MERCOSUR?s regulatory regionalism in higher education: a stepping stone for enhancing development or just fostering world class universities?

PERROTTA DANIELA

Barcelona

Conferencia; ECPR Standing Group on Regulatory Governance - 5th Biennial Conference ?Regulatory Governance between Global and Local?; 2014

IBEI Institut Barcelona D´Etudis Internacionals

This article introduces the assessment of MERCOSUR´s regulatory regionalism in higher education in order to discuss whether its main effect is to improve national higher education systems ?based upon social justice premises and therefore contribute to the overall development and scientific autonomy of the region? or to enhance certain institutions as world class universities ?therefore perpetuating the inequities and exclusion of many social actors?. We aim at contributing to the advancement of theory regarding Latin American (South American) regionalism by introducing the framework of regulatory regionalism. We argue that regional regulations, norms and policies are by-passing domestic policy process in the higher education agenda, mainly supported by epistemic communities and/or advocacy networks, in order to boost national top universities global competitiveness as well as improving cooperative linkages within the region. The conceptual framework of regulatory regionalism in higher education has been applied both in Europe and East Asia. Therefore, the paper would try to cover a vacant area in the study of regionalism in South America. In order to understand how regulatory regionalism is by-passing domestic policy processes in the HE agenda, we present an embedded case of study ?MERCOSUR´s AQA policy?.