The Role of ideas in the Emergence of Convergent Higher Education Policies in Europe: The Case of France
Résumé
How do ideas influence public policy ? French higher education is a good case in point. It seems
reasonable to think that the recent evolution French universities underwent resulted from the diffusion of
the convergent discourse held by most European countries on the need for increased university autonomy
and more self regulation. But no empirical evidence proves that this diffusion process occured in the
French case. Nevertheless, if the recent contractual policy in France can not be understood as the product
of the emergence of new beliefs, of a new vision of the (European higher education) world, it certainly
gave rise to the development of a new or paradigm. This leads us to revisit the relation of ideas and public
policy in two ways. First in arguing that the causal link between them is not as unidirectional as generally
stated. Second that change does not always happen through a paradigmatic revolution, but rather through
an incremental process.
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