Knowledge Politics and Policies

Knowledge, understood to be the foundation on which societies coalesce and economies thrive, has become central to contemporary politics and policymaking across governance levels. This section is interested in theoretical, empirical, and comparative contributions that investigate the role of politics and policy in the multi-level, multi-issue, and multi-actor governance of knowledge. In focusing on role, we refer to effects that ideas (including political ideologies), actors (both individual and organisational, including political parties and transnational entities), policy instruments, and institutions have on the governance, creation, dissemination, and transfer of knowledge. Panels will be oriented around these roles, key empirical questions, theories or methodologies. The Section continues the work on knowledge policy domains from the past 8 ECPR conferences (previously under the titles ‘Politics of Higher Education, Research and Innovation’ and ‘Europe of Knowledge’). It continues to welcome scholars, globally and interdisciplinarily, from all theoretical and methodological approaches. The following panels have all been pre-proposed by the chairs listed: Higher Education, Paradox and Transnational Political Crises: New Political Imaginaries, Knowledge Making and the Case of HE Chairs: Jo Dillabough, Zeina Al-Azmeh, & Lakshmi Bose, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK. An unprecedented combination of transnational political pressures, conflicts, and policy reforms are today weighing on higher education (HE) institutions, threatening their shared promise to support the ‘public good’; yet little is known comparatively about how political threats to HE's autonomy and its missions are manifested cross-nationally in HE contexts. This panel responds directly to this gap, taking HE, ‘crises’ and conflict as its primary focus, thereby clarifying ‘threats and risks’, both present and future, to the knowledge making project in HE, its autonomy, and its capacity for reducing conflict. How do universities compete? Chairs: Roland Bloch (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg), Alexander Mitterle (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg) and Tim Seidenschnur (INCHER, Universität Kassel) Higher education policies across countries have constructed universities and their subunits increasingly as competitive actors but how and whether competition actually takes place is difficult to observe. The panel asks how we can analytically grasp competition in higher education without deriving it a priori from policy imperatives or theoretical frames (e.g. market). It specifically invites empirical investigations of competition in process as well as problem-sensitive theorizing of competition in contemporary higher education. International policy dynamics and national filters - The global politics of higher education and research policies Chair: Jens Jungblut (University of Oslo) This panel focuses on the political dynamics underlying higher education and research policies in different countries around the globe. The panel is open for contributions that focus on different aspects of policymaking regarding higher education, research and innovation, such as actors, their interplay, multi-level dynamics, policy agendas or policy implementation. Contributions should be based on empirical analyses and preferably have an international comparative component or at least contextualize the national cases internationally or theoretically . Power, Politics, and Policy of Artificial Intelligence Panel Chairs: Inga Ulnicane (De Montfort University) and Tero Erkkilä (University of Helsinki) Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen as one of the most powerful technologies of our times with profound implications for societies, economies, and governments. In recent years major advances in the development and use of AI has generated considerable public controversies about associated benefits and concerns. This panel invites contributions that examine power, political, and policy aspects of AI. The Rise of Neonationalism and its Impact on European Higher Education Chairs: Katja Brøgger and Hannah Moscovitz, Danish School of Education Aarhus University The proposed panel explores the different ways in which rising new nationalisms in Europe affect higher education policy and considers implications for the future of the European Higher Education Area. Central to the discussion is the freedom of research and a growing willingness of governments to intervene in or influence this freedom, and the tensions arising between the aspirations for enhanced internationalization-integration and the trends towards re-nationalisation. Based on field work in different European countries and drawing on a combination of higher education policy studies and nationalisms studies, the panel aims to highlight different empirical cases and promote a stronger conceptualization of how neonationalism and higher education policy interact. Interest groups in the knowledge policy domains Chair: Martina Vukasovic (University of Bergen) The proposed panel focuses on the role of organizations representing various stakeholders in the knowledge policy domain. The key topics are interest mobilization, internal organizational dynamics, policy capacity, policy agendas, lobbying strategies and lobbying success. Comparative studies – across countries and/or across types of represented interest, and contributions focusing on several governance levels, theoretically and methodologically robust, are particularly welcome. Knowledge as a shaper of international affairs Chair: Mitchell Young (Charles University) The phrase ‘follow the science’ has been bandied about during the Covid crisis; however, this is atypical in international affairs. This panel is interested in understanding how knowledge actually shapes and drives global governance efforts? Papers may focus empirically or theoretically on how actors use knowledge, or on how it is embedded into the negotiations, governance objects, and institutions in which global governance efforts occur. Structural changes in higher education Chair: Mari Elken (University of Oslo and NIFU) Structural reforms have been a widely used policy solution to increase system performance in higher education. Yet, as most studies on such reforms tend to focus on narrow aspects of policy processes, gaps remain concerning the policy mix of structural reforms, mix of instruments employed, implementation of various kinds of structural reforms (e.g. mergers, changing institutional categories), as well as the black box between aims of structural reforms and outcomes on system level. The panel invites both empirically and analytically oriented contributions to address these and related issues concerning structural reforms. Biographies: Mitchell Young is Assistant Professor at Charles University focusing on European integration and science policy. He is a chair of the ECPR Standing Group on ‘Knowledge Politics and Policies’ and has co-chaired an ECPR section for the past 9 years. Martina Vukasovic is Associate Professor at University of Bergen. Her research focuses on knowledge policy and politics across multiple governance levels and involving various interest groups.