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Our paper investigates the emergence, development and contested nature of quality assurance (QA) in the European policy arena as part and parcel of the Bologna Process. We conceptualise our paper on the background of the study of multi-level and multi-actor dynamics between national, inter-governmental and supranational policies; we discuss the changing ideational framing of QA in the European policy arena, and attempts at European norm-setting and standardisation. QA in the Bologna Process moved from a non-binding inter-governmental agreement towards monitored coordination and became embedded in the competitive turn in European higher education policy stressing an instrumental view of the university. QA policies unfold coercive pressure for convergence alongside soft templates and prototypes of 'best practice'. The impressive architecture of Bologna leaves, however, ample room for national and institutional design in policy implementation and a variety of preferences and interests of actors at different levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Basel III Accord was the centrepiece of the international regulatory response to the global financial crisis, setting new capital requirements for internationally active banks. This paper explains the divergent preferences on Basel III of national regulators in three countries that approximate what are frequently presented as distinct varieties of capitalism in Europe — Germany, the United Kingdom and France. It is argued that national regulators setting post crisis capital requirements had to reconcile three inter-related and potentially conflicting objectives: banking sector stability, the competitiveness of national banks and short to medium term economic growth. The different national preferences on Basel III reflected how different national regulators defined and pursued these objectives, which in turn reflected the structure of national banking systems — specifically, systemic patterns of bank capital and bank-industry ties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Institutional designs of governance in the European Union frequently underlie a dichotomy between participation as the realm of civil society and representation as the realm of national governments and parliaments. The aim of this paper is to consider organised civil society not as distinct from but as part of the multi-level representative field that is emerging in the EU. This is done by distinguishing two distinct mechanisms of political representation in aggregating individual preferences or in integrating the political community of the EU. In order to spell out this latter integrative function of political representation as a creative practice, the notion of representative claims-making will be introduced. The practice of representative claims-making can then be analysed, first of all, as a way of distributing the social capital of the actors and institutions that populate the European field of civil society activism. Secondly, the practice of representative claims-making can be analysed as a way of building new forms of cultural and symbolic capital of civil society that are needed to occupy the new transnational positions that are made available by European integration. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper examines and classifies “uncivil society” in Europe, that is, a set of associational activities characterized by discursively exclusionist, undemocratic or violent features. With particular reference to organizations connected to the political right, it examines the relation between political systems and civil society, identifying the factors that have made civil society relevant for political actors and pointing to a relation of mutual dependence between the associational world and political movements and parties. It is argued that membership in uncivil society organizations is an alternative type of political participation which articulates growing anti-political sentiments, and that the emergence of uncivil society activities is rooted in newly relevant conceptions of social and political life which are anti-modern and based on ascriptive criteria of membership. Uncivil society organizations are classified as racist, nationalist and populist, and characterized as biologically essentialist, or territorially or culturally exclusionist. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: The paper tries to go beyond normative debates on what should count as civil society and who is to be identified as being part of civil society by relating such normative claims to the social sites where they are produced and claimed. It starts with the idea of conceiving civil society as a script which is used by a series of collective actors. This performance is structured first by general background conceptions of what a civil society looks like and which are taken up by all those engaging in claiming to be a civil society actor, and secondly by the public to which such performances are addressed. This second dimension is further explored assuming that the public civilizes civil society in terms of accepting or rejecting the performance of particular actors. Thus civil society is reformulated as a process in which the question of who is a legitimate part of civil society is permanently contested by a public that is addressed by these collective actors. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper argues that the re-emergence of a universal service debate is a political reaction to the deregulation process and an attempt to force the role of the state and public services higher on the agenda at EU level. To this end, the concepts of ‘service public’ and ‘public services’ are explored in light of telecommunication deregulation and public service provision as expressed by the universal service obligation (USO) in France, Great Britain, Belgium and Norway. Attention is paid to the importance of securing general access to telecommunications. Findings suggest the legitimating effect of USO is greater than its practical effects, and that market, competition, and technology have largely addressed problems with universal access, equality, continuity and affordability, rather than regulations. Further, future regulations of universal service provision and ‘service public’ requirements will need to address concerns over citizens’ dislike of some effects of regional and national deregulation and liberalisation policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]