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The article challenges the deficit view in which education in the Arab region is portrayed by examining the process of educational regionalisation. It takes as its case study the Arab Regional Agenda for Improving Educational Quality in order to explore the construction of an educational quality space that uses data as a governance model. Drawing on critical theory and evidence collected from 70 interviews, I argue that such approaches promote globalised versions of what quality education means remaining blind to context. I suggest that improving educational quality in the region entails creating responsive approaches grounded in political and socio-economic contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this era of amplified regionalisation, the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean's (ECLAC) conceptualisation of ‘open regionalism’ is pertinent to examine the role of regional governance mechanisms in constructing what I call the Caribbean Educational Policy Space. With the aid of a latent content analysis of policy documents that focuses on the current wave of regionalism within the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) countries, I argue that open regionalism is the instrument that facilitates the expansion of education into a regional tradable commodity that is embedded and linked to the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME). I suggest that open regionalism can be further finessed to consider the modalities that make the operationalising of the integrative project possible. In essence, open regionalism is used as a governance framework by CARICOM's states to enact national educational reform. I conclude by arguing that open regionalism is an approach that is driven by the knowledge-based economy, premised upon innovation and inventiveness, which facilitates regional entry into hemispheric relations, and focused on the deepening global relations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper argues that global university rankings can be understood as a mechanism upholding Taiwan's interests in light of cross-national analysis of university ranking and recent discussion on regionalisation of higher education in Asia. To draw an analytical framework, it begins by delineating a conceptualisation of university ranking, in which ranking exercises are seen as a form of institutions in the globalised field of education politics and policy. In anticipation of the emergence of the Greater China higher education region, the paper suggests that global university ranking can be used as a zoning technology to form an imaginary line of cultural and academic sovereignty, and to affect university strategies and government policies. This analysis not only explains how global university rankings can be used to uphold interests of Taiwan's higher education, but also sheds light on the way to constitute subjectivity in the process of regionalisation of worldwide higher education. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article compares educational regionalisation in Europe and Latin America. This analysis unveils the influence of three social phenomena in the two case studies, namely power, fields of activity and knowledge. Mostly, it focuses on the initiatives led by the European Union and the Organisation of Ibero-American States in order to implement large strategic, multi-government educational plans in each continent. The actions of international political players, the theories (or ‘ontologies’) embedded in these devices and the consequences for sub-national politics are observed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article aims to discuss the relationship between higher education (HE), globalisation and regionalism projects focusing on HE in Latin America and Brazil. It is claimed that HE has predominantly taken the diverse, yet concerted and co-ordinated routes of globalisation and regionalisation and, by doing so, been profoundly transformed. The first section considers a set of theoretical categories in relation to the phenomena of globalisation and regionalisation. The second section analyses the global and regional dimensions of HE in Latin America, exploring: (1) the Common Market of the South (MERCOSUR), along with the processes and mechanisms put into place to settle MERCOSUR's Educative Sector. It is argued that despite the political relevance of this regional project, its major developments are still harbouring important but preliminary preparations for future regional positioning and empowerment; (2) it is argued that the commodification, privatisation and ‘marketisation’ of HE, having occupied the centre stage in determined nations of the world, have become the founding conditions of a global market in HE; and (3) the Brazilian HE policies are examined in order to develop an argument about the decisive role played by national government in promoting and adjusting the process of globalisation and the regionalism project for HE. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Jayasuriya's conceptualisation of 'regulatory regionalism' is particularly useful for examining the presence, significance and effect of new higher education governance mechanisms in constituting Europe as a competitive region and knowledge-based economy. In particular he argues that we need to take sufficient account of the role of domestic political economies in constituting regions, on the one hand, and the role of governance mechanisms, on the other, and the constitutive role of these processes in region-building. Focusing on the current moment of this regionalising and globalising project in Europe, I argue that 'regulatory regionalism' can be further nuanced if it takes into account 'extra-regional' dynamics that have effects on region-building through the way they thicken and embed new structures, processes and social relations within and beyond the region. I conclude by arguing that in the case of Europe, this current moment of regulatory regionalism through higher education might also be conceived of as part of a wider project around statehood called 'regulatory state regionalism'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]