The public in the private: The role of international coordination service firms

This paper focuses on the privatization of higher education. It intends to show how the current wave of privatization is not restricted to the provision of higher education but increasingly includes its regulation. Cases in point are quality assurance agencies. These intermediary organisations fundamentally change the relation between higher education institutions and the bureaucratic state. They have gained an important scrutiny and coordination role that used to be a core competence of public bureaucracy in many countries. In addition, many of them have a transnational reach such as the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), Foundation for International Business Administration Accreditation FIBAA, European Quality Improvement System (EQUIS) or the European Foundation for Management Development (Efmd). The paper argues that this second type of privatization goes hand in hand with a new type of transnational private authority. It will develop a theoretical framework with a view to identifying the challenges for existing types of authorities. The paper will conclude by identifying important dimensions where state-theoretical accounts of control and regulations need to be revised in order to grasp the changes triggered by the privatization of regulations.