A Path Dependence Approach to Understanding Educational Policy Harmonisation: The Qualifications Framework in The European Higher Education Area

Abstract

This paper examines the development of a system of easily readable and comparable qualifications within a single Qualifications Framework in the European Higher Education Area (QF-EHEA) as part of the Bologna process. Employing a path dependence approach, combined with new understandings of critical junctures and incremental policy change, as our conceptual lens, we find that multiple self-reinforcing events between the 1998 Sorbonne Declaration and the 2005 Bergen Communique, in the form of Declarations and Communiques, guided implementation of the Bologna policy process, along with elements of incremental layering. We also see evidence that policy formation and implementation are self-reinforcing in the context of the development of the QF-EHEA.