Comparing regionalisms within Europe: Balkans, Baltics, Benelux and Nordics in the context of multi-level governance

European policy arena is an exceptional multi-level governance context (Piattoni 2010), comprising organizational, national, regional (within Europe), and European governance levels, all of which are also embedded in a ‘world society’ (Meyer et al. 1997). Some of these levels can be further expanded depending on the local circumstances, e.g. the organizational level into subunits, or the national into the federal/state/regional levels. Interaction of actors and ideas takes place across them and can be mutually reinforcing – driving policy and organizational changes in very similar directions; or creating barriers when preferences diverge. The regional level is of particular interest here; it can act as a platform for common translation of European “pressures” to fit the specificities in the region, leading to convergence within the region but divergence from other parts of Europe. It can also have no specific consequence on the extent of policy convergence within the region, i.e. convergence would primarily be towards European models and the region would largely be bypassed. Although interesting patterns of convergence and divergence have already been identified (Dobbins and Knill 2009; Gornitzka and Maassen 2011; Westerheijden et al. 2010), and while some ideas about the relevance of political, cultural, and socio-economic characteristics of countries have been put forward (Heinze and Knill 2007), a more systematic exploration of the importance of regions for higher education policy coordination has been missing. The present study analyses four distinct European regions: Balkans (former Yugoslavia + Albania), Baltics (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Benelux (Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands) and the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, Sweden). These regions were selected due to the social, political, economic and cultural similarities between the countries, and because they are externally recognized as regions. The study focuses on approaches to and the outcomes of policy coordination within these four regions, in relation to the overarching policy coordination in the Europe of Knowledge. Analytically, the study relies on the-so called Guttman scale of political coordination (Braun 2008) as a heuristic device to classify the extent of political coordination within the four regions in relation to five distinct categories: no coordination, negative coordination, positive coordination, policy integration and strategic coordination. The same heuristic is employed to classify one of the two major integrative initiatives within the Europe of Knowledge – the EHEA. This is complemented by the literature on measures and mechanisms of policy convergence in order to analyse the outcomes of regional policy coordination (Heichel et al. 2005; Heinze and Knill 2007; Héritier et al. 2001; Holzinger and Knill 2005; Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012; Pollitt 2002; Voegtle et al. 2011). Concerning design and methodology, the study compares two distinct aspects of coordination. First, the study focuses on identifying the regional governance structures, their mandate in relation to higher education and research, the resource base, as well as the policy outputs (if any). This is done through analysis of policy statements, statutes, mission statements and other organizational documents these regional governance structures have, and is used to assess the extent of political coordination within these regions. Second, for the analysis of outcomes of coordination, three aspects of higher education linked to the objectives of EHEA are analysed– quality assurance (QA) and accreditation, recognition of degrees, and joint degrees. Existence of pooling of capacity and resources in relation to QA, bilateral or multilateral agreements concerning recognition, as well as numbers of joint degree programmes are analysed, amongst other. Apart from analysis of relevant documents, this part of the study also relies on interviews with key actors in these regions and the corresponding countries to clarify the state of the art. Having in mind these theoretical and methodological choices, the study aims at contributing to the literature on the key characteristics and consequences of multi-level governance in Europe and the dynamic of differentiated European integration (Holzinger and Schimmelfennig 2012; Piattoni 2010) in higher education