Standardizing Europe: Standards as a Mode of Governance

Abstract

This chapter centers on the ways in which standards and standardization became key to set in motion the new form of soft governance in Europe. The dislocation of the governing of education from the EU to the Bologna Process prompted a shift in the design of governing from order-based to incentive-based governance ensuring that the process did not directly compromise the sovereignty of the nation states. The incentive-based governance used extensive standardization processes as a main technology to govern performance. Since the production of standards and standardizing processes now forms the core of new higher education governance, it proves necessary to theorize standards and standardizing processes in order to further analyze their character and their effect on the development of higher education in Europe. As part of this the chapter develops a performative notion of standards emphasizing standards as historical and embedded in social practices. The chapter argues that standards do not come into existence until they are set in motion through practices and production until others negotiate and contest them meaning that they are in constant flux, constantly migrating and transforming (both themselves and that which they seek to govern).