Networking Administration in Areas of National Sensitivity: The Commission and European Higher Education

Abstract

The emergence of regulatory agencies is widely considered as the institutional hallmark of the regulatory state and has attracted considerable academic attention. Moreover, research shows that national regulatory agencies are increasingly integrated into transnational regulatory networks. This paper argues that research on regulatory agencies and networks is based on an implicit assumption that regulatory agencies are a distinct 'species' of organisations that can be studied without considering other types of agencies. A key insight is that comparative perspectives including regulatory and executive agencies are important to put regulatory scholarship into context and to flesh out the contribution of regulatory scholarship to advance general knowledge on public administration. The paper illustrates such comparative perspectives by reviewing literature on the formal and actual autonomy of agencies, the effect of transnational networks on national agencies, and multilevel coordination in administrative networks.

Standardization of (higher) education in Europe – policy coordination 2.0?

“…There has historically been substantial scepticism from member states towards more European integration through supranational involvement in education and higher education policy (Corbett, 2005;Gornitzka, 2009). EUs fromal competencies are limited, in particular through the subsidiarity principle (Maassen & Musselin, 2009).…”

Tradition and innovation: Europe's accumulated executive order

“…In order to enhance its control, the Commission may itself have initiated the creation of such a network, as in the telecom sector (Nørga˚rd 2006) or in the education area (Gornitzka 2008). However, the EU executive has also successfully linked into already existing networks that have been relatively independent in the past (Eberlein and Grande 2005: 101-102), but for which it has gradually taken over the coordinating functions, as seems to be the case for the implementation network of pollution authorities (Martens 2006).…”

Conjunctions of power and comparative education

“…In terms of the former, it is important to heed Sotiria Grek's (2013) conclusion that there now exists an 'expertocracy' that specialises in 'expertise and the selling of undisputed, universal policy solutions have now drifted into one single entity and function' (695), and she goes on to suggest that the OECD has become a site of 'coproduction' of both knowledge and social order (Grek 2014). In the EU, according to Ase Gornitzka (2007), the: DGEAC's [Directorate-General for Education and Culture's] structure of committees and expert groups is a poignant [sic = powerful?] indication of the networked administrative systems dealing with education and training as a policy area.…”