CEU Electronic Theses and Dissertations, 2016
| Author | Králiková, Renáta |
|---|---|
| Title | Transition legacies, rules of appropriateness and "modernization agenda" translation in higher education governance in Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia |
| Summary | This dissertation seeks to contribute to an understanding of the translation of internationally promoted models of higher education (HE) governance. It focuses on transition countries sharing similar starting conditions and external pressures, yet different results in the translation process; Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia, which all experienced direct Communist party control over universities prior to 1989. After 1989, they reformed HE governance by introducing organizational autonomy for universities, reacting to state centralization. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, they implemented reforms under the influence of the ‘modernization agenda’ spread by major international organizations; the World Bank, OECD, UNESCO-CEPES, and European Commission. The use of the ‘modernization agenda’ is studied in changes made between 1988 and 2012 in three policy areas representing three dimensions of HE governance: university relationship with state (changes to funding and property use), university internal management (centralization of university internal management and organization), and university relations with wider society (introduction of university boards). These processes are explored through the theoretical lenses of historical and sociological institutionalism, underscoring the importance of domestic institutions in the translation of international models. The former approach points to the importance of historical legacies, while the latter concentrates on how rules of appropriateness structure actor behavior. The dissertation is based on qualitative analysis of data from 121 semi-structured interviews, and 97 documents produced by proponents and opponents of changes in these countries. Analysis of the data lead to three key findings, contributing to scholarly research, and possibly informing policymaking practice, as follows: - It demonstrates the productiveness of a rarely used approach; combining the logic of appropriateness and historical institutionalism. These approaches complement each other. The former increases the explanatory power of historical institutionalism through the concept of legitimacy, helping to explain the openness of an institution to change, and the shape that change takes. The latter shows how changes viewed as legitimate will not materialize if actor behavior is bound by legacies. - It enriches the literature on HE reforms, especially in the understudied post-communist region. It provides two novel points, when showing that HE governance reforms following regime change were not built on legacies of communism and the pre-communist era, but were a reaction to the communist system. Additionally, legacies produced by critical juncture in the early 1990s critically influenced the translation of the ‘modernization agenda’ decades later. It also shows that the relevance of the Bologna model is overestimated (no Bologna reforms have been used in the three studied areas). - Policymakers can learn that during the institution design process, establishment of rigid positions by actors with potential later influence over policies should be avoided, and that during institutional change substantive energy needs to be devoted not only to policy design, but also to limiting the impact of reform opponents. Also, international recommendations can only be successful if they recognize what national reformers perceive as appropriate, and if reformers have real influence over policy adoption process. |
| Supervisor | Matei, Liviu; Lazerson, Marvin |
| Department | School of Public Policy PhD |
| Full text | https://www.etd.ceu.edu/2016/kralikova_renata.pdf |
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