Researching the European Higher Education Area external effectiveness: regime complexity and interplay

20 Years of the Bologna Process in a Global Setting: the external dimension of the Bologna Process revisited

“…The articles in this special issue first advance theoretical understandings of the Bologna Process as an international regime (Zahavi and Friedman 2018), its foreign policy strategy (Moscovitz and Zahavi 2018), and the effectiveness of this strategy (Asderaki 2018;Moscovitz and Zahavi 2018). This special issue applies the international relations theories to advance the conceptualization of higher education as a foreign policy tool and of the Bologna Processthe European Higher Education Area (EHEA) as a distinct international higher education regime.…”

“…Naturally, the countries that have sought membership to the EHEA have been eager to comply with Bologna recommendations to the extent possible. Also, more willing to engage with Bologna tools are countries which signed partnership agreement with the EU and participate in EU programmes, most notably Erasmus + partner countries (see also Asderaki 2018). Programmes, such as Erasmus+, implicitly or explicitly promote the Bologna Process reforms.…”

“…However, these events have been attended unevenly in terms of international organizations, regional groupings, countries and their representatives (i.e. rank of government officials); and participation of non-member countries has been decreasing since 2010 (Asderaki 2018), which testifies of varyingpossibly diminishingimportance attributed to this forum by non-member states. The events did not move beyond policy dialogue.…”