Conceptual Narratives and the Governance of Knowledge Policies

This paper draws on narrativity as a methodological approach to higher education research (Magalhães and Veiga, 2015). Stemming from social constructionism it convenes concepts such as floating signifiers and nodal points, borrowed from discourse analysis, to explore the conflict and struggle between discourses on governance of knowledge policies. By looking at the articulation between metanarratives, public, and conceptual narratives the goal is to explore the role of empty/floating signifiers (e.g. good governance, knowledge society) in structuring knowledge policy drivers and practices in higher education. Metanarratives are ‘master narratives’ (Lyotard, 2003) encoded in terms such as progress, industrialisation and knowledge society and they ‘operate at a presuppositional level’ (Somers & Gibson, 1996, p.63). The metanarrative of knowledge society is basing seminal discourses on the mission and governance of higher education systems and institutions towards pervasive reforms. This metanarrative is being translated into public narratives justifying and legitimising the existence of modern universities as central to the development of knowledge transfer and dissemination towards social and economic development. Public narratives are attached to cultural, institutional formations and networks (Somers & Gibson, 1996). They meld normative and ideological ingredients and ‘can be linked to specific conceptions and theories regarding the relationship between the state and the society’ (Ferlie, Musselin, & Andresani, 2009, p. 13). In this sense, new public management, as other governance narratives, is a public narrative impinging on the enactment of knowledge policies and, consequently, impacting on higher education governance. Other examples of public narratives are those evolving at the institutional level that universities construe. Since 1997, European governance’s discursive repertoires are feeding the discourses on ‘knowledge transfer’, knowledge production’ and ‘knowledge dissemination’ to legitimise higher education institutions’ missions, strategies and activities. Conceptual narratives are used by social scientists and researchers to approach their subjects (Somers & Gibson, 1996) stemming from disciplinary discursive elements (e.g. organisations, actors, triple helix). Assuming that the Bologna process is a knowledge policy, the objective of the paper is twofold. On the one hand, it analyses the narrative repertoires present in the scholarship about the Bologna process. The focus will be on the conceptual narratives convened to explain, understand and assess what has been achieved in the Bologna process and how it evolved as a governance process. On the other hand, the paper looks at the articulation between metanarratives and public narratives driving governance of knowledge policies as ‘explained’ by the conceptual narratives. Drawing on a database of scientific production indexed in Web of Science about the ‘Bologna process’, we will identify papers by assuming the criteria that they convene conceptual narratives - path dependency theory, neo-instituionalism and capitalism theories – and selected keyword ‘governance’. We identified these conceptual narratives to highlight how they articulate with metanarratives and public narratives on knowledge production, transfer and dissemination, and how they contribute to explain the fixation of the meaning of governance and the drivers of knowledge policies.