Explaining institutional persistence and change in Polish and Czech higher education from a stakeholder perspective

Abstract

The authors examine recent very differential trends in Polish and Czech higher education from a stakeholder perspective. Previous research has highlighted how academic mobilization was instrumental in bringing down communism and facilitating the restoration of academic self-governance. For a long time, Polish and Czech higher education seemed to be characterized by participative democracy and an aversion to any overzealous state intervention. However, Poland has recently experienced a striking shift toward re-centralization, while the Czech system has largely remained embedded in its restored model of academic oligarchy. This chapter focuses on the catalytic forces behind these changes. The authors analyze how changes in interest intermediation structures and steering approaches facilitated centralization in Poland and the persistence of preexisting policy arrangements in the Czech Republic. They show how the organizational power of interest groups, their conflict orientation, and interlinkages with the governmental bureaucracy are key variables in explaining policy divergence. The authors argue that the national-conservative Polish government strategically played with the interests of particular stakeholders and thus transformed the opportunity structures of various organizations. In the Czech Republic, internal stakeholders continue to dominate the system.