Higher education in the single market between (trans)national integration and supranationalisation: exploring the european universities initiative

ABSTRACT

While higher education is not a ‘classical’ single market domain, considerable efforts have been made at the European level to advance integration. The European Higher Education Area (and the European Research Area have represented important drivers in the construction of a single market for education, despite uneven implementation and a lack of convergence around common values. This paper explores a very recent initiative in the field of higher education, i.e. the European Universities Initiative (EUI), characterised by a hybrid type of university collaboration based on transnational alliances linking education, research and innovation. Using the lenses of the ‘governance architecture framework’, the paper shows that the EUI can act as a catalyst for renewed integration in higher education through a multi-tiered, flexible mode of cooperation among different actors’ constellations. However, the paper also identifies a potential alternative trajectory of integration with (trans)national institutions as key actors driving the alliances.

KEYWORDS:

• Single market
• European Integration
• Higher Education
• European University Initiative
• governance
• European Commission

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the constructive comments provided by the participants of the virtual research workshop of the Jean Monnet Network VISTA held in May 2021 as well as panel participants meetings of the 10^th conference of the ECPR Standing Group on the European Union held in June 2021. Special thanks to Aneta Spendzharova and Ringa Raudla for their fruitful and attentive comments on earlier versions of the draft. I also wish to thank the editors of the JEI, and two anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the earlier version of this manuscript and provided extremely helpful comments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for pointing out this distinction.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ERASMUS+ Jean Monnet Network VISTA, Project number 612044-EPP-1-2019-1-NL-EPPJMO-NETWORK, Grant Decision Nr 2019-1609/001–001.

Notes on contributors

Marina Cino Pagliarello

Marina Cino Pagliarello is Lecturer in Political Economy at the Department of Government, University of Essex & Associate Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, University College London (UCL). Her research focuses on European governance, education policy, and on the role of political and economic actors in framing public policies. She has recently published her research in West European Politics, Comparative Education and in the Journal of Contemporary European Research.