Chapter 7: United Kingdom's Membership(s) in the European Higher Education Area: Applying a Heterogeneous Agenda

This chapter focuses on the United Kingdom (UK) which is the fourth and final element of the collective case study of the European Higher Education Area’s (EHEA's) founders' perspectives regarding the role of European cooperation in higher education (HE), illustrated by the EHEA initiatives, in understanding the evolving mission of the European project in the post-2020 period, focusing on the early 2020s.¹ As explained in the introductory Chapter 1, the analysis of the United Kingdom is prompted by a range of gaps in prior relevant research and involves two of the United Kingdom's memberships in the EHEA: one for England, Wales and Northern Ireland, which is presented as ‘the United Kingdom’ on the EHEA website, and the other one separately for Scotland (EHEA, 2024b). If one is unfamiliar with the context, this may be confusing as the United Kingdom normally represents all four parts of the United Kingdom. For the purpose of this chapter, Birtwistle's (2009, p. 59) abbreviation ‘EWNI’, which stands for ‘The EWNI (England, Wales, Northern Ireland) part of the UK’ in the EHEA, is adopted to refer to one of the memberships of United Kingdom's memberships in the United Kingdom. The other UK membership in the EHEA – Scotland – should be self-explanatory in terms of its geopolitical boundaries. The reasons for the two memberships will be explained later in this chapter.

Chapter 2 explained the neo-institutionalist approach which frames the analysis in this book. The methodological decisions that underpin the project, reported in this book, were presented in the introductory Chapter. However, it is worth reminding that the analysis in this chapter rests on a thematic analysis of six in-depth semi-structured elite interviews with an opportunistic/snowball sample of key Bologna stakeholders in both United Kingdom's members in the EHEA, supplemented by 19 official communications from the United Kingdom's Bologna stakeholders.² The interviewees represented the following stakeholders: the Scottish Government (Scotland), Guild HE (England, Wales, N. Ireland and Scotland), the National Union of Students (NUS-UK) (England, Wales, N. Ireland), Universities UK International (England, Wales, N. Ireland), National Union of Students (NUS-Scotland) (Scotland) and another key HE actor in the United Kingdom (Scotland) who wished to keep their organisational affiliation undisclosed. It is also worth reminding that the interviews with the UK stakeholders took place in 2021. This was the first phase of the project which took place a year earlier than the rest of the interviews in the other three founders of the EHEA, discussed in Chapters 4–6. While the timing of the UK interviews did not seem to have an impact on the content of what was discussed, there was one important topic that was omitted from the UK interviews because of their timing. The fact that they took place a few months before the launch of the full-scale attack on Ukraine by Russia meant that the UK stakeholders' responses to the war were not a matter of discussion.

This chapter starts with explaining recent developments in UK politics particularly with regard to its positionality and attitudes towards the European project. According to historical neo-institutionalism, explained in Chapter 2, this is essential to contextualise the analysis below. This is then followed by a review of literature on the Bologna Process (BP) in the United Kingdom and presenting key findings about UK EHEA stakeholders' perspectives on the role of HE in Europe after 2020.

This chapter demonstrates that the two UK members in the EHEA have had very different views on the role of their memberships in the EHEA and the EHEA in Europe. EWNI, where England's Bologna stakeholders set the tone for work (Kushnir & Brooks, 2022), have been focused on observing the developments in the EHEA and wider politics surrounding it, keeping the HE cooperation ties and looking outwards to cooperating with other regions. EWNI's attitude to the Europeanisation politics of the European region is that of a former empire – willingness to maintain international connections and external influence, while not being an active leader in the EHEA or in the European project. For Scotland, which is the other UK member in the EHEA, HE cooperation in the framework of the EHEA is an instrument for Scotland's politics of Europeanisation, particularly the mending of the ties with the European Union (EU), shaken post-Brexit.

Grek and Ozga (2010, p. 941) explain that ‘the UK imagined itself to have retained imperial status and looked on the choice of the European “project” as one of many possibilities’ before it was ‘dragged into a reluctant partnership in Europe.’ The authors continue arguing that in the United Kingdom, ‘there is a persistent trend among policy actors to respond to questions about international contacts through an amalgamation of European and global influences’ (Grek & Ozga, 2010, p. 942). This suggests that the Europeanisation process in the United Kingdom was often steered away from its Europe-rooted nature, acquiring a more general internationalisation flavour. It was possible because Europeanisation could, in fact, be regarded as a regional form of internationalisation which is a more global process based on similar principles (Kehm, 2003).

The nature of Europeanisation in the United Kingdom used to be a matter of a heated debate in the literature on UK politics. Examples include Spiering's (2014) book entitled ‘A Cultural History of British Euroscepticism’ which elaborates on the United Kingdom's historically wedged position in relation to ‘the European’. Such sentiments are also present in Fletcher's (2009, p. 71) analysis of the ‘balancing of the United Kingdom's “Ins” and “Outs”’ in its membership in the EU. Another similar example is Crescenzi et al.'s (2018, p. 117) discussion of the United Kingdom's ‘split Europeanisation’ which has increasingly been dominated by Euroscepticism which is ‘triggered by the increasing mismatch between internationalized economies (and corporate economic interests) and localistic societies.’ However, the devolution in the United Kingdom has facilitated a degree of divergence in these attitudes, with England representing the majority of the Eurosceptic views and Scotland expressing quite strong pro-European attitudes (Hepburn, 2006). This has remained a trend after Brexit, too (Stolz, 2020).

Brexit has seriously questioned the attitude of the United Kingdom towards the European in any policy area with European links. Migration linked to the post-2015 refugee crisis and particularly the EU Freedom of Movement and, more generally, tight political and economic links with the EU were the main areas of debate leading up to the Brexit vote. Specifically, Freeden (2017, p. 1) claims that:

The scholar recognises that the media failed to detail the nuances of the underlying issues. There are also more provocative accounts of the UK Leave Campaign, anchoring on the refugee crisis coupled with the EU Freedom of Movement:

Ironically, the details of what Brexit would mean for the United Kingdom and the EU started to be worked out following the Brexit vote, making the transitional period between 2016 and 2020 full of uncertainty for both sides. Initially, Brexit had a limited effect on the cooperation with other EU member states (Taggart & Szczerbiak, 2018), perhaps partly because of the challenges in devising a mutually satisfactory deal. The debate about the deal was tremendously complex, working out the details of the choice between ‘hard’ or ‘soft’ Brexit. ‘Hard Brexit’ referred to the position of leaving the EU's Single Market. Soft Brexit referred to staying in the EU's Single Market and Customs Union’ (Hobolt, 2018, p. 3). The disagreements existed not only between the EU and the United Kingdom but also within the EU and the United Kingdom (Hobolt, 2018). The difficulties in agreeing a deal may have, arguably, been related to a possible hidden agenda of both parties in using these issues as a reason to eventually retain the United Kingdom's membership in the EU (Kushnir et al., 2020). However, a deal was reached eventually with multiple coming backs about the validity of what has been agreed or needing more clarity on issues such as the Ireland/North Ireland border (Whitten, 2024). A degree of dissatisfaction has been growing with the progression of Brexit in the areas where the ‘remain’ vote dominated such as, for example, Scotland, as well as even among the slightly bigger part of the UK population that voted for it (51.89%) (Tilley & Hobolt, 2024). Continuing ‘resistance to leaving the European Union’ dominates in Scotland, especially among the high proportion of EU migrants (Bogacki et al., 2024). It is also worth noting that the post-Brexit negotiations between Scotland and the EU were particularly complex – ‘a political minefield’ due to ‘an absence of political autonomy for Scotland’, according to Wright (2018, p. 151).

The post-Brexit UK/EU cooperation in different areas has been full of uncertainties (Martill & Sus, 2021), including HE (Brusenbauch Meislová, 2021), aggravated by the layering of a range of other significant crises. One of them was the COVID-19 pandemic, the pitfalls of handling of which by the conservative government of the United Kingdom has put in deep cracks in the trust of the public in the conservatives (Williams, 2024).These trust issues may have contributed to making them give away power to the Labour Party in Labour's landslide win in securing a majority in the 2024 election (BBC, 2024). Another challenge the United Kingdom has faced jointly with the rest of the European region was the launch of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and the accompanying threat of the spread of the Russian aggression. These issues have consolidated countries in the European region including the United Kingdom in their support of Ukraine and their defence development agenda (Hooghe et al., 2024).

These changes and resulting uncertainties have put the continuation of the Europeanisation in the post-Brexit UK into question.

Grek et al. (2009) and Grek and Ozga (2010) are among those who investigate Europeanisation in the area of education in the United Kingdom. Their work echoes the England vs Scotland differential attitude to Europeanisation, mentioned earlier. Grek and Ozga (2010, p. 937) emphasise that ‘policy-makers in England reference global influences, rather than Europe, while policy-makers in Scotland reference Europe in order to project a new positioning of Scotland in closer alignment with Europe’. The authors also point out that the terms ‘the UK’, ‘Britain’ and ‘England’ are often used interchangeably in the education policy literature, and ‘the UK’ is often mistakenly understood ‘as a unitary state in relation to education’ (Grek & Ozga, 2010, p. 939). Interestingly, this still remains the case at least in relation to how the EWNI part of the United Kingdom is still presented on the EHEA website – the ‘United Kingdom’ (EHEA, 2024b), as if it represented Scotland as well.

While research about UK HE is boundless, the studies that focus specifically on the United Kingdom's participation in the EHEA are limited. Earlier studies are focused on the work of the Bologna action points specifically in England, while acknowledging similarities with other parts of the United Kingdom (Field, 2005; Hartley & Virkus, 2003; Witte & Wright, 2008). Lifelong learning features in the study by Jakobi and Rusconi (2008) who investigated its implementation in the four founding nations of the EHEA, including the United Kingdom as a whole. The authors admit that differences exist in the four parts of the United Kingdom, but they focus on the similarities among the four constituents of the United Kingdom. The promotion of student mobility was perhaps the most attractive EHEA objective for the United Kingdom as a whole, but the United Kingdom's international student market has never been limited to the EHEA (Cemmell & Bekhradnia, 2008). Despite some work associated with the Bologna action points, according to Furlong (2005), overall, the United Kingdom made little effort in response to the call of the EHEA to harmonise HE structures in its signatories. The author uses the terms ‘the UK’ and ‘Britain’ interchangeably but seems not to include Scotland in the discussion, which is not admitted explicitly. This can only be inferred based on the statements, such as, ‘In Britain the three-year Bachelors is the norm, and most Masters are one year in duration’ (Furlong, 2005, p. 59). This statement excludes Scotland, since Bachelor's programs are 4 years long there (Armstrong, 2023). Such limited enthusiasm for Bologna can be partly explained by Witte's (2008) analysis which provides evidence that the UK government assumed that its structures had already been quite similar to what Bologna set out to achieve in the EHEA.

There are only couple of studies that make a clear analytical distinction between EWNI and Scotland in Bologna. Specifically, Birtwistle (2009, p. 59) emphasises EWNI's reluctance to take action in relation to the Bologna action line about the implementation of the European Credit Transfer System,

Some aspects of the project presented in this book were also published in Kushnir and Brooks (2022) and Kushnir (2023) which follow Birtwistle's terminology for the distinction of the two United Kingdom's membership in the EHEA.

One strand of more recent studies – from the last decade – elaborates more on the idea of the lack of interest in Bologna. Marquand and Scott (2018) focus on England and Wales, stating that the BP was ‘largely ignored’ there in comparison to EU countries. Similarly, Sin (2012, p. 393) summarises England's response to Bologna as ‘academic disconnection and missing leadership’ and Sin and Saunders (2014, pp. 531–532) nominate England's approach to Bologna as ‘selective acquiescence’, pointing at ‘concerns raised in political circles that perceived and pictured the Bologna Process more like a threat (bureaucracy, top-down enforcement, infringing institutional autonomy) than an opportunity.’ Another strand of recent studies explores Bologna in the United Kingdom in more indirect ways, meaning not directly focused on or linked to Bologna action points, which, ironically, confirms the lack of interest in the UK Bologna, = per se. Examples include: the work of Raffe (2011a, 2011b) on the National Qualifications Framework in Scotland which is encouraged by Bologna but the impact of Bologna on the policy process in Scotland is not emphasised, studies about student mobility to and from the United Kingdom through Erasmus+ which is a supporting pillar of Bologna action lines (Brooks, 2021a; Ploner & Nada, 2019; Zotti, 2021), Brooks' (2021b) understanding of ‘the student’ that is constructed in the context of European policy in England in comparison to a selection of five EU countries.

UK cooperation with European HE partners post-Brexit has been gaining momentum recently as well (Brooks & Waters, 2023; Brusenbauch Meislová, 2021; Courtois & Veiga, 2020; Highman, 2019). Initial analysis of UK HE cooperation initiatives in the framework of the new Turing programme which has replaced Erasmus+ in the effort to set UK HE up for more global connections rather than focusing on European connections (Brooks & Waters, 2023) are of a particular importance.

This chapter builds on a couple of papers (Kushnir, 2023; Kushnir & Brooks, 2022) related to the project discussed in this book. It addresses a range of overlapping gaps in the scholarship about Bologna in the United Kingdom: the distinction between the memberships of EWNI and Scotland and the role they play in constructing the United Kingdom's overarching agenda in HE, the United Kingdom’s reasons for maintaining its EHEA membership specifically in the post-Brexit climate and the place of Europeanisation, if any, in this context. The state of affairs in the early 2020s is of a special interest here because 2020 marks a ‘tipping point’ for the EHEA countries. In addition to the change of European geopolitics in 2020 following the end of Brexit transitional period, the year 2020 was the deadline for the achievement of a ‘fully-functioning EHEA’ (EHEA, 2024b) and planning further work.

The analysis of the interviews and official communications from key EHEA stakeholders in Scotland and EWNI has revealed a more inward-looking view of the role of their HE cooperation with others in the framework of the EHEA. The discussion below focuses specifically on what we can learn about the United Kingdom's stakeholders more passive, albeit still complex, role in the EHEA compared to the other three members, discussed in the previous chapters, as well as the link of this to the United Kingdom's politics of Europeanisation and internationalisation.

Before delving into the analysis of each of the UK memberships, an important point to raise regarding the United Kingdom's memberships in the EHEA is about the lack of clarity about who exactly in the United Kingdom was among the initiators of the EHEA. There is a discrepancy in relevant references in the literature. A large group of scholars state that the United Kingdom along with Germany, France and Italy signed the Sorbonne Declaration in 1998 (e.g. Furlong, 2005; Jakobi & Rusconi, 2009; Matei et al., 2018; Torotcoi, 2017). There is, however, another smaller group of scholars who refer to England in place of the United Kingdom in this list (e.g. Cemmell & Bekhradnia, 2008; Erkoç & Bayrakçi, 2017; Zmas, 2015). Sorbonne Declaration (1998) details that Tessa Blackstone was the minister who represented the United Kingdom as a whole, despite being affiliated with the English administration.

The second and even more important point to clarify is the United Kingdom's two memberships in the EHEA. As specified in Chapter 1, the membership for EWNI is presented as ‘the United Kingdom’ on the EHEA website, and the other membership is separately for Scotland (EHEA, 2024a). If one is unfamiliar with the context, this may be confusing as the United Kingdom represents all four parts of the United Kingdom including Scotland. The reasons for the two memberships require explanation. This should be attributed to a range of differences that the HE systems in Scotland and the rest of the United Kingdom have had. An example of this is a common three-year undergraduate degree in EWNI, while in Scotland an undergraduate degree lasts four years (Sweeney, 2010). The Scottish education system at all levels has always been different, and the Scotland Act of 1998 created reserved powers for Scotland, HE being one of them, and further institutionalised those differences (Gallacher & Raffe, 2012). Separate EHEA memberships, arguably, are an expression of those differences. No details about the timing and context of the emergence of the dual membership of the United Kingdom in the EHEA are provided in scholarly literature, neither is it explained on the EHEA website. Nevertheless, a representative of the Scottish government, interviewed in the framework of this project, has shed a glimpse of light on this matter:

The degree of interaction between the two memberships of the United Kingdom in Bologna has not been static. For example, reports submitted by EWNI and Scotland prior to 2005 do not make a formal distinction between the two memberships, such as in the ‘National Report United Kingdom 2003’ (EHEA, 2024c, 2024d). The same report features both on the EWNI and Scotland pages of the EHEA website, but it does make 29 references on its 10-page length to the peculiarities of Bologna implementation in Scotland in addition to how it worked in the rest of the United Kingdom (EHEA, 2024c, 2024d). All subsequent reports on the EWNI and Scotland on the EHEA website are different. However, this is not to say that there have been no more joint relevant documents (see Table 3 in Chapter 1). A degree of overlaps in the remit and functioning of the memberships of EWNI and Scotland in the EHEA should be acknowledged based on the fact that they are part of one country, with their respective devolved administrations working closely together in governing different matters including HE (Gallacher & Raffe, 2012). However, the differences have been sufficient enough to maintain two separate memberships in the EHEA, detailed below.

The continuing EHEA membership of EWNI is driven predominantly by the English administration and is explained by the stakeholders in terms of power-related incentives but also economic profit incentives, both of which are related to HE specifically and to Westminster's wider politics of internationalisation. Historical neo-institutionalism serving as a contextual background in this discussion (rather than the focus) dictates the need to appeal to the legacy of English imperialism. Choosing not to be actively involved in the Europeanisation driven by the EU historically (Crescenzi et al., 2018) would pre-empt us from being taken by surprise by what a representative from Guild HE has shared:

The ‘us-them’ distinction here refers to EWNI vs the rest of the EHEA. Such a distinction and the idea of passively observing the developments in the EHEA with an opportunity to make EWNI's voice heard if needed is a common theme in the interviews with the Bologna stakeholders from the United Kingdom. EWNI's HE international strategy is an important pillar in the support of the United Kingdom's wider power politics of internationalisation summarised well in the following extract from the International Education Strategy (Department for Education and Department for International Trade, 2021): ‘It is paramount that the government continues to develop the UK's soft power globally.’

The assumed rational choice-making process of such a power position may also shed more light on the lack of interest in making any substantial changes in the HE sector in response to the BP, evident from prior research in the field in this context (e.g. Marquand & Scott, 2018). This reserved attitude to the EHEA is also present in the policy paper International Education Strategy (Department for Education and Department for International Trade, 2021), which is a key strategic document for driving HE development in the country. No explicit references are present to the BP or the EHEA in this document. Nevertheless, the BP does feature implicitly in this key document in the references to quality assurance and internationalisation, and a mutually shaping relationship between HE politics and the wider politics of internationalisation is evident.

In addition to the power rationales for continuing EWNI's EHEA membership presently, despite Brexit and leaving Erasmus+, economic motivations are also rationalised in the data. The representative from GuildHE also points out economic advantages for EWNI in staying part of the EHEA, which is illustrative of similar opinions expressed by other interviewees, both in EWNI and Scotland. Such a partly consumerist position of EWNI is related first and foremost to student mobility which the EHEA facilitates beyond the Erasmus+ Programme (e.g. in the form of other exchanges through partnership agreements and recognition frameworks):

It is also worth explaining further the earlier mentioned point about England's administration driving the strategy of EWNI's membership in the EHEA. First, the government official communications that were analysed all find their origin in the central UK government which is driven by the English administration (Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, 2019; Department for Education, 2019a, 2019b, Department for Education and Department for International Trade, 2021). The headquarters of the other organisations whose official communications related to EWNI membership in the EHEA were reviewed (see Table 3 in Chapter 1) are all located in England, which suggests more input and influence from English voices – Quality Assurance Agency in Gloucester, Universities UK International and the Association of Colleges both in London (Association of Colleges, 2022; Quality Assurance Agency, 2022; Universities UK, 2022). A key HE actor from Scotland summarises who drives the EWNI membership in the EHEA which is presented as ‘the United Kingdom’ on the EHEA website (EHEA, 2024d):

The fact that the focus of prior literature on the BP in the United Kingdom is specifically on England (e.g. Sin, 2012; Sin & Saunders, 2014) may be justified by England's leading role in the HE policymaking in EWNI. This would also resonate with the power dynamics in policymaking in the United Kingdom beyond HE (Gallacher & Raffe, 2012).

Moreover, the HE sector of N. Ireland had a hard time accepting Brexit and the resulting departure from Erasmus+ (Koch, 2021), similar to Scotland, as explained below. However, while Scotland's voice in the EHEA becomes clear due to its separate EHEA membership, the voice of N. Ireland gets lost in a specifically EHEA discussion in the context of N. Ireland's joint membership with England and Wales. While its voice seems to be subdued in the official communications that have been analysed, the interview data bring it up, opposing it as well as Wales' voice to that of England with regard to the development of social justice in HE:

These issues bring us right back to where the discussion in this section started – England administration's leading role in the EWNI membership and the power ambitions at stake. Evidently, they are relevant not just with regard to the EHEA context broadly but are also linked to the BP management within the United Kingdom. Additionally, the question of Wales' separate seat in the EHEA has been raised but this has not led to any changes to the EWNI membership:

‘Scotland's very distinct education system’ was likely to offer Scotland a chance to get their ‘foot in the door at the beginning’ by securing a separate membership in the EHEA (A4, representative of the Scottish Government). Scotland's membership is more uniform in the EHEA due to having one nation in it unlike the power imbalance between the nations in EWNI, discussed above. Among different reasons, Scotland's continuing EHEA membership is rationalised, first and foremost, by the need to mend its relationship with Europe inevitably caused by Brexit, both in HE and beyond, with ‘the European Union: protecting Scotland's place in Europe’ being set out as a key objective in the Scotland's International Framework (Scottish Government, 2017). The BP is not explicitly mentioned in this overarching framework which covers all areas of policy, but European cooperation in education and research is emphasised there.

The interviewees representing Scottish Bologna stakeholders believe strongly in the value of the BP for the development of Scottish HE which shares a lot in common with the HE in other European countries, and they recognise that the link to the EHEA now is particularly valuable to demonstrate to the rest of the EHEA the value of the BP and European connections for Scotland. Here are a couple of illustrative quotes to evidence this:

Scotland does not seem to hold a strong leading role within the EHEA due to finding itself in the circumstances whereby it has to do a catching-up job. The harmonisation of HE policy in the EU that the representative of the Scottish Government mentions above refers to the well-known European Education Area initiative limited to EU countries only (Kushnir, 2021, 2022). The motivation to stay in tune with the developments in EU HE is vital for Scotland to mend and sustain the European connections established prior to Brexit:

Despite this interest in the BP in Scotland and its resulting supposedly equal role in Bologna, the connections to EWNI and a degree of influence of the English administration in the Scottish membership should not be overlooked. Evidently, the interconnectedness between HE stakeholders for EWNI and Scotland is in their structure – while a lot of them would have a Scotland branch such as, for example, NUS-Scotland associated with NUS-UK, some organisations are universal for the whole of the United Kingdom such as Guild HE (EHEA, 2024c, 2024d).

The data from EWNI and Scotland have evidenced a deliberate and rational inward-looking approach of their stakeholders to continuing their EHEA memberships in order to be able to draw certain benefits. In Graziano and Vink's (2017) terms, the two United Kingdom's memberships in the EHEA can be viewed as a resource that enables all the devolved nations to participate in a form of Europeanisation in HE after Brexit with the aim to draw economic gains, power enhancement and other ideological and political benefits. According to Graziano and Vink (2017, p. 40), resulting ‘strategic organizational adaptation displayed by interest groups…when domestic political actors “rationally” use European resources in order to support predefined preferences.’ These predefined preferences have appeared to be quite different for the two UK members of the EHEA.

Europeanisation in Scotland turns out to be a regional form of internationalisation, in Kehm's (2003) terms, focused on European values and principles. Scotland's membership in the EHEA is driven by a strong interest in the affiliation and cooperation with European countries. Scotland's aspirations to continue Europeanisation post-2020 through its EHEA membership are an attempt to mend the damages caused by Brexit in the overall UK–EU relationship. Contrastingly, Europeanisation in EWNI seems to be taking more of the form of internationalisation, focusing on the global arena where specifically Europeanisation motives are far from being a primary concern. Europeanisation in EWNI resembles covert internationalisation. Clearly, this is a trend preserved from over a decade ago when Grek and Ozga (2010) explained how policymakers in Scotland referred to European matters more while those in England relied more on references to the global arena in justifying policy choices.

Although the changes and resulting uncertainties that Brexit brought about have put the continuation of Europeanisation in the post-Brexit UK into question, this chapter demonstrates the role of United Kingdom's EHEA memberships in sustaining Europeanisation after the end of the Brexit transitional period in 2020, but in very peculiar forms. There also is a very strong link between the nature of Europeanisation in HE and the wider politics of Europeanisation.

In addition to these more inward-looking accounts of the role of the EHEA – in the United Kingdom – it is also important to point out the insights the above analysis has given us about the United Kingdom's Bologna stakeholders' ideas about the role of the EHEA in Europe. While the UK stakeholders' answers were noticeably less-outward looking (i.e. considering the role of EHEA cooperation for Europe in general) compared to the other three cases presented in the previous Chapters, it is clear that both EWNI and Scotland position the cooperation in the framework of the EHEA as an indispensable internationalisation process in the European region. While EWNI present its importance as equal to their cooperation with other regions, Scotland's strong emphasis on the importance of particularly European cooperation in Europe is palpable.

Chapter 7 has focused on the United Kingdom's two members of the EHEA which represent the final elements in the collective case study of the EHEA's founders' perspectives on the role of European HE represented by EHEA initiatives in the evolving mission of the European project post-2020. The chapter provided an overview of the United Kingdom's politics particularly related to Europeanisation trends as this is important to contextualise the analysis linked to the EHEA. This was followed by a review of literature on the BP and the United Kingdom and presenting key findings. This chapter has shown that the two UK members in the EHEA have had quite different perspectives on the role of their memberships in the EHEA and the role of the EHEA in Europe more generally.

The next chapter will refer to the findings above in relation to the findings from Germany, France and Italy and discuss them jointly in light of the theoretical and empirical literature on the topic. It will also explain how this book addresses the gaps in this prior literature, which were detailed in Chapters 1 and 3.