Future Scenarios for the European Higher Education Area: Exploring the Potential of 'Experimentalist Governance'

Scientific Conference (2014, November 25)

The launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2010 posed many of the central questions already asked of the Bologna Process (BP) with a renewed urgency, reflecting a growing sense among ... [more ▼]

The launch of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) in 2010 posed many of the central questions already asked of the Bologna Process (BP) with a renewed urgency, reflecting a growing sense among participants of a possible exhaustion of the initial process. Taking as its point of departure the irrevocably “soft law” character of the BP as a pan-European process, the present paper seeks to develop an understanding of how the process might be re-energized with reference to a model of “experimentalist governance” derived from the work of Sabel and Zeitlin. The paper first maps the functioning of the BP to date relative to the strictures of this experimentalist model, particularly identifying the absence of a strong dynamic of iterative policy learning as a major shortcoming. Building on this diagnosis, four broad lessons are then drawn for the possible future development of the EHEA. These lessons concern the role of expertise (and experts) in the process; the representative function of European-level stakeholder groups; the higher education policy discourse of the European Commission; and the reframing of national higher education policy debates in a manner that overcomes an identified logic of “discursive closure”. [less ▲]

The Governance of the Global University: Leadership and Policy Challenges

in Leadership and Governance in Higher Education (2014), 2014(3), 36-52

This paper takes as its starting point the argument that the ‘global university’ is better conceived as a complex hybrid than as a genuinely transformative type of institution. The fundamental challenges ... [more ▼]

This paper takes as its starting point the argument that the ‘global university’ is better conceived as a complex hybrid than as a genuinely transformative type of institution. The fundamental challenges of governance which it poses are correspondingly conceptualised primarily in terms of the need to strike difficult balances across multiple, competing demands. The analysis is developed in two broad stages. The first part of the paper problematises the idea of globalisation as related to higher education policy, highlighting both the limits of the phenomenon and its intrinsic contradictions. The second part of the paper then explores the significance of this understanding for institutional leadership, looking in turn at issues of internal governance and the management of external policy congruence. [less ▲]

Compte rendu de Thomas Risse, Stephen C. Ropp et Kathryn Sikkink (eds.), The Persistent Power of Human Rights: From Commitment to Compliance

in Revue Française de Science Politique (2014), 64(4), 617-619

The Challenges of the Contemporary University

in Margue, Michel (Ed.) Université du Luxembourg, 2003-2013 (2013)

Compte-rendu de Mikael Rask Madsen, La génèse de l’Europe des droits de l’homme. Enjeux juridiques et stratégies d’Etat (France, Grande-Bretagne, pays scandinaves, 1945-1970)

in Revue Française de Science Politique (2012), 12(3), 507-508

The Reform of the Convention System: Institutional Restructuring and the (Geo-)Politics of Human Rights

in Christoffersen, Jonas; Rask Madsen, Mikael (Eds.) The European Court of Human Rights between Law and Politics (2011)

Introduction: National European Discourses and the 2009 European Parliament Elections

in Harmsen, Robert; Schild, Joachim (Eds.) Debating Europe: The 2009 European Parliament Elections and Beyond (2011)

Concluding Comment: On Understanding the Relationship between Populism and Euroscepticism

in Perspectives on European Politics and Society (2010), 11(3), 333-341

The Transformation of the ECHR Legal Order and the Post-Enlargement Challenges facing the European Court of Human Rights

in Martinico, Giuseppe; Pollicino, Oreste (Eds.) The National Judicial Treatment of the ECHR and EU Laws: A Comparative Constitutional Approach (2010)