenda, their repeated use leads to their endorsement, shapes and standardizes individual strategies, and shifts the codes of academic identity to the point of eroding academics’ sense of purpose and permeating their judgements about colleagues.