From Voluntary Participation to Monitored Coordination: why European countries feel increasingly bound by their commitment to the Bologna Process (original) (raw)
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This paper argues that at a time in which higher education has become central to the concerns of EU institutions as well as national governments, it is helpful to understand current policy initiatives-both the spin offs from the EU's Lisbon strategy and the intergovernmental Bologna Process-in the comparative terms of the dynamics of policy-making. Drawing on institutionalist frameworks biased towards process (Kingdon 1984, March and Olsen 1989, Barzelay 2003) and comparative historical analysis, it presents policy initiatives from the period 1955-87, including the supranational European University proposal and the Erasmus programme, as both historical events, and theorised configurations of agenda setting, alternative specification, and choice. It suggests that such a framework can be helpful to both those interested primarily in European integration and those whose interests lie in the dynamics of higher education policy-making in a multi-level setting.
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The Bologna Process and the creation of a European Higher Education Area (EHEA) signify that European nations commit to making different education systems comparable and advancing quality by competition. Employing a governmentality lens, this article scrutinizes the Bologna Process as a set of transnational political technologies at work. The Open Method of Coordination appears as the key political technology to advance the Bologna Process. In a voluntarily based political process the OMC brings about a transnational forum by simultaneously catching national players between the lures of peer pressure and self-interest. This complex of advancing national educational policies by means of on-going and gradual transnational consensus-building is exemplified in analyses of the crucial 2009 Bologna Stocktaking Report and its context.
European Journal of Higher Education The Bologna Process: an international higher education regime
The Bologna Process and the ensuing establishment of the European Higher Education Area has had an impact on the ways in which higher education in Europe operates, and the ways it is perceived and related to in countries and regions outside Europe. The Bologna Process has come to symbolize a form of international cooperation in higher education policy, not only in Europe, but all over the world. In this article, we discuss the Bologna Process as a system of international coordination; or, in the jargon of international relations, as a ‘regime’. The article traces the features and methods enabling the Bologna model and their diffusion outside Europe. This perspective offers a useful contribution to the understanding of the Bologna Process as constituting a foreign policy tool for the EU. Moreover, the realization that an international regime can become a player with a life of its own, with an independent influence on the international system, allows us to draw conclusions about the forces that govern the regime, and their international power.
Education has always been considered an area of national sensitivity, and that for a number of reasons. These range from the obligation of the state to provide compulsory education to the role of educational institutions as nationally embedded socialising institutions. Yet, despite the tenuous nature of the legal basis that gives some substance to policy-making at European Community level, the European Commission is assuming taking on an increasing role in education, and particularly in higher education. The main vehicles for re-defining the Community's role in this domain embrace the implementation of both the Bologna process and the Lisbon Strategy. In this paper, we discuss the European policy implementation processes and how they contribute to change European higher education while enabling the creeping competence of the European Commission in higher education.
European Educational Research Journal, Volume 3, Number 4, 2004
In this article, the Bologna Process and the European Research Area are viewed as the two sides of the same coin: that of the redefinition of the missions of the institution of the university. The Bologna Process is viewed as relatively closed to global developments: as largely inward-looking, focused on European regional problems (and European regional solutions), in the absence of references to global changes and huge globalization-related political and economic transformations underlying them. Higher education in central and eastern Europe has been in a state of permanent crisis since the fall of communism and there has not been enough general reflection on its transformations. The author's concern about Bologna is that it is not trying to rise to the conceptual level that would be required to assist higher education systems in central and eastern Europe with their integration with western European systems. Bologna could be a useful policy agenda; it could provide clear recommendations on what to do and how, presenting a comprehensive package of reforms. But it is not. In this respect, it does not meet expectations of the academic community in the region; it is unclear in its visions, and consequently in its recommendations for actions. In conclusion, the author states that while it may be quite successful in promoting its agenda in western Europe, it may fail in the transition countries, especially because of the combination of old and new challenges and because of chronic underfunding of national higher education systems. While western European institutions currently seem to be afraid of losing their autonomy, for educational institutions in most transition countries the Bologna Process could be a coherent reform agenda.