Browsing by Subject "hallintamentaliteetti"

Objectives. This thesis examines the European Union higher education governance. Previous research has shown that political steering of higher education institutions has strengthened over the recent decades, and growing convergence between the education policies of European states. The purpose of the thesis is to examine the kinds of thinking according to which the Union governance seeks to shape the space it governs, and what kind of position the higher education occupies in the picture. The European Union hasn´t got educational policy competences for steering educational institutions, but previous research has shown that the Union nevertheless does practice education policy steering. Methods. In this thesis, the European Union higher education governance was scrutinized by analytics of governing with the data consisting of Higher Education for Smart Specialization manual, produced by the European Commission. The HESS Manual is directed to the Union Member States regional administrators with a higher education policy competence and responsible for regional development. The manual instructs regional administrators to carry out such regional governance and higher education steering model reforms that serve the political objectives of the Union. The analysis of HESS Manual was carried out by Peter Millers and Niklas Roses analytics of government, according to which the HESS Manual was scrutinized as a technology of government, with the aim of specifying characteristic thinking of Manual and therefore of governing. Results and conclusions. The thesis demonstrates that the characteristic thinking of the Union values economic and technological progress and seeks to harness both the governed space and the higher education towards this ambition. The thesis also shows that according to the characteristic thinking of the Union, existence must be earned through contributing to political objectives. The thesis shows the Union governs by setting prerequisites to resources in an environment which requires economic resources.

My aim in this study is to outline what kind of circumstances urban policy as a new form of societal governance provides for political agency of citizens. I am looking at the nature of this governance and the way it works between citizens and the city organization in projects seeking to promote the involvement and influence of citizens. I am especially interested in how these goals are promoted on behalf of the city organization, how citizens are addressed, what kind of agency seems to be called for, and what kind of tensions may arise during this process. I formulated my research material from project documents produced in the Pilot Experiment for Local Democracy in the city of Helsinki. Some of my own observation notes from various events connected to the pilot experiment were also added to the material. I approached some of my research material in relation to the strategic program of the city of Helsinki to delineate the most common strategies of the city concerning citizen participation. I analyzed my material by applying a Foucault-oriented discursive approach and theoretications of new governance and political agency. In light of my analysis, I conclude that seeking to promote citizens' possibilities for local participation and to influence the city organization simultaneously ends up defining and limiting the terms and preconditions for such actions in many ways. It seems that project work as a form of governance is significant considering how the contents and goals of citizen participation and citizens' agency itself is to be formed. According to my analysis, projectified governance works firstly by feigning invisibility, i.e. guiding the attention from actual ambitions and goals to the form of actions to "the right way" of governing those actions. Secondly, it works by sharing more and more power and responsibility among different agents, simultaneously limiting the possibilities of this agency. This kind of governmentality can be seen to set its sights on being efficiently internalized through the ideal of active citizenship and consensual collaboration between the city organization and citizens into so-called participatory local democracy and citizen agency. On the other hand it may also enable new possibilities for describing the genuine political agency of the citizens in urban policy. In order for these possibilities to open up, I consider it crucial to bring forth continuous critical conversation and to question what it is that is actually being pursued by projects seeking to promote citizen participation, what it is that is actually done, and what kind of consequences these questions have from the perspective of political agency.