Excellence and Frontier Research as Travelling Concepts in Science Policymaking Tim Flink 1 • Tobias Peter 2 Published online: 26 March 2018 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Excellence and frontier research have made inroads into European research policymaking and structure political agendas, funding programs and evaluation practices. The two concepts travelled a long way from the United States and have derived from contexts outside of science (and policy). Following their conceptual journey, we ask how excellence and frontier research have percolated into European science and higher education policies and how they have turned into lubricants of competition that buttress an ongoing reform process in Europe. Keywords Science policy Á Discourse analysis Á Conceptual history Á Excellence Á Frontier research Á European Research Council Á Metaphors Language Concepts as Pacemakers of Science Policy Reforms Many scholars of research and higher education policy agree—and sometimes join those commonly accepted expressions of lament—that higher education and science have been exposed to far-reaching reforms inspired by New Public Management (NPM), especially in Europe since the 1980s. Flanked by formalized management control mechanisms (Bleiklie 2005; Ferlie et al. 2008; Whitley 2011), these reforms ironically called for greater self-steering responsibilities of scientific institutions & Tim Flink tim.flink@hu-berlin.de & Tobias Peter tobias.peter@uni-oldenburg.de 1 Department of Social Sciences, Humboldt-Universita ¨t zu Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10099 Berlin, Germany 2 Research Center Genealogy of Today, Carl von Ossietzky Universita ¨t Oldenburg, Ammerla ¨nder Heerstraße 114-118, 26111 Oldenburg, Germany 123 Minerva (2018) 56:431–452 https://doi.org/10.1007/s11024-018-9351-7