New geopolitical and social realities and policies for internationalisation of higher education in Europe

Higher education in Europe has since the end of WWII been operating under relatively stable academic, political and economic conditions, with cross-border collaboration within Europe emerging as an important policy issue. Yet, the landscape for international collaboration has been fundamentally altered in the last few years. The rise and consolidation of authoritarian powers in several European as well as BRICS countries, the world-wide COVID-19 pandemic, and the war in Ukraine have raised concerns on whether the previously sheltered position of higher education in international relations is viable and desirable. There has this far been little systematic analysis of the national policy changes that this has led to within higher education. Through this paper we want to contribute to a better understanding of HE policy changes in Europe in the area of internationalization. For that purpose we will address the following research problem: How can we account for HE policy change in selected European countries in the area of internationalization? We explore this question in the context of new geopolitical and social realities. There are various perspectives available for making sense of policy change. First, there is the notion of a ‘global script’, which argues that national governance reforms follow global norms and ideas of good governance models with the result a homogenization of policies around the world. Even if we accept that a global reform script will affect national HE policies in the area of internationalization, does this mean that higher education policies and practices for internationalization become more alike? Alternative perspectives to a global reform script would argue that political conditions and constellations vary across national systems. Such national filters will keep arrangements in place for how internationalization is interpreted and operationalization within each higher education system context. A key concern thus is how such national filters interpret and modify global scripts and hegemonic ideas in the development and implementation of HE policies in the area of internationalization. First, a ‘punctuated equilibrium/major transformations’ perspective would expect that major transformation in HE policy takes place as a result of exogenous shocks followed by stasis in internationalization arrangements. Second, an ‘intercurrence’ perspective would expect that governance reforms are initiated in the area of interrelationships between different institutional and sectoral spheres, e.g. relationship general public governance with higher education governance reforms. Third, a ‘temporal sorting’ perspective would emphasise national variations in policy-making opportunities, policy problems and available solutions and contingent events. Fourth, a ‘path dependency’ perspective would expect that higher education policy development and implementation follow a specific national developments and lock-in effects. Fifth, an ‘incrementalism’ perspective would imply that policy development and implementation take a routine and layering shape, and policy change takes place incrementally through routine adaptations, where shocks and crises are not the ultimate source of change but the nudge that serves to accelerate ongoing “slow motion” reform processes. The paper explores these concurrent explanations by analysing policy changes as stated in formal policy documents from the last ten years in ten European countries.