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Based on the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF), this article presents a comparative analysis of the Chilean and Colombian policies of quality assurance (QA) in higher education. Despite their instrumental commonalities, these policies actually reflect two contrasting approaches to quality: a flexible approach in Chile versus an excellence‐oriented approach in Colombia. The article shows that both policies were initially developed by groups of prestigious academics who shared most of the features of programmatic elites and that the contrast between the approaches to quality arises from the divergent evolution of the policy program of these groups: The policy of QA was subjected to an instrumental layering in Chile while, in Colombia, it followed a path‐dependent evolution. The study shows that sociological perspectives like the PAF can provide a more complete and dynamic understanding of the Evaluative State that takes into account the instrumental and the social dimensions of quality‐related activities.

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