Words into deeds: the use of framing strategy in EU higher education policy

Abstract

This article offers an analysis of the framing strategy of EU policymakers within the framework of the open method of coordination (OMC). It argues that the institutional embeddedness of agents has an impact on the way policy ideas are framed and maintained over time. The study interprets a multi-method, qualitative research project that analyzes the evolution of European Union higher education policy from 2000 to 2011, a period in which the introduction of the OMC brought about drastic changes, making higher education, once a highly contested policy field, a cornerstone of the Lisbon Agenda. By combining framing theoretical insights with neo-institutional theory, we show that the framing strategy adopted by policy agents in the European Commission operates in two ways: first, the strategic adoption of frames increases the visibility of the higher education agenda at the European level and second, it serves as a means to take action in politically opportune circumstances, thereby paving the way for the development and implementation of new programs.

Keywords:

• framing
• European Commission
• EU policymaking
• higher education
• open method of coordination
• neo-institutionalism

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the SCANCOR group for organization studies and Renate Meyer, Miranda Richmond Mouillot and the anonymous reviewers for their invaluable feedback on this essay. Sincere appreciation also belongs to the policy agents studied here for their generous participation in this research.

Notes

1. The analytical software Atlas.TI was employed to code and analyze the corpus using a set of nine broad thematic categories (actors, context, investment, constraints, information asymmetry, organization and governance, social issues, themes of change and economic themes) as well as 140 subcategories.

2. We interviewed the three civil servants that have been active in EU higher policymaking since 2000, three contractuals that have been working on the policy texts over five to ten years as well as three of the most cited stakeholder representatives.

3. The full discourse analysis has been published in Serrano-Velarde (2013). In this part, we will focus on those aspects that are relevant to the framing strategy of EU policy agents.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kathia Serrano-Velarde

Kathia Serrano-Velarde is an assistant professor of sociology at Heidelberg University. Her research focuses on the transformation of the education and research sector in Europe. Kathia wrote her PhD at the Humboldt University in Berlin on the emergence of a market for quality assurance agencies in higher education. Her current research project deals with the institutionalization of grant writing practices in academia.