The purpose of this paper is to analyze the institutional evaluation processes applied to Brazilian graduate programs, which processes are carried out by a federal agency, CAPES (Coordenação para o Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior/Coordination for the Advancement of Graduate Education), and their impact on the development of Political Science in Brazil. To do that, the text is divided into four parts: the first section presents CAPES’ characteristics and evolution in the past 60 years. The second part describes the academic evaluation procedures graduate programs are submitted to by CAPES for them to enter or remain in the system. Next, we analyze the influence of evaluation rules and criteria set by CAPES on the development of Political Science in Brazil. Finally, the last section examines the relationships between the institutional evaluation results, in the form of scores assigned to graduate institutions, and CAPES’ funding patterns in order to determine to what extent a relationship between performance and grants can be isolated.