How are National Level Actors Enacting the Ideational Component of European Governance – The Portuguese Case

The influence of European policies to create an integrated political and social area under the aegis of the Europe of knowledge can be seen as relying on the influence of ideas and discourses. How these ideas and discourses are interpreted and translated into the national contexts is a major issue in policy analysis. In this paper, we will focus on these processes on the basis of the Portuguese case of higher education governance. In the aftermath of previous research on the prevailing ideas, interests, instruments and institutions enacted at the European level, this paper focuses on the analysis of the interviews to national key-actors in higher education and on their interpretations of the ‘four I’s’ in the governance of knowledge policies. The analysis of the (mis)matching of European and national actor’s views aims at contributing for the study of the ideational component of European and national governance.