20 YEARS OF THE BOLOGNA DECLARATION - A LITERATURE REVIEW ON THE GLOBALISATION OF HIGHER EDUCATION REFORMS

One of the flagships of the Bologna declaration (1999), and consequently of the creation of the European Higher Education Area (EHEA), was the aim of increasing (students and staff) mobility, comparability and intergovernmental and inter-institutional cooperation in order to promote the internationalization of European higher education and the modernization of higher education institutions (HEI). However, and although the literature referring to the Bologna process has been fruitful, it is still challenging to find consensus on how these processes, (staff) mobility, intergovernmental and institutional cooperation, have been developing and on its impact on the internationalization, globalization and even modernization of higher education. Moreover, despite these buzzwords, often used interchangeably, have been addressed in the literature, there are several interpretations on their meaning. This paper attempts to enrich this discussion through a systematic literature review, showing how these processes have been approached in the literature under the Bologna process umbrella. The literature evidences a substantial increase in the popularity of the process in non-EU countries. Concomitantly, the literature analysis shows a predominance of policy implementation, policy diffusion and policy convergence studies, mostly of empirical nature, reinforcing the image of the Bologna process as the visible face of Europeanization and internationalization phenomena. An interesting finding is the fact that although the Bologna process has being labelled as an intergovernmental cooperation initiative, few entries appear using the combination of these expressions: 'Bologna process' plus 'intergovernmental cooperation' (only 4), whose focus range from legal aspects to challenges and opportunities associated with the internationalisation of education.