An anatomy of authority: the Bologna and ASEM education secretariats as policy actors and region builders

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the sources of authority behind the Bologna and ASEM secretariats’ technocratic appearance and administrative routines, and argues that they are transnational policy actors in their own right. By drawing on principal-agent theory and the concept of ‘authority’, it offers an alternative framework for understanding the various forms of authority. The case studies generate three important insights. First, it shows how the secretariats derive their authority from the tasks delegated by states, the moral values and social purpose they uphold, and the expertise they possess. Second, it compares how the different governance structures of the Bologna and ASEM education processes impact on the secretariats’ authority. Third, it highlights how the secretariats exercise their respective authorities and exert their discernible influence at different stages of higher education policy-making and region-building processes.

KEYWORDS:

• Authority
• power
• regional secretariat
• higher education
• Bologna Process
• ASEM

Acknowledgements

The paper was presented at the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) conference in Prague and won the 2016 Excellent Paper from an Emerging Scholar competition of the ECPR Standing Group: Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Que Anh Dang http://orcid.org/0000-0003-2104-0856

Notes

1. The ASEM education secretariat is the first and the only official and physical secretariat for ASEM ministerial sectoral cooperation, at the time of writing. For more details on the ASEM process’ governance structure see (Dang 2016b).

2. The seven countries admitted to the Bologna Process in 2003 are Albania, Andorra, Bosnia Herzegovina, Macedonia, Russian Federation, Serbia, and Holy See.

3. The six Bologna rotating secretariats were hosted by Norway (January 2004–June 2005), the United Kingdom (July 2005–June 2007), Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg – Benelux (July 2007–June 2010), Romania (July 2010–June 2012), Armenia (July 2012–June 2015) and France (July 2015–June 2018).

4. This first ASEM report was named ‘From Berlin 2008 via Hanoi 2009 to Copenhagen’ – Status Report of the ASEM Education Secretariat for the Third Asia-Europe Meeting of Ministers for Education. A status report is to tell this is where we are and how we got here. It is different from a stocktaking report which focuses more on progress and achievements against pre-set targets.

5. At ASEM ME2 in 2009, the Danish Minister, as the host of the next meeting, announced three topics: innovation; entrepreneurial competences; and maths, information communication technology (ICT) and natural sciences. The minister was responsible for school education and adult education, but not universities and research. In 2010, he left for another position while his colleagues were preparing for ASEM ME3 with support from the new ASEM Education Secretariat.

6. ASEM member countries may have different ministries in charge of different levels of education, for example, higher education may be separate from school education and vocational education.

7. The set of indicators and the EHEA Implementation Reports, accessed in August 2017 at http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=21

8. If the Bologna Communique mentions the name of a country it is unlikely to be a positive signal, rather it refers to something that needs to be followed up or check upon. For example, the 2005 Yerevan Communique mentions Belarus on page 3 in order to specify a monitoring process of the road map attached to Belarusian ‘conditional’ membership.

9. There were several previous versions of the draft Chair’s conclusions prior to this stage. One can judge a version by looking at the remaining blank space(s) and all the country names which were already filled in. This process indicates many interactions between the Secretariat and the member countries.

10. BFUG Work Programme 2015-2018 retrieved from http://www.ehea.info/article-details.aspx?ArticleId=391 in October 2016.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by FP7-PEOPLE 2012, Support for Training and Career Development of Researchers (Marie Curie) [grant no. 317452].