HIGHER EDUCATION GOVERNANCE AND POLICY CHANGE IN WESTERN EUROPE: INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES TO HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONS
| Date | 01 December 2015 |
| Published date | 01 December 2015 |
| Author | RAFIS ABAZOV |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/padm.12204 |
doi: 10.1111/padm.12204
REVIEWS
HIGHER EDUCATION GOVERNANCE AND POLICY CHANGE IN WESTERN
EUROPE: INTERNATIONAL CHALLENGES TO HISTORICAL INSTITUTIONS
Michael Dobbins and Christoph Knill
Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 232 pp., $45 (hb), ISBN: 9781137399847
Higher education reforms have been at the centre of public policy debates across Europe
for more than a decade. Despite the seemingly straightforward process of unication and
standardization of the higher education (HE) system within the framework of the Bologna
Process, public debates on this issue have remained highly charged. This book, written by
Michael Dobbins and Christoph Knill, offers an interesting assessment of governance and
policy changes in Western Europe, utilizing four case studies and suggesting a theoretical
framework for conceptualizing the understanding of international challenges to reforming
the HE system in Europe.
Higher Education Governance and Policy Change in Western Europe represents an attempt to
analyse and understand policy changes through the lens of public policy theory. It identi-
es ‘different causal mechanisms that explain the extent to which national policies become
more similar over time’ (p. 21). Approaching this policy process at the institutional level,
the book studies the transformation of institutions in the specic national and international
settings unique to each member of the European Union. To support their arguments, the
authors present a comprehensive collection of empirical evidence and analysis of policy
documents reecting policy thinking and policy-making in several key countries in the
European Union. Thus, the monograph continues policy debates on the merits, directions
and future of HE governance, offering a fresh and engaging overview of the policies and
their implications.
Dobbins and Knill offer their own classication, dividing HE governance into three
types: ‘the state-centred model’ (p. 38), ‘the university as a self-governing community of
scholars’ (the Humboldt model) (p. 39) and ‘the market-oriented model’ (p. 40). This clas-
sication system helps the authors to narrow down the empirical materials for the four
case studies they explore: France, Italy, Great Britain and Germany. Each of the countries
presented in this research faces its own unique set of challenges and a unique policy envi-
ronment. Not surprisingly, therefore, each of the countries has come up with its own policy
tools and solutions, including changes in HE governance aimed at meeting the challenges
of ‘Europeanization and internationalization pressures’ (p. 20).
The authors identify as the main objective of their research ‘to analyse the extent to
which the HE policies of the four countries under study have converged on a common
model of HE governance over time’ (p. 21). Their conceptual framework for this task is
grounded in Policy Convergence Theory, which allows them to construct the methodol-
ogy for assessment of how the HE governance system has evolved over time. The authors
identify three sets of variables to understand changes in HE governance: ‘nancial gover-
nance’ (HE funding mechanisms), ‘personnel autonomy’ and ‘substantive autonomy’ (or
Public Administration 2015
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.
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