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Politics, Power and Ideology in Higher Education

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Politics

Politics is a concept which refers to conflicts and disagreements over ideas and actions, particularly ideas and actions arising from ideological debates. It can be applied to any organization or sphere, not just political parties and mainstream politics. Importantly, anyone, not just a elected politician or policy maker can be a political actor, and organizations are ideal locations for such political actors (a person who creates government policy). In the case of higher education institutions, staff (whether academic, administrative, technical, or manual), students, and external stakeholders can all be political actors, though some argue that academics are scientists rather than political actors (Grant 2016). But they can be both. Organizational politics is fairly common as an object of exploration in higher education research, whether this refers to disputes between academics in different or the same disciplines, tensions between academics and administrators/leaders, or...

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Correspondence to Rosemary Deem .

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Deem, R. (2018). Politics, Power and Ideology in Higher Education. In: Encyclopedia of International Higher Education Systems and Institutions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_132-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9553-1_132-1

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