Policy internationalization, national varietyand governance: global models and network powerin higher education states

Roger King

Published online: 24 February 2010� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2010

Abstract This article analyzes policy convergence and the adoption of globalizing

models by higher education states, a process we describe, following Thatcher (2007), as

policy internationalization. This refers to processes found in many policy domains and

which increasingly are exemplified in tertiary education systems too. The focus is on

governmental policymakers, their transnational networks, and the dilemmas they face in

responding to the increasing global diffusion of governance models, such as the new public

management. The notion of structuration is introduced to convey the inextricability of

autonomy and structural constraint for decisionmakers in globally-situated higher educa-

tion states. Primary aims are to understand the forces that drive policy internationalization,

not least those associated with network power, as well as those factors that generate the

basis for continuing forms of localism. It is suggested national policy ‘divergences’ may

aid the worldwide diffusion of governance models rather than necessarily act as

impediments.

Keywords Globalization � Governance � Policy internationalization �Network power � Structuration

Introduction: globalization and policy internationalization

Interconnectedness and interdependence between nation states is found well before the

current phase of globalization. By the late nineteenth century, fuelled by increasing means

of worldwide communication, ‘most regimes throughout the world were attempting to

control closely-defined territories by means of uniform administrative, legal, and educa-

tional structures’ (Bayly 2004:247). A particular feature of this early phase of globalization

continues in its contemporary phase. Global forces and local structures work together. As

Appadurai (2005:17) notes, ‘If the genealogy of cultural forms is about their circulation

across regions, the history of these forms is about their ongoing domestication into local

R. King (&)Open University, Milton Keynes, UKe-mail: roking@talk21.com

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High Educ (2010) 60:583–594DOI 10.1007/s10734-010-9317-7

practice’. In similar vein, Sassen (2006:42–43) argues that globalization is nearly always

embedded in the national, and that contemporary globalization engenders a variety of

negotiations between the global and the local.

More specifically, in higher education analysis, Marginson and Rhoades (2002) point to

the interpenetration of the three levels of embeddedness in which change in university

systems takes place: global, national and local-organizational, or glonacality. Vaira

(2004:485) uses the notion of ‘organizational allomorphism’ to refer to a synthesis of the

isomorphic pressures produced by globalization processes and the local responses to them,

‘blunting the mutual exclusivity of both’. As we shall see, it is the duality of the global and

the local in globalization that creates difficulties for over-drawn distinctions between

‘convergence’ and ‘divergence’ in comparative policy accounts of higher education, and

other, systems.

Policy internationalization describes the increased worldwide convergence of policy

approaches by national governments in many sectors, in part at least facilitated by the

further rapid ease in global communications in recent years (Thatcher 2007). It refers to

relationships of actors, often but not always governmental, between nation states. Inter-

national organizations, such as the European Union (EU) and the World Trade Organi-

sation (WTO), provide examples of ‘strong’ policy internationalization. Formalized

inter-state negotiations produce mutually-accepted models, policies and standards as

structures of international regulation. Slaughter (2004) points out, however, that, especially

as the modern state has increasingly disaggregated into its component institutions,

worldwide networks of departmental government officials, often outside international

organizations, have become a distinct mode of global governance also.

Models and network power

Neither formal inter-governmental agreement nor conference-based deliberation is nec-

essarily the main source of model diffusion. Nor does such dissemination obviously arise

from the common response by policymakers to a similar set of external circumstances.

Rather, national policymakers make policy in the context of decisions taken by other

autonomous states. This context—and the models and standards that other states adopt—

generate constraints for individual choice-making by governments and contain strong

elements of network power. Isomorphism in higher education governance, for example,

may be the consequence of concern by national policymakers at heightened comparative

advantage for reformed foreign systems (scholarly and commercial). Model adoption

abroad may spur the view that existing domestic institutional structures require recon-

sideration and that governance changes are ‘inevitable’, especially if found in strongly-

emulated countries such as the USA.

Such choices by national governments, while voluntary (freely-made), are not entirely

autonomous (unconstrained) as they are significantly influenced by the models adopted in

other countries. Although policymakers are nearly always confronted by structurationdynamics—in which the free choices of individual agents (here, national states) generate

structures of constraint which then act back on individual choice—rapidly increasing

worldwide adoption of certain standards and policies enable thresholds of adoption to be

surpassed that then strongly compel non-adopters to fall in line (Grewal 2008). Certain

models attain high levels of worldwide adoption and exert strong normative and network

power.

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We should be clear that increased transnational networking by national policymakers

reinforces widespread model borrowing, but does not fully explain it. The diffusion of

standards, learning from others, and ‘off-the-peg’ solutions for those that lack the resources

or inclination to devise more customized national arrangements, are actions that nearly

always require explanations involving both free choice and structural constraint. Action-

based networking accounts for global model diffusion tend to under-theorize structural

power in such processes and its interplay with autonomous choice-making.

Structuration and the new public management

The new public management (NPM) is a clear example, in higher education and other

public sectors, of a globalizing model. To what extent is its adoption increasingly the result

of normative network power exerting strong constraints on national policymakers, at least

once a certain threshold of ‘conversion’ is achieved? Although network power does not

explain the origination and early dissemination of the NPM, there may come a point of

diffusion where later-adopting countries feel more externally or structurally constrained to

introduce NPM reforms than earlier adopters. That is, with widening diffusion, extrinsic

pressures overcome more intrinsic and merit-based considerations of particular governance

models by officials.

However, structuration is not a rigid process. It allows for processes of local adaptation

and ‘path histories’ to be accommodated within a nonetheless strong ‘pull’ towards

globalizing standards and models. Governance models globally diffuse, in fact, through

mechanisms affording elaboration and flexibility while retaining the overall coda of a new

institutional arrangement. Yet, with increasing adoption, the ‘structure’ in structurationtends to become more compelling for non-adopters than agency autonomy as a conse-

quence of a model’s increasing network power.

This snowballing structural influence reflects, and is reinforced by, changes in actor-

based power dynamics. The wider political weakening of professional and organized

labour, and the re-emergence of strong market rather than welfare states, as occurred in the

1980s in a number of developed countries, particularly Europe, appears a necessary con-

dition in providing the political insulation necessary for national decisionmakers to adopt

‘anti-academic’ NPM reforms. While all countries require such political conditions for the

force of a model’s network power to operate strongly, it is especially important in the early

adopting nation states. In the case of the NPM, radical domestic reform in the UK, and a

centralized and unitary political system, provided the environment for institutional change

in the absence of the network power that comes to characterize the policymaking contexts

for later adopters as the model diffuses globally.

Convergence and divergence in higher education systems

In higher education there has been increased policy convergence by territorial decision-

makers around certain funding and governance models. The NPM, and its associated

components of institutional autonomy, market-like competition, system diversity, man-

agerialism, external regulatory accountability, and the commercial production and trans-

lation of research outcomes to enhance national competitiveness in the global knowledge

economy, is an obvious example. But also we find the ‘emerging global model (EGM)’ of

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the research-based university, which illustrates ‘an intensification and globalization of the

development of research universities in general’ (Mohrman et al. 2008:5).

Similarly, under the influence of global university rankings, can be detected widespread

governmental ambitions to develop domestic entities as ‘world-class universities’, including

through increasingly selective funding policies. This is reflected in successive re-definitions

of ‘excellence’ and a re-balancing of contributory factors, including grade criteria and

greater emphasis on social ‘impacts’. National research and strategic investment policies

also appear eerily similar. Rather than being distinctively linked to local capacities and

requirements, we find an almost generic list of the sectors identified for support by countries,

notably biochemistry, nanomaterials, environmental protection, and information and

computer technology (OECD 2008). The European Union meanwhile is creating the

structural conditions for a European research area and a European area of higher education,

implying even stronger policy coordination across nation states. As with globalization more

generally, the higher education world of policy internationalization appears increasingly

‘flat’ (Friedman 2006), in its governance and organizational outcomes for nations.

However, caveats must be entered. First, notions of policy convergence and divergence

in comparative higher education and other analyses appear curiously unspecified. This

allows scope for the mainly unresolved debate between, on the one hand, those who claim

that globalization is producing a flattening of differences in national social and political

structures, including in higher education, and other observers, such as found in the ‘varieties

of capitalism’ approach, who argue that while institutional change is undoubtedly occurring

it is essentially a modification of distinctive national path dependencies. That is, the

complementarities associated with institutional sub-systems convey particular competitive

advantages within globalization for different social systems, especially between those that

are ‘Liberal’ and ‘Coordinated’ market economies. Institutional change is therefore

described as ‘transforming’ rather than ‘disruptive’, with modified rather than drastically-

altered institutions (Hall and Soskice 2001; Streeck and Thelen 2005). Yet the solution to

such dilemmas may be to recognize that the local adoption of globalizing models nearly

always involves adaptation, elements of redesign and interpretative flexibility.

Second, convergence (like diffusion) refers more to a process (often uneven) than an end-

state. Processes of convergence will nearly always display national differences as global

templates are ‘negotiated’ with local conditions. Moreover, some forms of national diver-

gence from globalizing models may actually aid transnational policy convergence by

allowing acceptance of the key features while preserving adaptability to local pathways in

the details. That is, rather than global standards becoming ‘adopted’, they are ‘interpreted’.

New meaningful interpretations and elaborations progressively are added at local levels by a

wider circle of adopters—but within an acceptance of the standard’s basic integrity and

universality as attested by ‘experts’. That is, rather than necessarily impeding policy con-

vergence, some forms of ‘divergence’ may assist diffusion by generating adaptation and

flexibility. ‘Convergence’ and ‘divergence’ need not always be in direct opposition as is

conventionally conceived. Policy internationalization proceeds through the mutual influ-

ence—the duality—of the global and the local. It is not one-way traffic from the global.

Third, we must be wary of attributing policy internationalization as the explanation for

all processes of international convergence. National governments may reach separately

arrived at, but common, policy solutions without policy internationalization being much in

evidence. For example, a number of European governments faced similar problems in their

higher education systems in the late 1960 and 1970s, such as student unrest, the growth of

trade unionism, and the rising influence of Marxism. Allied with governmental concern to

make universities more efficient, better managed, less collegially-driven, and more closely

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linked to industrial innovation, governments gradually embarked on reforms that appeared

domestically, rather than internationally, self-evident at the time. As we have noted, the

NPM originated in the UK in the mid-1980s almost entirely for domestic reasons. Ideas

were drawn on from elsewhere, notably the USA, only when they either supported reform

intentions or provided illustrative examples. In France, NPM-like policies, such as insti-

tutional contracts between universities and the state, were introduced in the 1980 and

1990 s in the absence of NPM rhetoric. NPM model awareness by French higher education

policymakers hardly surfaced much before the mid-2000s. Reforms were seen rather as

meeting particular French domestic concerns (Musselin and Paradeise 2009).

In France, as also in some other countries that came ‘late’ to NPM narratives, such as

Germany (see Schimank and Lange 2009), NPM-belatedness nonetheless is an interesting

phenomenon for considerations of policy internationalization, particularly for the network

processes underpinning it. That is, does the diffusion of the NPM model to latecomers

signify an accelerating form of network power associated with that model? Did the NPM

governance model reach a level of worldwide national adoption to the extent that previous

non-adopters felt compelled to introduce it, too?

It is, of course, difficult to know exactly the influences operating on decisionmakers,

international or otherwise, and perhaps subliminally or not. Methodologies based on

analyzing decision processes on the basis of actors’ ideas, interactions, strategies and other

self-reported and observed behaviour need supplementing by awareness of more structural

properties at work. A number of researchers have found it difficult to articulate explana-

tions for complex higher education reform processes in terms solely based on actors’

values and power-based actor alliances (Bleiklie 2004; Kogan et al. 2006).

It is here that network analysis may help explanations, especially when utilizing notions

of structuration—the process identified in social theory by which agents’ freely-made

choices create structures which in turn constrain agents’ decisionmaking (see Giddens

1984; Grewal 2008). A further helpful distinction is between networking power (which

refers to the power of actors in a network over others in and outside the network) and

network power. Networking power is agent-based and refers predominantly to the volun-

tary dimension in structuration, while network power highlights its structural character-

istics. The latter refers to the standards—the in-built structure or programme for the

network—which possess a form of power based on the ability to coordinate multiple-linked

actors. This can lead to the eventual elimination of alternative standards. The increasing

worldwide dominance as a global standard of the English language, which lacks any clear

intrinsic benefits over many other languages in terms of, say, simplicity, is an example of a

standard’s normative or network power (Castells 2009:42–43; Grewal 2008:5). In this

piece we are particularly interested in knowing how network power—the systemic force of

standards—operates to both sustain and hinder transnational policy diffusion and con-

vergence in higher education.

It will be helpful at this stage to consider further the pathways—the histories—of NPM-

model adoption in various national public systems. Do these pathways indicate that

processes of structuration and network power may be at work? Similarly, does local

interpretation aid or hinder the model’s diffusion?

Pathways

Clearly, not all countries pursue identical reform paths, as confirmed in the analysis of

comparative public management trends by Pollitt and Bouckaert (2004). Similarly, while

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emphasizing the strength of NPM diffusion in public management models, Ferlie et al.

(2005:721) conclude that ‘while the broad ideas and slogans may travel widely, each

country makes its own translation or adaptation of the NPM package’. Ferlie et al. (2009:2)

note too, that ‘steering patterns vary considerably from one European nation state to

another, reflecting attachment to alternative narratives, conditions of path dependency and

localized reform trajectories’. Recent investigations support the view that policy interna-

tionalization is gathering pace. Paradeise et al. (2009:229) conclude from a study of seven

European higher education systems that ‘there are clear signs everywhere that universities

are experiencing an organizational turn that pushes them from dependent administrative

bodies or loosely-coupled professional bureaucracies towards autonomously managed

organizations’. The NPM and other global models are not ‘take-it-or leave-it’ templates

but, reflecting local circumstances, can be disaggregated, adopted selectively, and modified

(Pollitt and Bouckaert 2004). Although transnational policy convergence appears quite

relentless, it is facilitated by local adaptation that nonetheless ensures convergence on the

main principles.

It seems clear that governments learn both through interactions with their historically-

derived national circumstances and also through their exposure in networks to policy-

makers worldwide. That is, path dependency occurs at both the national and global levels.

Path dependency at the global level occurs when network power helps to lock-in particular

standards and norms (Grewal 2008). A critical issue becomes the extent to which national

agency is able to manoeuvre the constraints of international structural power to preserve at

least some elements of localism and autonomy. In some cases this may be relatively

unproblematic and require little in the way of foot-shifting. When localisms are strong,

however, local variants appear more distinctive as a consequence of the influence of path

histories. In severe cases of localism, behavioural strategies of under-commitment (rather

than no commitment) become increasingly important in generating flexibility and dis-

tinctive national variety in the adoption of global standards. Yet even behavioural strate-

gies of under-commitment do not necessarily act as permanently-anchored impediments to

the diffusion of global standards, at least in a weakened form (as we explore later). In all

cases, however, the global and the local interact and ‘negotiate’.

The respective constraints exercised by these two major and apparently conflicting

processes of feedback (from the global and local environments respectively) ‘pull’ on

decisionmakers. Convergence and divergence is reflected in the extent to which either

global or local path dependency has exercised the greatest influence. Both forms of

feedback are likely to be operating. But levels of divergence may be functional for con-

vergence by enabling localization to work with the international in a symbiotic rather than

oppositional fashion, and aiding rather than impeding policy diffusion. As illustrated later,

the Bologna Process provides such an example for higher education.

However, we require more dynamic empirical investigations in higher education

research of particular policy trajectories where the focus is on the dilemmas facing deci-

sionmakers as they respond to local and more international influences. Both networkingpower (who has power in policy international networks?) and network power (how much

normative power do particular and diffusing templates possess?) form part of the con-

ceptual framework. That is, both provide the two faces of structuration. The second and

related task is to know more about the factors governing chosen pathways when national

decisionmakers are faced with the changing externalities for their policymaking that are

caused by, on one hand, strengthening forms of policy internationalization (and the

increasing dominance of certain models, i.e., network power), and, on the other, by local

conditions, histories, and institutional and other path variables that militate against

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unadorned universalism but which nonetheless still advance global standards through

processes of interpretation, modification and adaptation.

Consequently, an important analytical issue in policy internationalization is determining

at the outset how the agent/structure dilemma is to be reconciled in operationalizing the

concept of structuration. That is, we will need to construct bridging concepts to help

estimate empirically the extent that agents (policymakers) are free to make their choices

within the constraints of structures, including those of systemic network power, that are

found within most policymaking environments.

First, however, it will be helpful to look more briefly at the current explanations for

policy internationalization, and then at ways in which some of the more irksome charac-

teristics of network power for policymakers is avoided behaviourally. More particularly, it

will be useful to seek to locate these accounts within our consideration of structuration and

the related concept of network power.

Explaining policy internationalization

Among the primary explanations for policy internationalization in higher education and the

diffusion of globally-conquering models, those based on economic competition appear

especially influential (King 2009). The economic competition explanation for policy

internationalization suggests that the nation state’s general reliance on successful forms of

advanced capitalism in a highly competitive global economy, and the belief that univer-

sities are critical instruments for attaining economic prosperity through the provision of

educated personnel and knowledge creation, disposes national governments to adopt the

organizational models of the world’s leading economies, particularly those of the USA,

and this includes for higher education systems.

In the USA, the thinking goes, is found a higher education system composed of quite

highly differentiated, market-based and autonomous institutions with distinctive missions.

These characteristics tend to be viewed by many national governmental decisionmakers,

and by international organizations such as the EU and OECD, as likely to deliver the

innovation, knowledge and skills necessary for highly-competitive economic performance

by countries.

This is reflected at the ‘meso’-level as global economic (and status) competition

between universities has consequences for policy diffusion. Competition can create dis-

turbances in national and organizational environments which require some form of sta-

bilization. Increased factor mobility of intellectual labour may shift towards countries that

display particular governance (and other) arrangements in their higher education systems.

Increasingly fierce national and institutional competition for international fee-paying and

scholarship students, for example, is one reason why NPM and similar market-based

reforms are taken up by late-adopting countries (parts of Continental Europe, for instance)

as their competitive equilibrium is disturbed by the actions of the pacesetters (such as the

USA, Australia and the UK). Network power, however, facilitates the adoption of key

elements of governance arrangements found in competitor nations.

The argument is that economic competition (and conditions such as the political

weakening of potential opponents of reforms, such as professionalized and unionized

academics, and student unions), provides the circumstances within which the network

power of the governance models employed by successful competitors attains traction and

leads towards particular solutions. Only countries with a generally high level of global

standing and relative unconcern with the models of other nation states have the capacity to

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ignore worldwide standards, such as the USA, as, for example, with its retention of the

death penalty in the face of a wave of abolition in other democracies (Grewal 2008). It is

the gathering number of followers for a model worldwide that results in increased nor-

mative or network power bearing on non-adopters. This, rather than any necessarily well-

evidenced evaluation of the essential advantages of a model, increasingly comes into play.

The larger is the group of national adopters of a globalizing standard (such as versions

of the NPM), the greater the reservoir of worldwide experience and knowledge available

for enhancing such policies once they have been implemented. As with the purchase of

electronic consumer goods, the supply and availability of product maintenance and updates

becomes important in decisions to adopt (‘buy’). The more users a product has, the more

secure the purchaser feels about the choice made. Countries may feel comfortable in

following the crowd in reforming their higher education systems, not on economic com-

petition grounds alone, but because it appears to be the safest action to take. As a model

globalizes, the more such decisions are experienced as compelling (structural), rather than

the outcome of autonomous choices.

Network power is often reinforced by the tendency of countries to be imperfect eval-

uators. Elkins (2009), in discussing the adoption by countries of constitutional models,

points out that policy diffusion is not always straightforward. Countries engage in learning

processes to understand better the advantages and disadvantages for them of adopting

models employed by their neighbouring and peer countries. ‘Internal repertoires’ (effec-

tively national ‘path histories’) play a part in such evaluations. Like individuals, however,

states as ‘bounded rationalists’ are not generally very good in judging processes in other

countries and often rely on short-cuts or heuristics in coming to their views about adopting

models from elsewhere. This may lead to a decision, for example, that it is best to rely on

the accumulated wisdom of others and to adopt a global model without demur. But it may

also lead to model modification as territorial decisionmakers seek adjustment to the

standard to fit what are perceived to be a country’s specific historical, political and cultural

conditions. In both cases, however, bounded rationality reinforces the pull of network

power associated with globalizing standards and models.

Network power appears likely to be strengthened when globalizing governance models

are found in countries with high levels of interaction with current non-adopting countries,

or when both nations share perceptions of cultural and political likeness. Large variations

in power between the countries may also lead to diffusion, as may that between a country

and other countries collectively when international organizations such as the World Bank,

for example, make adoption of globalizing standards a condition for providing loan and

similar finance to a country in economic difficulty.

The gradual adoption by governments of increasingly globalizing models changes the

policy context in which non- or late-adopting countries come to decisions. These exter-

nalities tend to result in national decisionmakers being less influenced by the direct

advantages of a particular policy than by its normative power. That is, the natural

advantages of a model or standard become less important, once a certain level of world-

wide adoption has been reached, than its network characteristics. The number and standing

of those who have signed up to the model elsewhere is the key to its accelerating diffusion

(Grewal 2008).

Nonetheless, it should not be assumed that policy diffusion necessarily leads to for-

mulaic policy convergence, as national governments possess autonomy. They take the

decisions, although often in the context of the declining voluntarism and tighter constraints

that come with the accelerating network power of globalizing standards. Local adaptability

is a quite common feature of globalizing standards. Successful local adoption, as Elkins

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(2009) notes, may be more likely when the process of diffusion is characterized as a

learning process by a territorial authority, rather than a globalizing model simply being

seized upon, somewhat unreflectively, as an easy ‘of-the-peg’ solution. Yet, even in these

circumstances, quite high levels of structural constraint operate, and increase the more a

model globalizes.

Nonetheless, it is reasonable to suppose that learning mechanisms (rather than

straightforward, largely untested adoption) may improve the chances of adopters gener-

ating high levels of internalized commitment to these externally-originated models. This is

likely to lead to national customization of a model in ways appropriate for a particular

country: it is a successful conjunction of the global and the local. Undoubtedly, however,

we need further study on policy networks in higher education in the age of advancing

policy internationalization to see whether elements of ‘path histories’ in countries, rather

than being obstacles to policy diffusion, enhance successful model adaptation through

processes of learning and modification.

The normative power of models

A model’s global diffusion thus reflects its normative power, rather than necessarily any

advantages inherent to it, at least once a certain level of worldwide adoption has been

reached. Models diffused through international networks may attain particular ‘tipping

points’ through a rising number of adherents, thus providing compelling pressure on non-

adopters to sign up, consequentially weakening the power of alternative and competing

models (Gladwell 2000; Grewal 2008:11). The model thus attains a ‘pulling’ capacity that

accelerates with each additional adopter, while by definition weakening alternatives

(Grewal 2008:4). Is the NPM, with its associated characteristics of markets, institutional

autonomy and external regulation, for example, likely to become even more dominant

globally in higher education, if not necessarily universal, because it is has reached a point

in its diffusion that accelerates its pulling power to current non-adopters?

This is not to suggest ‘the end of history’ with dominant global models such as the NPM

eliminating all rivals and remaining triumphant in perpetuity. Models close to universalism

face inevitable challenges as a consequence of reactions to the anti-innovative conformism

that is often engendered by triumphant models and orthodoxies. Global standards can fail

because over time they do not meet local and changing circumstances. The almost uni-

versal gold standard for regulating currencies in the financial world for over 50 years from

the late 19th century eventually was abandoned as it lacked the flexibility to respond to the

growing need for innovation and local autonomy in the management of national economies

(Eichengreen 2008). As Grewal (2008:5) notes: ‘inherent in the use of any standard is a

tension between the cooperation that it allows users to enjoy and the check on innovation

that it also imposes, since innovation would constitute a break in an ongoing cooperative

regime’.

Nor do dominant models exist in a vacuum. They have consequences for other policy

objectives (and other dominant models in the global knowledge economy) and these may

be perverse. NPM and associated commercialization approaches to research, for example,

despite facilitating some forms of entrepreneurialism, allowing ‘load-shedding’ by the

state, and reducing fiscal pressures on governments through increased private sources of

funding, may encourage short-termism and limit the scope for the scientific curiosity and

creativity in basic research that are essential for high-quality innovation (OECD 2008).

Moreover, as social constructions, all models are subject to the contestations of values that

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are part of the everyday world of sociability and frequently lead to the regular and cyclical

supplanting of temporarily dominant models by alternatives (Hood 1998). Yet, network

power in the age of policy internationalization provides some models, such as the NPM,

with the durability to rise above this (normal) cyclicality for far longer than in less

globally-networked eras.

Behavioural variations

Localized interpretation and elaboration as processes aiding the global spread of particular

standards and models may sometimes take circuitous routes. Behavioural sleight-of-hand

by governments and key domestic groups may occur in the implementation of global

standards where levels of local political opposition remain relatively high (that is, when the

some of the political conditions for facilitating network power are not fully realized). The

objective for governments in such circumstances is to evade the international and other

criticism that would follow outright rejection of a global standard (as a result of local

opposition) while also accommodating domestic opposition to reform by powerful inter-

ests. Strategies of ‘mock compliance’ tend to be the outcome.

Mock compliance is especially likely when the costs of global compliance by a country

tend to fall disproportionately on influential domestic interests. When governments are

faced with contradictory domestic and foreign pressures for the adoption of authoritative,

‘worldwide’ (often ‘Western’) standards, among the methods for avoiding full-throated

reform implementation include: regulatory forbearance (government and its agencies

‘turning a blind eye’ to cases of non-implementation); administrative failure (lack of

governmental impetus to collect data, monitor and to upbraid the recalcitrant); and private

non-compliance (companies simply acting as before with or without a gesture of formal

change). Strategies of mock compliance occurred, for example, in the wake of the East

Asian financial crisis and the strong subsequent encouragement from the major international

financial bodies for these countries to adopt the more explicit and independent regulatory

governance models of the West. In these cases, however, some movement towards ‘global’

standards was achieved, albeit incrementally and with reservations and exceptions

(Eichengreen 2008; Walter 2008). Mock compliance is often found in situations where

external monitoring of implementation is difficult and where evasion is consequently easier.

Elements of ‘mock compliance’—when the outward appearance of compliance is

combined with relatively disguised behavioural divergence from newly-adopted stan-

dards—is found in higher education, too. The European Bologna process aims at con-

verging national systems’ architectures by 2010, but quite significant harmonization on the

surface masks continuing national differences and interpretations more locally (Hoell et al.

2009; Witte 2006). Nonetheless, the Bologna process continues to make inexorable pro-

gress towards the establishment of common European standards and structures.

Regulatory ritualism, a second form of behavioural evasion, tends to develop over time,

rather than at inception as with mock compliance (Braithwaite 2008). In higher education

systems, it is associated with strategizing by institutions and academics in the face of

increased external accountability, such as that found with quality assurance. After a period,

regulatory processes such as those based on audit become a ‘ritual of comfort’ or an

‘institution of pacification’ rather than evidence of successful and effective compliance

(Power 1997). With regulatory ritualism there is an acceptance of institutionalized means

for securing regulatory goals combined with losing focus on achieving the goals or out-

comes themselves.

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Global science

While policy internationalization is predominantly governmental, the emergence and

reproduction of global standards may be private and yet possess strong network power. The

great majority of global scientific alliances in recent years have been formed by person-to-

person projects on the basis of shared interests, rather than by trans-ministerial agreement

(Wagner 2008). Generally they are organized collectively by individuals through estab-

lished professional and disciplinary networks. Strong notions of autonomy, objectivity,

testability and peer judgement provide key standardizing (and exclusionary) characteristics

across the global scientific network. In our conceptualization, actor exchanges freely

entered into are subject to processes of structuration in which actors create structures

through their decisions that in turn constrain their actions and coordinate the network. This

structure generates scientific standards and a scientific method that, with increasing

legitimization worldwide, attracts network power properties based on global normative

influence. These strongly influence individual scientists.

Conclusion

Increasingly it appears advantageous for higher education research to explore the differ-

ences and contestations that underlie network power in the globalization of models and

standards. Actors generate structures in dynamic processes of structuration that, in turn,

constrain levels of policymaking autonomy. There is a constant spatial reorganization of

higher education policymaking through an inextricable co-influencing of the global and the

local. The era of policy internationalization, perceived through agents, structures and

networks in processes of mutual constructions, begins to challenge over-simple binary

distinctions between policy convergence and divergence and recognizes their symbiotic

relationship in the diffusion of global standards.

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