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Although there is a growing interest of policy makers in higher education issues (especially on an international scale), there is still a lack of theoretically well-grounded comparative analyses of higher education policy. Even broadly discussed topics in higher education research like the potential convergence of European higher education systems in the course of the Bologna Process suffer from a thin empirical and comparative basis. This paper aims to deal with these problems by addressing theoretical questions concerning the domestic impact of the Bologna Process and the role national factors play in determining its effects on cross-national policy convergence. It develops a distinct theoretical approach for the systematic and comparative analysis of cross-national policy convergence. In doing so, it relies upon insights from related research areas — namely literature on Europeanization as well as studies dealing with cross-national policy convergence.
This paper aims to address these problems by dealing with theoretical and methodological questions concerning the national effects of the Bologna Process and the role national factors play in determining the impact of these effects. Altogether the purpose of the paper is to serve as a starting point for future research – both as a guide for systematic and comparative empirical work on higher education, but also for further theoretical and methodological reasoning concerning research on (higher) education policy. As higher education research so far particularly lacks an approach allowing for a competitive and systematic falsification of theoretical arguments by clearly indicating testable and specific hypothesis as well as variables behind the research design (Goedegebuure/Vught 1996) we propose to fall back on neighbouring disciplines, namely social science to improve and enhance the analysis (Slaughter 2001: 398; Altbach 2002: 154; Teichler 1996a: 433, 2005: 448). Several strands of research have to be considered – namely literature on Europeanization as well as insights and approaches of studies dealing with cross-national policy convergence. Taking into account the non-obligatory and mainly intergovernmental character of the Bologna Process the main focus of the paper is on factors related to the effects of transnational communication. The inherent goal is to extend the research agenda on higher education (McLendon 2003: 184ff) and to leave behind the restriction of to analyse only a few cases by striving for a research design that allows for systematic testing and sufficient explanations of cross-national policy convergence at the interface between the Bologna Process and domestic factors.