The article analyzes the debate on the relationship between universities and government in advanced countries with regard to the production of scientific knowledge (research). Thereupon this article was primarily supported in studies of French and American authors. This relationship is analyzed along two dimensions: the science policy, where the university has its independent management and academic freedom reduced, or even eliminated, by the government; and the policy for science, where the university has its independent management and academic freedom preserved. These dimensions allow the identification of four categories of relationship between government and university: university associate or subordinate to the government, in the first dimension; and independent or tributary to the government, on second. These categories contribute to show that the university, far from responding to a single conception of the organization of its independent management and academic freedom, is constituted by existing power relations in each historical moment.
University; Government; Production of scientific knowledge
