2022
Cairn
Audrey Harroche, « Excellence initiatives. The result of “winner-take-all policies“ in higher education? », Revue française de science politique, ID : 10670/1.918163...
The “Initiatives of Excellence” (Idex) are one of the latest reforms in higher education. These initiatives are calls for projects that concentrate additional resources on a dozen university sites, with a view to developing French institutions capable of competing with the best universities in the world. In this article, we study the progressive strengthening of a university board of directors that developed, supported, and administered a successful Idex project. More precisely, this project turned out to be a configuration comparable to winner-take-all policies, in so far as the site and the actors in question systematically emerged strengthened by the alignment between their program and the reforms deployed in higher education during the 2000s.