PATH DEPENDENCY AND THE POLITICS OF QUALITY ASSURANCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION

National policy agendas for quality assurance in higher education (HE) are increasingly influenced by supra-national trends and decisions. Taking Spain, Switzerland and The Netherlands as examples, the paper analyses how supranational trends are re-interpreted at the national level and how recently formulated national policies combine the demands for cross-national harmonisation with the long-lasting influence of decisions and procedures run in the past in the domain of quality assurance. In this perspective, the paper argues that cross-national policy harmonisation, a key prerequisite for the construction of the European Higher Education Area is challenged by the long-lasting influence of national path dependent policies.