Abstract
The study underlying this article investigates the factors under which European policy initiatives with respect to higher education (HE), such as the Bologna Process, lead to policy change at the national level. In theoretical terms, it uses institutionalist approaches to the Europeanization of public policy developed in the fields of comparative politics and international relations. The empirical focus is on HE policy changes in three countries of former Yugoslavia from 1990 onwards. More specifically, the focus is on changes of policy goals, normative basis and instruments with regard to quality assurance. A process-tracing approach based on document analysis and interviews with policy actors is used to safeguard against overestimating the influence of European initiatives on national policy change. What matters for European influences on national policy changes are clarity of European initiatives and consequences of non-compliance, as well as density of veto players in the domestic policy context. While legitimacy of European initiatives, the strength of domestic institutional legacies and the participation of domestic actors in the European epistemic communities may also be conducive to European influence on national policy change, the study identifies points where better operationalization and further research in relation to these factors are necessary.
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Notes
Apart from the Bologna Process, this is also true to a somewhat lesser extent for the EU’s Lisbon Strategy in 2000, as well as the related Modernisation Agenda from 2006 and the ‘Lisbon-successor’ EU 2020 Strategy.
For a review of uses of the term ‘Europeanization’ see Olsen (2002).
All reports from the Stocktaking exercise are available in the ‘Main Documents’ section of the official Bologna Process website: www.ehea.info, page accessed 19 August 2013.
EUA, ESU, EURASHE and ENQA.
The ESG are currently under revision that includes consultations not only with European transnational organizations but also at the grass-root level, so it can be expected that the legitimacy of the revised ESG will be boosted even more. This is beyond the scope of this article, but should be nevertheless the focus of future empirical scrutiny.
The full list of analysed documents used is available upon request.
Because of requirements related to informed consent and anonymity, more specific description of interviewees’ positions is not possible.
The respondent refers to the recently abolished Steering Committee for Higher Education and Research of the Council of Europe.
Both tasks were completed by 2012.
CAQC became a full member of ENQA in April 2013.
At this moment (end of October 2013), the Slovenian HE agency is not a member of ENQA but has become part of the EQAR register (mid October 2013).
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Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Mari Elken, Jens Jungblut, Peter Maassen, Bjørn Stensaker, other members of the Higher Education: Institutional Dynamics and Knowledge Cultures research group at the Department of Education of the University of Oslo, two anonymous reviewers and the editor of the journal for very helpful comments on previous versions of this article.
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*From 1 December 2013, the author will be part of The Odysseus Project on Higher Education Governance, Faculty of Political and Social Sciences, Department of Sociology, Ghent University, 9000 Ghent, Belgium.
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Vukasovic, M. When and How Does Europe Matter? Higher Education Policy Change in Croatia, Serbia and Slovenia. High Educ Policy 27, 403–423 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2013.36
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2013.36