Deliberative governance in the European Higher Education Area. The Bologna Process as a case of alternative governance architecture in Europe

Designing political institutions is a balancing act between upholding democratic ideals and accommodating constraints. Advocates of deliberative governance in the European Union live this tension in a particularly polarized manner, torn between the deliberative ideal of consensual decision-making and the reality of power politics. To which extent does deliberative governance provide a suitable conceptual framework as well as a mode of governance in its own right for European policy-making?

This paper applies five features of deliberative governance suggested by Teague (2001) in his study of European social policy to the genesis of the Bologna Process and subsequent domestic reforms.

The Bologna Process has, since the Sorbonne declaration of 25 May 1998, aimed at creating a European Higher Education Area. This study concludes that deliberative governance has the potential to start a long-term process of progressive domestic policy change and therefore deserves further investigation.