El rol del COFECYT en la federalización de la ciencia y la tecnología en Argentina

Abstract

This article describes and analyzes the process of federalization of science and technology carried out by the Federal Council of Science and Technology (COFECYT). Federalization is defined as the process of decentralizing decisions and deconcentrating resources. Accordingly we focus on changes in both COFECYT’s structure and decision-making process as well on descriptive statistics of research projects funded in calls for proposals. From its origin on, COFECYT was oriented to socio-productive problems, enabling the dialogue of actors in the territory, an aspect aligned with federalization processes, while the funding policy of distribution of the same amount of resources to each province, notwithstanding its impact on subnational effective decision-making processes, is still waiting for a discussion of truly equitable criteria for the distribution of resources.