Implications of overlapping regionalism in higher education: opportunities for policy transfer and strategic cooperation in the post-Soviet space

This paper maps various regional (higher) education coordination initiatives that have developed in the post-Soviet space since the early 1990s, focusing on overlap in countries and issues, and pinpointing state and non-state actors involved. This mapping provides the basis for identifying opportunities for policy transfer across time and space, as well as the extent to which multiple initiatives in higher education provide openings for cooperation in other areas. This serves to discuss the temporal and cross-national higher education policy linkages, as well as linkages between higher education policy developments and developments in other policy domains. The conceptual approach combines the literature on overlapping regionalism (Hettne, 2005; Panke & Stapel, 2018) and regionalism in higher education (Chou & Ravinet, 2015; Jayasuriya & Robertson, 2010) with insights about policy transfer (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2012), in particular those highlighting the importance of power and time (Dolowitz, Plugaru, & Saurugger, 2019). The empirical basis comprises various policy documents and secondary sources. The analysis shows that despite the risks of being exposed to conflicting rules, ex-USSR states are particularly inclined to produce overlapping regionalisms through policy transfer. In this way they create an opportunity structure enabling them to exert their agency through forum shopping or strategic inconsistency mechanisms (Russo & Gawrich, 2017) in a region characterised by power asymmetries between Russia and ‘smaller’ states. These incentives, combined with loose obligations and supplementary role of higher education in relation to security and economic issues in the post-Soviet regional projects, make overlaps immanent in the higher education policy sector. References Chou, M.-H., & Ravinet, P. (2015). The Rise of 'Higher Education Regionalism': An Agenda for Higher Education and Research. In J. Huisman, H. De Boer, D. D. Dill, & M. Souto-Otero (Eds.), The Palgrave International Handbook of Higher Education Policy and Governance (pp. 361-378). Houndmills, Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Dolowitz, D. P., & Marsh, D. (2012). The Future of Policy Transfer Research. Political Studies Review, 10(3), 339-345. doi:10.1111/j.1478-9302.2012.00274.x Dolowitz, D. P., Plugaru, R., & Saurugger, S. (2019). The process of transfer: The micro-influences of power, time and learning. Public Policy and Administration, 0(0), 0952076718822714. doi:10.1177/0952076718822714 Hettne, B. (2005). Beyond the ‘new’ regionalism. New Political Economy, 10(4), 543-571. doi:10.1080/13563460500344484 Jayasuriya, K., & Robertson, S. L. (2010). Regulatory regionalism and the governance of higher education. Globalisation, Societies and Education, 8(1), 1-6. doi:10.1080/14767720903573993 Lombaerde, P. d., Söderbaum, F., Van Langehnove, L., & Baert, F. (2010). The problem of comparison in comparative regionalism. Review of International Studies, 36(03), 731-753. doi:doi:10.1017/S0260210510000707 Panke, D., & Stapel, S. (2018). Exploring overlapping regionalism. Journal of International Relations and Development, 21(3), 635-662. doi:10.1057/s41268-016-0081-x Russo, A., & Gawrich, A. (2017). Overlap with contestation? Comparing norms and policies of regional organizations in the post-Soviet space. Central Asian Survey, 36(3), 331–352. https://doi.org/10.1080/02634937.2017.1281222