Whose quality? Social actors in the interface of transnational and national higher education policy

Abstract

The article analyzes the construction of national reactions to a transnational higher education policy from the point of view of the representation of social actors in policy documents. The data are provided by the so-called Bologna Process, particularly the development of comparable quality assurance systems, and Finnish responses to those demands. Who is represented as active and who as passive, as European policies are discursively translated into national policies? How are those ‘quality actors’ represented in the policy documents directed at a transnational audience (i.e. the Bologna Process communiqués, as well as national reports on its advancement) as opposed to documents directed at a national, in this case Finnish, audience (i.e. national policy formation documents)? What kinds of policy fields emerge as a result of different representations of actors? This article takes the Bologna Process as an example of the ‘glocalisation’ of higher education policy.