Governing by Soft Conditioning Program.

Why are academics reactive to state-commissioned accreditation and evaluation regimes? The answer is: academic conventions have become embedded in a soft conditioning program (SoCoP) of law-applying. In a historical sociological perspective, the new SoCoP methodology is developed and reflected upon by analyzing the case of the German higher education accreditation regime. This provides an example of how the administrative and legal adaptation of a SoCoP in the specific environment is achieved by including the social partnership convention between the state and the academic profession and convention of academic peer review. Aiming at reactivity in social behavior, a SoCoP means “investments in forms” (Thévenot 1984), which establishes a long-term codification of procedures. The operational construction of legitimacy embedded in the SoCoP form is further theorized building on Luhmann’s ([1969] 1983) notion of procedures and their social orders according to an analytical framework of plural orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot [1991] 2006). The conclusion presents an outlook on the use of the new SoCoP methodology, ranging from schools and health and welfare systems via the multi-national firm Amazon to governing grand challenges formulated in the Sustainable Development Goals.