ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses some assumptions that position the empirical case study, and contextualize them using the existing research literature. These assumptions refer to different levels of the European Research Area's (ERA's) given social structure: Its position in a global framework and structured relations among its members; at country level of public science systems and at local level of universities and departments; among scientific disciplines and research fields; and between social groups of researchers. For each of these structures, supranational research funding by the newly introduced European Research Council (ERC) has particular consequences. The extent to which historical path-dependencies of traditional science systems are compatible with a general pressure towards Europeanization and internationalization of science, depends on their geopolitical location in an anticipated centre-periphery-structure. The more pronounced the institutionalized differentiation of research from other tasks of public science within a national research landscape, the more competitively research-oriented institutions and their respective national research system perform in the supranational grant competition too.
