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The Politics of Higher Education Governance Reform in Western Europe

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Comparative Higher Education Politics

Part of the book series: Higher Education Dynamics ((HEDY,volume 60))

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Abstract

There has been ample reform activity regarding the governance of higher education in Europe since the late 1980s. The initial impetus behind these reforms has been linked to the introduction of concepts stemming from New Public Management (NPM) leading to somewhat similar reform rationales throughout Western Europe. At the same time, European countries have approached the issue of governance reforms from very different starting points, and still today there is significant national diversity in higher education governance.

Overall, differing starting points, a converging reform rhetoric, but also diverging interests of the involved actors characterize governance reforms in higher education in Europe. This makes for a complex political environment and it is the aim of this chapter to provide a detailed account of the state of the art of academic research on this issue and make an argument for the importance of key political actors, namely political parties, in contemporary discussions about higher education governance. To this end, we will in a first step present a structured overview of the literature on politics of higher education governance reforms in Western Europe, which is then followed by an empirical analysis focusing on one specific factor that influences reforms and national variation in higher education governance in Europe: the preferences of political parties. In this, we will analyze to what extent different party families (e.g. Social Democrats or Christian Democrats) have diverging preferences with regard to higher education governance and whether and how parties with a similar ideological background differ in their policy positions across national contexts. This is based on an analysis and comparison of party manifestos from parties from six countries to identify both inter-party and inter-country differences in policy preferences.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This includes for example socialist or communist parties.

  2. 2.

    This includes for example right-wing populist or nationalist parties.

  3. 3.

    The concept of the party family describes a group of political parties that are active in different countries but share common ideological roots.

  4. 4.

    The “Liste Peter Pilz” is not included in the study due to missing data.

  5. 5.

    See: https://www.university-autonomy.eu/

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Jens Jungblut

  2. Department of Politics and Public Administration, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

    Michael Dobbins

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  1. Jens Jungblut
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Correspondence to Jens Jungblut .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Jens Jungblut

  2. Université du Québec, Rimouski, QC, Canada

    Martin Maltais

  3. Louise McBee Institute of Higher Education, University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA

    Erik C. Ness

  4. Simon Fraser University, Burnaby, BC, Canada

    Deanna Rexe

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Jungblut, J., Dobbins, M. (2023). The Politics of Higher Education Governance Reform in Western Europe. In: Jungblut, J., Maltais, M., Ness, E.C., Rexe, D. (eds) Comparative Higher Education Politics . Higher Education Dynamics, vol 60. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-25867-1_2

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