The Cold War was not only a geopolitical standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union but also an epistemic war—a battle over who defines knowledge, what counts as truth, and how expertise is institutionalized. As ideological tensions escalated in the mid-20th century, science became a strategic asset and a symbol of national superiority. In the process, institutions of knowledge—universities, scientific bodies, funding agencies—were subtly, and sometimes overtly, reshaped by the logics of hegemony. This era laid the foundation for what scholars today call the institutionalization of epistemic power.
As ideological tensions escalated in the mid-20th century, science became a strategic asset and a symbol of national superiority. In the process, institutions of knowledge—universities, scientific bodies, funding agencies—were subtly, and sometimes overtly, reshaped by the logics of hegemony.
Epistemic power refers to the authority to define what is known and how it is known. During the Cold War, this power was monopolized primarily by Western liberal democracies, with the United States at the helm. Science and technology were marshaled for military purposes and as tools for ideological persuasion and global influence. The launching of Sputnik in 1957 by the Soviet Union shocked the West into accelerating its scientific investments, leading to the establishment of NASA and massive funding through the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Health (NIH). This institutional expansion was not value-neutral. It embedded specific norms—empiricism, objectivity, linear progress—that aligned with Western philosophical traditions and marginalized others.
At the international level, organizations like UNESCO, the World Bank, and the World Health Organization became arenas where epistemic power was exercised and institutionalized. Development programs often imported Western scientific models to the Global South, assuming their universality. Health interventions, for instance, were predicated on biomedical paradigms that downplayed indigenous knowledge systems. The idea of “modern science” was projected as both superior and politically neutral, though in practice, it was deeply entangled with Cold War politics.
A clear example of this institutional entanglement is the Green Revolution. Heavily funded by Western institutions such as the Rockefeller Foundation, it exported scientific agriculture—hybrid seeds, chemical fertilizers, and mechanized farming—to countries like India and Mexico. While it increased yields, it entrenched a top-down knowledge transfer model that favored Western scientific expertise and sidelined local agrarian knowledge. These epistemic hierarchies were justified through the language of progress, modernization, and rationality, thereby reinforcing Cold War hegemonies.
Universities became ideological battlegrounds, funded through programs like the Fulbright scholarships or American cultural centers abroad, promoting not just education but also political alignment
Academic disciplines were not immune either. The behavioral sciences, particularly psychology and economics, were shaped by Cold War imperatives. RAND Corporation’s work on decision and game theory exemplifies how scientific tools were molded to serve strategic military goals. Universities became ideological battlegrounds, funded through programs like the Fulbright scholarships or American cultural centers abroad, promoting not just education but also political alignment.
Since the late 20th century, neoliberalism has reshaped institutions across the globe—not merely through economic policy, but through the diffusion of rationalities that prioritize efficiency, competition, individual responsibility, and market-based governance. Nowhere is this transformation more evident than in the globalization of managerial logics: a technocratic mode of organization that privileges metrics, performance indicators, audits, and targets as the dominant tools of institutional legitimacy. This shift has altered not only how organizations function but also how value, success, and even knowledge itself are defined.
Neoliberal rationality, as theorized by thinkers like Wendy Brown (2015), refers to a mode of reason that extends market principles beyond the economy into all aspects of life—education, health, governance, and even personal behavior. It is not merely about privatization or deregulation; it is about reconfiguring citizens into entrepreneurs of the self, institutions into market actors, and policies into performance regimes. In this context, managerial logics—borrowed from the corporate world—become the lingua franca of global governance.
This transformation is evident in the public sector’s widespread adoption of New Public Management (NPM), a neoliberal reform framework that reimagines public institutions as service providers competing in quasi-markets. Universities, hospitals, and development agencies are increasingly expected to demonstrate “value for money,” efficiency, and customer satisfaction. Performance-based funding, standardized assessments, and contractual accountability are imposed in the name of transparency and modernization.
In the higher education sector, this logic has taken root through practices such as rankings, publication quotas, impact factors, and grant competition. Academic work is reframed not as inquiry or public service, but as output to be measured, compared, and monetized. Teaching is “delivered,” students are “clients,” and research must align with strategic priorities to secure investment. Scholars such as Rosemary Deem and Stephen Ball have chronicled how this managerialism fosters precarious labor, undermines collegiality, and narrows the intellectual agenda.
The globalization of managerial logics is facilitated by international financial institutions, consultancy firms, and intergovernmental bodies. The World Bank’s education reform frameworks, for example, have promoted managerial governance in Global South countries, often as a condition for loans or technical assistance. This creates a one-size-fits-all model of “best practices,” typically rooted in Anglo-American traditions of performance and managerial control. In doing so, it displaces local knowledge systems, undermines democratic accountability, and prioritizes compliance over contextual relevance.
Moreover, managerialism is not ideologically neutral. Its metrics are often aligned with what can be easily measured—efficiency, output, cost—but not necessarily with what matters—equity, critical thought, well-being, or social justice. As sociologist Marilyn Strathern once quipped: “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.” The obsession with auditability fosters “gaming the system,” where institutions focus more on appearing successful than being substantively effective.
Yet, despite its dominance, managerial logic faces growing resistance. Movements to decolonize knowledge, democratize governance, and restore public values in education and healthcare challenge the hegemony of managerial rationality. Scholars and activists alike call for participatory models of evaluation, care-centered leadership, and epistemic justice that recognize the plural values institutions serve.
Crucially, the critique of managerialism is not a defense of inefficiency, but a call for rethinking what we mean by “management” itself. Can we manage for solidarity, not just productivity? Can leadership prioritize relationships, not just results? These are urgent questions in an age where data-driven governance increasingly obscures the human dimensions of institutional life. In sum, the globalization of managerial logics is a defining feature of neoliberal rationality. It codifies authority in terms of measurable performance, retools institutions as market actors, and marginalizes alternative ways of knowing and governing. To resist it is to reclaim institutions as spaces of public purpose, intellectual freedom, and collective care.
In today’s multipolar world, the Cold War model of epistemic authority is no longer uncontested. China, for instance, has invested heavily in building scientific infrastructure that rivals Western institutions. Meanwhile, debates on decolonizing science, especially in the health and climate sectors, underscore the need for epistemic pluralism. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its global inequities in vaccine distribution and knowledge sharing, has further exposed the enduring legacies of epistemic asymmetry.
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