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This paper finds that the Croatian public's and the social elites' perceptions of science are a mixture of scientific and technological optimism, of the tendency to absolve science of social responsibility, of skepticism about the social effects of science, and of cognitive optimism and skepticism. However, perceptions differ significantly according to the different social roles and the wider value system of the observed groups. The survey data show some key similarities, as well as certain specificities in the configuration of the types of views of the four groups--the public, scientists, politicians and managers. The results suggest that the well-known typology of the four cultures reveals some of the ideologies of the key actors of scientific and technological policy. The greatest social, primarily educational and socio-spatial, differentiation of the perceptions of science was found in the general public.

The main objective of this paper is to provide an empirical insight into the changes in the basic characteristics of the knowledge production mode and of scientific productivity in the Croatian research system in the transitional period. Empirical analysis is based on the results of two comparable questionnaire studies. The first survey was conducted in 1990 and the sample covered 921 respondents, while the second survey was conducted in 2004 with a sample of 915 respondents. The central characteristics of the knowledge production mode and of productivity confirm an expected duality: the features that accompany the introduction of a competitive system of research funding and evaluation on the one hand, and the anachronistic and newly acquired peculiarity of the research system on the other. Thus, the gap between the improved scientific performance of the researchers and the conditions in which they work has deepened. Scientific productivity still lags behind the productivity of the (developed) countries. Though Croatian researchers publish less, they follow basic global trends in the structure of publications, especially the rise in foreign and co-authored works.