Market Power Europe and the Externalization of Higher Education

Abstract

Higher education policy has long had important domestic, intergovernmental and values‐based features. However, through the Bologna Process, the European Union (EU) has influenced these traditional features and helped to develop an external dimension to higher education policy in and beyond Europe. Despite these significant changes, scholarship on the EU has not yet interrogated directly the external dimensions of Bologna and the influence the EU wields through this process. This article employs Market Power Europe (MPE) as a conceptual framework to examine the Bologna Process and the EU's role in these important changes. Focusing on the notion of externalization, the article reveals the importance of market factors, multiple means (externalization tools) and actors (beyond intergovernmental) through which the EU influences other actors in higher education policy. The findings contribute to the MPE conceptual framework and encourage further research into the causal mechanisms at play in the under‐studied external dimensions of this policy area.

Expanding actorness to explain EU external engagement in originally internal policy areas

“…Capability might then follow from this, but it is not in itself necessary for external engagement to emerge. The EU develops this capability once it has begun to engage externally, and the strength of this capability may then moderate the degree of its external engagement (Damro et al 2018). However, the co-existence of an external opportunity and of internal EU policies in a given domain do not automatically lead to external engagement.…”

“…This increase in external engagement is visible across a range of purposive EU activities in bilateral and multilateral contexts, right up to the development of 'sectoral diplomacies' for external engagement (for an overview, see Damro et al 2018). 1 All of these policy domains represent areas in which the EU originally did not possess external policies.…”

The voice of inclusion in the midst of neoliberalist noise in the Bologna Process

“…The literature on the EHEA echoes to a great extent the focus on neoliberalism in the wider education literature, discussed above. A large body of literature on the BP mentions, in one way or another, that the BP is a neoliberalist endeavour (Antunes, 2012; Commisso, 2013; Damro and Friedman, 2018; Fejes, 2008; Hujak and Sik-Lanyi, 2017; Jayasuriya, 2010; Kašić, 2016; Lorenz, 2012; Lucas, 2019; Lundbye-Cone, 2018; Mitchell, 2006; Novoa, 2007; Pritchard, 2011; Tabulawa, 2009). Specifically, Lundbye-Cone (2018) mentions a ‘neoliberal cholera’ in EHEA policy-making (1022), with ‘a neoliberal hegemony arching over the last two decades’ (1020).…”

“…Indeed, tuning education for the market (Antunes, 2012) and building a knowledge-based economy have been among the aims of the EHEA and 'buzzwords' in its policy-making, whereby knowledge is a key driver of economic development (Hujak and Sik-Lanyi, 2017). Damro and Friedman (2018) emphasise the importance of market factors through which the European Union influences policy actors in higher education, particularly in the EHEA. Academia is turning into a market altogether in the context of the BP as its nature is neoliberal (Cosar and Ergul, 2015).…”

Emerging Security Technologies and EU Governance

“…The MPE is one such alternative conceptual framework (Damro and Friedman 2018;Damro 2012Damro , 2015 that, in contrast to the NPE, suggests that the key feature of the EU as a global power is its capability to externalise its marketrelated policies beyond its borders, influencing other actors in the process. This derives from the fact that the European Single Market is one of the largest in the world, thus, its regulations have considerable external impact.…”