Mapping the terrains of the Europe of Knowledge: an analytical framework of ideas, institutions, instruments, and interests

ABSTRACT

This editorial introduces how we may begin to analytically study the shifting terrains of the Europe of Knowledge. Knowledge policies – higher education, research, and innovation – are integral to many sectors, and changes in the ways in which knowledge is governed will inevitably alter the shape and contents of other policy domains. The contributions of this special issue reveal some of these shifting patterns by analysing the relationship between central features of multi-level, multi-actor, and multi-issue policy-making in the knowledge domain: the ideas that inspire reform, the institutions tasked to implement the changes, the instruments adopted for translating ideas into practice, and the diverse interests of actors with a stake in how knowledge is governed. By invoking the image of terrains, this special issue is interested in describing and explaining what happens to the Europe of Knowledge landscapes when the ‘old’ meets and interacts with the ‘new’.

KEYWORDS:

• Global
• higher education
• ideas
• institutions
• instruments
• interests
• knowledge

Acknowledgement

Martina Vukasovic gave detailed and helpful comments to an earlier draft, which vastly improved it, but all errors remain mine.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Meng-Hsuan Chou (Ph.D., University of Cambridge) is Nanyang Assistant Professor in public policy and global affairs at NTU Singapore. Her research interests lie at the intersection of public policy, regionalism, and international relations. Hsuan’s publications have appeared in the Journal of European Public Policy, PS: Political Science and Politics, and Journal of Contemporary European Politics. She is the co-editor of Building the Knowledge Economy in Europe: New Constellations in European Research and Higher Education Governance (with Åse Gornitzka, 2014, Edward Elgar) and The Transnational Politics of Higher Education: Contesting the Global/Transforming the Local (with Isaac Kamola and Tamson Pietsch, 2016, Routledge).

Notes

1. Elken et al. (2011, 5) searched the phrase ‘Europe of Knowledge’ on the EU’s official website in 2010 and received no less than ‘574 hits’; 225 of these documents were classified as belonging to research and development policy, and 58 belonged to education, teaching, vocational training and youth.

2. I exclude the EU’s Innovation Union (IU) in this discussion about the Europe of Knowledge because the IU is a transversal initiative announced in 2012 as part of the seven flagship initiatives of the Europe 2020 Strategy. While ‘Delivering the European Research Area’ is one of IU’s 30 action points, the long history of the emergence and struggles to construct the EHEA and the ERA provides a richer foundation for the current discussion. Certainly, theoretically driven and empirically rigorous studies into how the respective policy sectors that make up the Europe of Knowledge have formally co-opted the other two sectors to advance developments in its own sector would provide a greater understanding of this phenomenon.

3. The Euratom Treaty is distinct from the Treaty establishing the EEC, commonly referred to as the Treaty of Rome. The EEC Treaty and its subsequent revisions are the legal foundation behind the EU as we know it today.

4. The key conventions concerning higher education are the following: (1) European Convention on the Equivalence of Diplomas leading to Admission to Universities (1953, ETS15) and its Protocol (1964, ETS49); (2) European Convention on the Equivalence of Periods of University Study (1956, ETS21); (3) European Convention on the Academic Recognition of University Qualifications (1959, ETS32); (4) Convention on the Recognition of Studies, Diplomas and Degrees Concerning Higher Education in the States belonging to the Europe Region (1979); (5) European Convention on the General Equivalence of Periods of University Study (1990, ETS138); and (6) Convention on the recognition of qualifications concerning Higher Education in the European Region (1997, ETS165). The development of some of these Conventions relied on EU developed instruments such as the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS) and Diploma Supplement.

5. Conférence permanente des Recteurs, Présidents et Vice-Chanceliers des Universités européennes.

6. Now Article 352 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the EU.

7. The fascination with innovation is on-going. At the start of 2016, the EU Research Commissioner Carlos Moedas presented his idea for a European Innovation Council (EIC), which seeks to emulate the success of the well-known European Research Council (cf. the history of the European Institute of Innovation and Technology in Gornitzka and Metz 2014b).

8. The EU member states renewed their commitments to the Lisbon Strategy in 2010 when they adopted the Europe 2020 Strategy.

9. This list excludes the external service providers who support the running of modern universities and their maintenance.

10. For simplicity, I exclude third countries invited to participate in specific Horizon 2020 schemes and projects. Their inclusion certainly widens the boundaries of the ERA to, indeed, the world.

11. The EU Support to Higher Education in ASEAN Region (EU SHARE) is an example of such an initiative. With an operational budget of €10 million for 2015–2019, SHARE seeks to ‘strengthen regional co-operation, enhance the quality, regional competitiveness and internationalisation of ASEAN higher education institutions and students, contributing to an ASEAN Community in 2015 and beyond’ (see: https://ec.europa.eu/europeaid/projects/eu-support-higher-education-asean-region-eu-share_en, accessed on 26 January 2016).

12. The International Association of Universities (2015) estimates that there are more than 17,000 institutes around the world offering tertiary degrees.

13. This simplistic overview does not go into details about where ideational scholars stand on the broader rational-choice and constructivist spectrum, something also visible in the institutionalism literature (see Hall and Taylor 1996).

Additional information

Funding

I am grateful for the support from NTU Singapore and the Ministry of Education of Singapore (AcRF Tier 1) for my on-going research on talent migration and the global higher education market. I would like to acknowledge the generous funding support from UACES for running the Collaborative Research Network on the European Research Area (2013–2016) where the overall analytical framework presented here has steered many conversations, which I hope will continue for years to come in the framework of the ECPR Standing Group on the Politics of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation, newly established in 2016.