| Chapter : | Introduction |
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the legislature (Neave and van Vught 1991, x). Higher educational institutions function in such a way that they make judgements over matters of fact and, in doing so, establish norms. This is one of the distinguishing features of university research, both in the ‘pure sciences’ and in advanced scholarship. It is only at the lower end of the higher education system that well-codified routines and utilitarian procedures, such as occupational training, are followed. Similarly, standard procedures in applied research might be compared to the application of routine administrative procedures, such as those in prisons. Though not as compelling, the same argument applies to the civil service because it follows rules rather than sets them; it only becomes implicated in higher order activities and norm creation to a limited degree. Nevertheless, as integral as the civil service and prisons may be to the operation of the state, the power relations that exist between these institutions and higher education are clearly not of the same order. This point, which is accepted intuitively within the higher education policy community, appears not to have been established a priori within political theory in general.
Conversely, a recurring theme and well-established principle in policy research is that national higher education systems operate within and tend to seek some degree of balance. They are highly complex, self-regulating systems that are culturally, socially, and politically embedded. Within this equilibrium, different national styles and institutional arrangements are clearly expressed, such as varying degrees of academic or institutional autonomy. These features in turn reflect national ‘morphological’ characteristics that, Herbst has argued, have a bearing upon system performance:
This extended national styles analysis has been successful in explaining the so-called ‘Atlantic split’. However, this line of inquiry within