“…While the existing literature on the German higher education system deals with a number of detailed developments on the macro-level such as the emergence of New Public Management (Lange, 2008;Lanzendorf & Pasternack, 2009;Löffler, 2003;Meier, 2009;Meier & Schimank, 2009;Nickel, 2007;Schmoch & Schubert, 2010), the new Excellence Initiatives by the federal government (Bloch, Keller, Lottmann, & Würmann, 2008;Hartmann, 2006;Hornbostel, Simon, & Heise, 2008;Kehm & Pasternack, 2008;Leibfried, 2010;Münch, 2006;Münch, 2007;Sieweke, 2010), or the impact of Bologna reforms on German universities (Bührmann, 2008;Hanft & Müskens, 2005;Kellermann, 2006;Nickel, 2007), very little research exists that synthesizes these existing findings into a broader, longitudinal analysis of the institutional changes that have unfolded during the postwar period. (Pasternack & Wissel, 2010 provide a temporal typology of university concepts in Germany since 1945) We argue that understanding these changes in institutional logics, actors, and governance is crucial for explaining the nature of the unique setting of the German higher education system, which has created a path-dependency with distinctive institutional pressures.…”