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This article focuses on the role of political parties for policy making, and it traces the development from party preferences over coalition positions to policy proposals. The main argument is that parties with more similar preferences agree on more encompassing sets of policies, and that if a coalition formulates a policy in its agreement the chances for a policy proposal are higher. However, the need to negotiate the coalition agreement with other parties mediates the influence of partisan preferences. The article is based on a qualitative content analysis of documents as well as expert interviews from three West European countries and focuses on higher education policy. The results show preferences of governing parties influence policy proposals also in situations of coalition government. Furthermore, coalition agreements are found to be central documents in policy making as they limit veto capacities and indicate where substantial policy change is likely.

AbstractUsing a neo‐institutional framework, this study investigates how German police use Twitter for their communication. This is relevant, because the police increasingly use social media to bypass the media's gatekeeping function and attain increased agency in communication activities. However, little is known about their different communication strategies and their impact on user engagement. The analysis is based on an automated content analysis of all tweets (N = 137,771) sent out by the German police in 2019. It identifies different patterns regarding the usage of Twitter between police entities on different levels of governance and in differing types of environments and examines how these patterns translate into different levels of user engagement. We find that German police entities differ in their use of Twitter and that environmental and organizational aspects can explain these differences. Moreover, different patterns of social media usage also lead to differing levels of user engagement.

In den letzten Jahren wurde in der deutschen Politikwissenschaft (und darüber hinaus) eine intensive Debatte über die gesellschaftliche und politische Relevanz der Disziplin geführt. Dabei blieb allerdings die faktische politikberatende Rolle mindestens genauso umstritten wie die normative Seite dieser Tätigkeit; und auch innerhalb der vergleichenden Forschung zu Politikberatung wurde der Politikwissenschaft keine gezielte Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie, für wen und wie häufig Politikwissenschaftler*innen in Deutschland ihre Expertise für die Politik bereitstellen. Die Analyse basiert auf den deutschen Ergebnissen (n=376) einer Umfrage, die 2018 in mehr als 30 europäischen Ländern durchgeführt wurde. Neben ersten empirischen Einblicken in ein bislang wenig untersuchtes Phänomen ist es Ziel des Beitrags, deutsche Politikwissenschaftler*innen in einer Typologie von Beratungsrollen zu verorten. Die Analyse zeigt durchaus umfangreiche und diverse, im Ländervergleich allerdings unterdurchschnittliche politikberatende Tätigkeiten. Der zentrale Unterschied für Art und Ausmaß der Politikberatung scheint zwischen Politikwissenschaftler*innen auf befristeten und unbefristeten Stellen zu bestehen.

In den letzten Jahren wurde in der deutschen Politikwissenschaft (und darüber hinaus) eine intensive Debatte über die gesellschaftliche und politische Relevanz der Disziplin geführt. Dabei blieb allerdings die faktische politikberatende Rolle mindestens genauso umstritten wie die normative Seite dieser Tätigkeit; und auch innerhalb der vergleichenden Forschung zu Politikberatung wurde der Politikwissenschaft keine gezielte Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie, für wen und wie häufig Politikwissenschaftler*innen in Deutschland ihre Expertise für die Politik bereitstellen. Die Analyse basiert auf den deutschen Ergebnissen (n=376) einer Umfrage, die 2018 in mehr als 30 europäischen Ländern durchgeführt wurde. Neben ersten empirischen Einblicken in ein bislang wenig untersuchtes Phänomen ist es Ziel des Beitrags, deutsche Politikwissenschaftler*innen in einer Typologie von Beratungsrollen zu verorten. Die Analyse zeigt durchaus umfangreiche und diverse, im Ländervergleich allerdings unterdurchschnittliche politikberatende Tätigkeiten. Der zentrale Unterschied für Art und Ausmaß der Politikberatung scheint zwischen Politikwissenschaftler*innen auf befristeten und unbefristeten Stellen zu bestehen.

In den letzten Jahren wurde in der deutschen Politikwissenschaft (und darüber hinaus) eine intensive Debatte über die gesellschaftliche und politische Relevanz der Disziplin geführt. Dabei blieb allerdings die faktische politikberatende Rolle mindestens genauso umstritten wie die normative Seite dieser Tätigkeit; und auch innerhalb der vergleichenden Forschung zu Politikberatung wurde der Politikwissenschaft keine gezielte Aufmerksamkeit geschenkt. Dieser Artikel untersucht, wie, für wen und wie häufig Politikwissenschaftler*innen in Deutschland ihre Expertise für die Politik bereitstellen. Die Analyse basiert auf den deutschen Ergebnissen (n=376) einer Umfrage, die 2018 in mehr als 30 europäischen Ländern durchgeführt wurde. Neben ersten empirischen Einblicken in ein bislang wenig untersuchtes Phänomen ist es Ziel des Beitrags, deutsche Politikwissenschaftler*innen in einer Typologie von Beratungsrollen zu verorten. Die Analyse zeigt durchaus umfangreiche und diverse, im Ländervergleich allerdings unterdurchschnittliche politikberatende Tätigkeiten. Der zentrale Unterschied für Art und Ausmaß der Politikberatung scheint zwischen Politikwissenschaftler*innen auf befristeten und unbefristeten Stellen zu bestehen.

Modern governments are increasingly faced with problems of policy coordination. However, coordination does not come naturally to organizations as it demands overcoming institutionalized working modes. Thus, countries have to find ways to tackle these problems to ensure efficient provision of public services. This contribution focuses on a specific and complex case, namely policy coordination for higher education policy in federal systems. The main research interest is to analyse the way in which coordination bodies responsible for higher education policy in two federal countries, Canada and Germany, organize their activities. Through this the study contributes to the understanding of the relevance of policy coordination in multi-level and multi-actor policy-making environments as well as the particular institutions that are dedicated to this task. Both coordination bodies are found to have many commonalities. However, the persisting differences, which can be traced to constitutional surroundings, also stress the importance of local conditions.

AbstractScholars may be diversely engaged in boundary-crossing work, either staying more confined in academic settings, or reaching out to the policy world. Despite growing theoretical attention, there is little empirical knowledge on the extent to which scholars indeed engage in boundary-crossing activities, and the conditions that foster or jeopardize this. We use original survey data from European political scientists to investigate how frequently they 'travel' to the policy world, what patterns of engagement are visible, and how these are determined. The article introduces a typology capturing different boundary-crossing profiles and shows that political scientists are rather frequent travelers across the border between academia and the policy world. Yet, individual characteristics matter. Having (had) a position outside of academia has an especially strong effect on the likelihood of boundary-crossing. Our results also reveal that not every scholar has the same chance to be involved, depending on gender or seniority.

AbstractNorwegian politics have undergone significant changes since 1945. This paper analyzes over seven decades of policy agendas outlined in Norwegian executive speeches focusing on the composition and development of the agenda using categories from the Comparative Agendas Project. The analysis focuses on (a) the dynamics of agenda changes over time, (b) the diversity and distribution of attention, and (c) in how far external shocks or partisan factors drive major agenda shifts. Our results show that the Norwegian executive agenda has become more encompassing over time, that it is comparatively diverse, and that diversity increases as Norwegian politics becomes more complex. While there is generally a high degree of stability in the agenda, sudden punctuations also occur. Partisan factors only play a limited role in explaining these attention shifts, while external shocks seem to be more relevant.

Numerous universities throughout the world have established top-level advisory boards – informal bodies and councils that the institutional leadership may consult on issues perceived as important. Through a series of qualitative interviews with members of such entities as well as representatives of the institutions appointing them, the article sheds light on how strategic advisory bodies function, and how these entities frame and interact with the institutional leadership. We observe that strategic advisory boards represent a hybrid form of governance installing mutual dependencies between representatives of the boards and the institutional leadership – what we label as a kind of controlled collegiality. While university leadership acts as a gatekeeper controlling access to these boards, once members are nominated the power relations between the actors, become more equal. The study highlights the importance of strategic advisory boards as new elements in higher education governance – working in the shadow of more formal governance arrangements. Here, we argue that the establishment of these boards can be interpreted as a re-introduction of a collegial element in universities exposed to a number of reforms resulting in more streamlined and managerial governance structures.

While the EHEA has achieved its goal to reduce structural barriers for student and staff mobility, the situation is different when it comes to the realization of the agreed upon promotion of basic values and principles. For example, in a number of EHEA countries the adherence of academic freedom has deteriorated since 2010. In addition, various studies have suggested a decreasing level of political commitment to Europeanisation of higher education in a growing number of countries. Achieving progress in the coming period in this key part of the EHEA's objectives is difficult also as a result of the problems the overall process of European integration faces. For example, Brexit, the rise of anti-EU political parties and movements, and growing disagreements among EU member states on the key ideas and principles underlying European integration are posing serious challenges for Europe's way forward in higher education collaboration. In this chapter, we will discuss a number of the challenges facing, directly or indirectly, the EHEA. We will start with a discussion of the importance of the rise of science diplomacy for the EHEA, being a consequence of the growing connection between foreign affairs and the higher education & science policy areas. Next, we will analyse the growing intra-European political tensions, with a number of EHEA countries not adhering to basic European values and principles concerning liberal democracy and open societies. Further, we will examine relevant trends in EU-funded higher education collaboration within the EHEA, with special attention for the European University Initiative. Finally, the discussions and analyses presented in the chapter lead to proposing two complementary EHEA trajectories for the coming period, the first implying a move away from the geographical focus on Europe, the second including only those countries that adhere to promoting academic freedom, institutional autonomy and other basic values and principles. Both trajectories take as a starting-point that the EHEA is in need of fundamental reforms.

Regional cooperation in the higher education policy sector has been on the rise throughout the last decades. In this article, we compare and analyse two instances of higher education regionalisms (i.e. political projects of higher education region creation) in Europe and South-East Asia from an ideational perspective. In so doing, we engage with and challenge the diffusion argument common in both European higher education studies ('Bologna Process export thesis') and new comparative regionalism. Using publicly accessible documents from regional bodies active in higher education policy coordination, and 53 semi-structured interviews with key policy actors involved in these developments, we identify the policy ideas of European and South-East Asian higher education regionalisms, and consider whether the extant models of regional cooperation and the knowledge discourse affected their evolution. Our findings indicate that the 'Bologna Process export thesis' and the diffusion assumptions of comparative regionalism are too simplistic and misleading. We conclude with suggestions for scholars interested in new comparative regionalism.