Political Economy and Party Politics of Higher Education 1

Abstract

Political parties are quintessential actors in politics and policymaking, yet our understanding of them in relation to knowledge policy (including higher education as well as science and research policies) is still limited. Similarly, the comparative political economy of higher education is an area that also still leaves a lot of room for additional scholarly work. These gaps in the literature are especially surprising as education and knowledge policies are policy areas with growing political saliency and which are becoming more politicized as larger parts of public budgets are spent in this field. Therefore, our panels provide a forum for scholars to address the role of political parties and for political economy analyses in shaping knowledge policies. This includes, for example, questions linked to the impact of ideology or institutional arrangements of the knowledge sector on party preferences, the framing and saliency of knowledge policies in relation to other issue areas, the process of transferring partisan preferences into policies, partisan differences in policy outputs or outcomes in relation to the knowledge sector as well as the way parties (inter-)act across multiple governance levels. The papers proposed for these panels should have an empirical foundation and can analyze both single cases or use more comparative approaches. The panels have no specific regional focus and are open for contributions addressing cases from all world regions.

Title	Details
The Political Economy of Higher Education Tuition Fees and Subsidies	View Paper Details
Tuition Policy Choices and Party Politics in Canadian Provinces, 1990 – 2015	View Paper Details
The Political Enterprise of Australian Higher Education Funding	View Paper Details
A Political-economic Analysis of the Reaction of the Higher Education System to Major Societal Changes	View Paper Details