MERCOSUR, regulatory regionalism and contesting projects of higher education governance

Abstract

Higher education (HE) governance is far from being shaped exclusively by national policy-making frameworks. In fact, territorial politics of the State is being challenged by a complex set of regulations and norms established at international and regional arenas. At the same time, these regulations and norms generate ideas and discourses of HE governance that also stimulates practices within HE institutions (HEI). Therefore, in order to surpass this methodological nationalism, avenues for research have been opened by the study of how regional integration schemes are transforming the scales for policy delivery (Jayasuriya & Robertson, 2010). Many regional integration agreements (RIA) ?including Latin American and the Caribbean (LAC) regionalism? have settled norms for the HE sector and most of the regional policies are by-passing the territoriality of politics of the State. As a result, the concept of regulatory regionalism is fruitful to assess these thick configurations of norms, regulations and policies that are crafting HE governance across the globe.