ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some knowledge-bearing institutions, the ideal case of which is the university. As the semantic preliminaries suggest, sensible talk about the governance of knowledge requires an identification of the relevant institutional vehicles of knowledge production. The identity of knowledge as a public good strengthened with the consolidation of the nation-state in the nineteenth century, culminating in the welfare states of the second half of the twentieth century. Without explicit attention to the institutional vehicles of knowledge governance, debates over whether knowledge producers should govern themselves or be subject to external control are bound to be radically underdetermined in terms of policy implications. Thus, as researchers, academics create social capital because intellectual innovation necessarily begins life as an elite product available only to those on the cutting edge. As the competition for consumers intensifies, marketing costs rise, perhaps even overtaking production costs.
