Reconciling Permanence and Temporariness: How European University Alliances Use Formalisation in Governance to Engender Legitimacy and Demonstrate Permanence

The European University Initiative (EUI), part of the European Strategy for Universities, created European University Alliances as the European Commission's answer to a political polycrisis. Building on Erasmus+, the EUI is intended to create the "Universities of the Future," and are tasked with addressing grand challenges, yet they do so under project-based funding with goals defined at submission. Alliances' futures are therefore both certain - anchored in a five-year plan, - and uncertain, with no guarantee of continued funding after that period. With the dawn of New Public Management and the growing place of European project funding within the higher education landscape, universities are more accustomed than ever to creating projects and completing deliverables. However, unlike typical projects embedded within universities, alliances flip the script, with the entire university becoming part of a time-limited project. This leaves the EUI with a circle that is impossible to SQuare: alliances must project permanence to create the necessary internal and external stability needed to foster legitimacy, all within time-limited project parameters. This paradox frames our inQuiry: how do alliances demonstrate permanence while navigating the constraints of time-limited funding? To answer this question, we analyse governance artefacts from 41 alliances using a framework that combines two main lenses. First, Ahrne and Brunsson's five organising elements - membership, rules, monitoring, sanctions, and hierarchy - allow us to examine governance formality as both a coordination mechanism and a performative device. Second, Suchman's typology of legitimacy - cognitive, pragmatic, moral - helps identify which forms of legitimacy are sought, and for which audiences primarily: internal, external, or the European Commission as gatekeepers of the project and its continued funding. By doing this, our aim is to understand what governance mechanisms are designed to achieve, which audiences they address, and how these choices reflect the temporality of the EUI alliances. We propose this framework as a basis for future research on governance, legitimacy, and temporariness in transnational higher education.