Democrats, Authoritarians and the Bologna Process.

The Bologna Process, initiated in 1999, now includes all 48 member countries of the Council of Europe. In 2010, it was renamed ‘the European Higher Education Area’. It now attracts the interest of many countries around the world. Without sanctions, it has transformed the structure of higher education in its member states, to allow comparability of their higher education outcomes and encourage increased mobility between them. Increasingly, it has encouraged the use of learner-centred methods of teaching. It now attempts to further other democratic social objectives as well. Despite growing authoritarianism and populism in some of its member states, it managed to make quiet progress, even at its most recent Ministerial Conference in May 2018. It may yet survive, perhaps because of strong motivation in many of its member states to pursue economic development through increased technological and innovative capacity.

Judith Marquand is an honorary professor at Cardiff University. She was educated at Somerville and Nuffield Colleges, Harvard, and the Open University, and lectured at Manchester University and LSE before joining the Government Economic Service, where she worked in departments including the Treasury, Environment, Trade and Industry and the Manpower Services Commission. She left to head a Centre for Training Policy Studies at the University of Sheffield. Her books include Autonomy and Change: the Sources of Economic Growth (1989) and Development Aid in Russia: Lessons from Siberia (2009).

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