Policy Futures in Education, Volume 5, Number 4, 2007

doi:10.2304/pfie.2007.5.4.449

Governmentality, European Politics and the Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities

ANDREA LIESNER University of Hamburg, Germany

ABSTRACT This article deals with the governmental strategies basic to the construction of the European Higher Education Area within the Bologna Process. With regard to the actual reconstruction of German universities, these strategies are verified on a structural level, in individual and collective subject relations and also in the subject matter which is to be taught and learned. The introduction of standardized quality assurance procedures, the promotion of entrepreneurial forms of subjectivation and the dividing of knowledge into functional modules are powerful instruments which combine to form a reduced understanding of what is supposed to be economic with a universal claim. Now, after the first half of the Bologna Process, some possible effects of these strategies are visible. From an educational perspective, there are two corresponding tendencies in particular which are noteworthy: while the knowledge of educational experts outside the university is devalued by a common prudentialism, educational sciences within the German universities are trivialized by structures and curricula which tend to obstruct the production of new dimensions of knowledge and to curtail the possibilities of scientific scepticism and critique. The universities of Europe are in a process of change. Integrated into the Bologna Process, they are under pressure to establish comparable structures of learning to make them more competitive and to create a highly mobile personnel. The aim is to develop an international, cooperative university system: the European Higher Education Area. This system, similar to the European Research Area, is part of a comprehensive political architecture, redesigning Europe as a territory by creating areas no longer limited by the geographical borders of the present European Union (EU). This article deals with the governmental strategies basic to these constructions what is the idea of these areas, who will live there and what will be the means to secure the architecture? Referring to Foucault, the article seeks the interrelationship of the political discourses of security, territory and population (Foucault, 2004). Where do these discourses coincide; where is there friction, inconsistencies or even fractures? The timescale involved provides us with the opportunity to take a comprehensive view of these discourses. The numerous initiatives to create new areas are limited by the fact that, in 2010, both the Bologna Process and the Lisbon Strategy are due to achieve their aims. The intention is to make the EU the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world, capable of sustainable economic growth with more and better jobs and greater social cohesion (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2003, p. 2). The national Agenda 2010, promoted by the government of the Federal Republic of Germany, operates within a corresponding time schedule. Could there be, apart from this time schedule, other connections between Bologna, Lisbon and Berlin? Could there even be the possibility of discovering a common mode of modern governing in these numerous programmes of reform? And how do these strategies correspond to Foucaults position that the governmentalisation of the state is significant for our times (Foucault, 2004, p. 163)?

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Andrea Liesner The central assumption discussed here is that the European plans for the development of new (populated) areas are interconnected with a number of security strategies. The main point, however, is not that these policies are pragmatically guided by the aim to secure their success, but rather how the establishment of new areas is connected to the agreed time schedule. It is obvious that the initiatives scheduled for 2010 rely on multidimensional strategies to guarantee the process is on schedule. These strategies can be verified on a structural level, in individual and collective subject relations, and, with reference to the educational sector, also in the subject matter which is to be taught and learned. Given the scope and complexity of these three programmes, my focus will be on the Bologna Process. References to the Lisbon Strategy and to Agenda 2010 will be marginal. Part I deals with the structural architecture of the European Higher Education Area, Part II with the population, Part III with the curriculum and the concluding part with the scope of opportunities and risks to be recognized today with regard to educational theory. I. Structural Security Measures In May 2005, the 40 European countries which had been participating in the process up to that point evaluated the state of the Bologna Process (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2005). A Follow-up Group was mandated to report in Bergen, Norway, on the reform process. There were 10 aims for the implementation of the process: 1. to develop a system of comparable degrees; 2. to establish a consecutive structure of studies; 3. the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS); 4. guaranteed grants for students moving to a university of another European country; 5. the improvement of quality assurance measures; 6. the development of common study programmes to extend the time for studies in foreign countries and for the acquisition of foreign languages; 7. to improve the relevance of lifelong learning; 8. to achieve a greater involvement of students in the Bologna Process; 9. to increase the number of students from countries outside Europe; 10. to conceptualize the European Higher Education Area together with the European Research Area as a structural element of a knowledge-based society (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2003; Keller, 2004, p. 14). A crucial element in this programme is the improvement of quality assurance measures (see point 5). The participants of the Berlin conference agreed to define the competencies for their quality assurance systems to realize a comprehensive evaluation of universities, the accreditation of study programmes and international cooperation by 2004. The guidelines for the various agencies involved in the process of evaluation within the nation states are defined by the European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education (ENQA). Fostered by the European Commission, this network presented its programme for the methods to be applied in 2004 (European Network for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, 2004). The rules for the procedures are defined by the European Higher Education Policy, whereas the national university administrations are responsible for their implementation and for the overall success of the programme. With regard to these procedures, the Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education stated in Bergen that although almost all countries have made provision for a quality assurance system [1], there is still progress to be made, in particular as regards students involvement and international cooperation (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2005, p. 2). For the German Conference of University Presidents (HRK) the implementation of the steering model, which aims at measurable quality standards, signifies a paradigmatic change: a radical turn away from the traditional way to administer universities to a mainly self-directed process of quality assurance, guided by self-defined aims of an autonomous university (German Conference of University Presidents, 2003, p. 192). For German universities, quality assurance has been obligatory by law since 1998, but these preconditions seem to be insufficient to achieve the aims of the Bologna Process. It is crucial that the universities want to do what they ought to do, that is establish quality assurance as a central

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Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities target for their own development, guiding all decisions of relevance (German Conference of University Presidents, 2003, p. 192). The implicit message of this statement is that universities have not yet grasped the real importance of quality assurance measures. This, however, can give us an idea of the ambivalence of the concept of university autonomy: the unchained university (MllerBling, 2000), thrown into liberation (Herzog, 1997), has certainly more competencies, but these are subject to the condition that self-steering and self-control mechanisms and procedures are introduced to qualify the universities to make responsible use of the newly granted autonomy (Weiskopf, 2005, p. 173). The new steering model relies on securing strategies to strengthen the administration by a readjustment of the internal structures. Quality assurance, rather than research and teaching, is at the centre of university activities. This means that the techniques and technologies which are seen as a precondition and an expression of university autonomy are not merely supplemental. In fact, they imply that autonomous decisions are replaced by procedures and that people, ideas and subject matter are no longer decisive for the quality of teaching and research but their control (Weiskopf, 2005, p. 174). II. Biopolitical Strategies Governing autonomous universities, however, needs more than changing the administrative structures. It requires biopolitical strategies to maintain quality and competitiveness. The university personnel are confronted with business-oriented supply and demand structures, resulting in individualizing incentives (Simons, 2004; Liesner, 2005). University autonomy appears to be an autonomy that counts on individualizing effects and intends to emphasize the mode of subjective decision making. In the context of this new model of government, teachers and students are bound to make active and self-reliant decisions. They have to decide what they offer and what they choose. In the discourse of educational policies, the perception of professors as service providers and of students as clients is increasingly part of the game, and refers to only one dimension of the academic entrepreneurial concept. Those who supply teaching and research are also conceived as consumers of institutional offers by using the infrastructure, by creating networks, or by participating in further education. Likewise, students are not reduced to the consumption of the teaching and consulting supplied. They also appear as individualized subjects, presenting themselves as targets for investment. What connects both groups is the challenge, in crucial biographical situations, to come to decisions which promise the best kind of profit (Simons, 2004, p. 182). The spectrum for individual choices appears as a market, promising and demanding a greater amount of autonomy. But the freedom of choice is the freedom of accountability, and those who do not survive the revision of themselves are personally responsible for the consequences. Within this concept of the university, rational decisions are perceived as calculated risk management. Similar to the public administration of poverty, unemployment or other personal challenges and dangers, the issue to propagate the idea of an autonomous subject as a public model is oriented towards a concept of life which defines self-responsibility in terms of economic efficiency and entrepreneurial rationality (Lemke et al, 2000, p. 30). Apart from structural safeguards with respect to the problem of quality, it is language which functions as the medium to conduct those who lead (Foucault, 1982, p. 220). In the universities, language enables the autonomous actors to think in respective categories and to apply these categories in acts of individual and collective self-reflection. If universities are described in the language of economic efficiency, these categories become part of ones self-evaluation and they influence ones perspective (Weiskopf, 2005, p. 173). These prerogatives for a defined pattern of behaviour may illustrate the situation that, even at the beginning of the twenty-first century, government is suspicious of incalculable forms of self-regulation. The additional securing means, basic to the net of individualizing strategies, illustrate this kind of distrust. The purpose of these means is to promote collective identification in cases where the balancing act of the autonomous subject is in danger of failing. These are operations in a field of possibilities that the behaviour of the acting subjects is inscribed to. To govern, in this sense, is to structure the possible field of action of other people (Foucault, 1982, p. 221). The aim is to minimize the danger of an

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Andrea Liesner incalculable anarchic selection of options instead of decisions which are rational in terms of efficiency and profit. The securing means provided by the Bologna Process are a repetition of what has been characteristic for German social and educational policies over the past years: we and us serve as points of reference to provide a common aim for individual efforts (Liesner, 2002, p. 143). The programme of the Christian Democratic Party, as well as Gerhard Schrders Social Democratic arguments in support of the Agenda 2010 similarly address the individual with reference to the population as a collective subject with the intention of bringing Germany back to the top in matters of prosperity and employment (Schrder, 2003). The plans for the European Higher Education Area refer to this specific figure of actions upon other actions in two ways (Foucault, 1982, p. 220). Students as individuals are expected to realize their potentials in order to accomplish the aims of a European identity and citizenship, and of an employment capacity. Furthermore, all university members are expected to view themselves as part of a unity aiming at common goals (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2003). In the political reform programmes, European academic citizens are collectively perceived in a way which Rose describes as generally relating to the social: [it] may be giving way to the community as a new territory for the administration of individual and collective existence, a new plane or surface upon which micro-moral relations among persons are conceptualised and administered. (Rose, 1996, p. 331) Rose talks of a mutation, rather profound, if still uncertain, in the ways of thinking and acting that used to be conducted in a social language (Rose, 1996, p. 331). The community-related elements of the European Higher Education Policy thus reveal a twofold strategy: [t]hey configure the imagined territory upon which these strategies should act by influencing the dynamics of the members of the universities, a collective, constituted by language, and they extend to the specification of the subjects of government as individuals who are also, actually or potentially, the subjects of allegiance to a particular set of community values, beliefs and commitments (Rose, 1996, p. 331). The arguments concerning the population of the European Higher Education Area, like so many other similar loci of allegiance ... employ a Janus-faced logic. Each assertion of community refers itself to something that already exists and has a claim on us (Rose, 1996, p. 334). Obviously we have to be made aware of our allegiance to a particular community, and this requires, among others, the work of educators. And Government through community involves a variety of strategies for inventing and instrumentalizing these dimensions of allegiance between individuals and communities in the service of projects of regulation, reform or mobilization. (Rose, 1996, p. 334) It can be assumed that the community-oriented governmental strategies as part of the structure of the European Higher Education Area serve as a precaution against individuals making the wrong decisions, which is best illustrated by the danger of the brain drain, where students and scholars migrate to competitive territories outside Europe. Nevertheless, the political protagonists seem to have doubts about whether their moralistic approach is going to be successful. All too often the decision to become part of the brain drain is influenced by economic reasons. This, however, would endanger the central aims of the Bologna Process to improve the competitiveness of European universities and of the Lisbon Strategy to reclaim global leadership for a knowledgebased European economic region. Due to this situation, the strategy to mobilize the academic human capital by means of identification is accompanied by a strategy which comprises the content matter of education, and which aims at students making the right decisions as early as the study phase. III. Curricular Securities People convinced of Europe are not created by political decisions but by an appropriate education and by experiences (German Conference of University Presidents, 2001, p. 235). This appropriateness of education is to be supported by teaching subject matters related to Europe and by a joint development of curricula. These projects, however, have not yet been realized on a broader scale (European Ministers of Education, 1999; German Conference of University

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Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities Presidents, 2001, p. 241). Their implementation could prove to be difficult because it is agreed that the harmonization of studies and certificates should not lead to a reduction in the quality of studies. This position is due to the massive protests against what was called progressive harmonization in the preparatory phase of the Bologna Declaration in 1998 (Ministers in Charge for France, Germany, Italy and the United Kingdom, 1998). However, the reform process is demonstrating a tendency to abolish this principle step by step, for example, by way of a European quality assurance policy: The common European guidelines for an evaluation and accreditation of studies also imply minimal standards for curricula (Keller, 2004, pp. 42ff.). Trends III, a study produced for the Berlin conference, and the new Trends IV reveal a similar perspective (European University Association, 2003, 2005). Both studies not only relate to the official sources of the ministries of education and of the university presidents, but also to feedback from students, employers and individual universities. They suggest that universities should enter a close dialogue with professional associations and employers for the reform of the curricula. The greatest challenge, however, would be to harmonize the demands of all parties interested in the relevance of higher education and in the employability of students with the longterm perspective characteristic of higher education and universities (European University Association, 2003). The trend to structure curricula according to the results of learning and with respect to competencies is seen as a step forward. Also, Trends IV highlights the necessity to force the curricular development within the scope of European qualifications though there has been only little progress in elaborating corresponding national qualification frameworks in most countries until now (European University Association, 2005, p. 20). So, it remains to be seen if ministries of education and universities will follow the suggestion to establish national frameworks of qualifications, based on external points of reference and in accord with the common European framework of qualifications.[2] Government strategies indeed show more and more clearly that the Bologna Process not only comprises new structures for studies, but also an architectural plan directed at the content matter of studies and at the self-concept of the members of the universities. The concept of security as part of this project is different from the traditional idea that the reform programmes of great industrial nations must find their legitimation under conditions of actual need no resources for public investment and global competition are defining the needs and necessities for what has to be perceived as realistic in a certain time frame. Here, the notion of security becomes a utopian notion because it embraces the possibility of connecting government strategies related to the territory and to the population in such a way that the uncertainty of the future appears to be a manageable project. Since the beginning of the Bologna Process, the political construction of the net of initiatives to secure this utopian notion has been continuously getting tighter. But it should be noted that this development has not really changed the European Higher Education Area (Keller, 2004). On the contrary, there are empirical findings for German universities that not only will the traditional heterogeneous structure resist constructions of uniformity for quite some time, but there are also new and growing differences to be observed among the study programmes of individual universities, varying from one federal state to the next (Lohmann, 2004a, p. 461). In all participating countries, the reforms initiated in Bologna have to acknowledge the given specific local conditions. For the Federal Republic of Germany this means that decisive differences within the federal states have to be accepted for the starting phase and for the implementation of the process. Inherent to the modular design of old and new studies is a tendency to abolish those study programmes which lack a quantitative critical substance. Therefore, it could well be that the Bologna Process does not produce more mobility and compatibility, but less. In addition, it is hard to see that it could be able to contribute to the Lisbon Convention, aimed at a mutual acceptance and guarantee of cultural diversity resulting from historical processes (Lohmann, 2004a, p. 461). IV. Well Advised? Educational and Political Questions Concerning the Bologna Process The question is whether all those working in the field of pedagogy are well advised to welcome the ongoing political reforms. It is hardly controversial to say that the state of German universities demands changes (Ash, 1997; Kimmich & Thumfart, 2004; Liesner & Sanders, 2005). But the

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Andrea Liesner calculating way of thinking which tries to win them over as the local creators of the European Higher Education Area and as prospective citizens of the knowledge-based economic area of Europe seems to be highly problematic as it combines a reduced understanding of what is supposed to be economic with a universal claim. With Michael Peters, this way of thinking can be characterized as a new prudentialism, as a central aspect of present-day governmentality. According to this concept, the modern strategies of social regulation are going to make us prudent: risk management of the social hazards facing us in modernity is based on the selfconstituting prudential citizen under economic and contractual conditions (Peters, 2005, p. 8). From an educational and a university policy perspective, this form of governance is noteworthy because it implies a degrading of the expertise and of the knowledge of all those who had the status of experts in the liberal welfare state, for example, teachers, social workers and social educators. Their status is eroding because, nowadays, all citizens are addressed as experts. The constant appeals to lead a rational, prudential life disclose a political orientation which is characteristic of the insurance system and which aims at normative, individualizing effects by obliging everyone to invest in themselves and in their children (Peters, 2005, p. 8). To decide what it pays to do and what it pays not to do is an act of a self-reliable risk calculation, and it is the farewell to an unhappy chance or an unavoidable destiny: we are encouraged to move from chance to choice (Fach, 2004, p. 232). There is also a choice for what is offered in the field of pedagogy and what should be chosen according to the criteria of prudentialism: does it pay to talk to teachers when your child has problems at school or is it more prudent, and more beneficial, to see a therapist, or a neurologist, or to insist on a systemic learning consultation? Is it really prudent to hand over the reform of a community centre to educators or could it be better to trust in experts in organizational development? The tendency to devalue pedagogical knowledge outside universities corresponds with a process within the institution. This tendency could be a contribution to the trivialization of educational science as a scientific discipline alongside the strategy to define European curricular dimensions. In the Federal Republic of Germany, the political aim to make studies and degrees more comparable is mainly achieved by the modular design of studies. This new structure can be easily connected to concepts of core curricula and to concepts for common European quality standards. It is primarily a top-down development with the assumption that everything which should or must be achieved in studies can be derived from aims defined at the top level and can be realized top-down down to the level of teaching and studying (Kokemohr, 2005, p. 105). This kind of modular design is characterized by a logic of deduction, preferring a set of knowledge discourses, related to simple discourses and legitimized, by definition, by the disciplines or by conventions of language, thus encouraging the reproduction of the knowledge discourses at hand and obstructing or preventing the production of new dimensions of knowledge (Kokemohr, 2005, p. 114). The present activities of universities to furnish study programmes with well-fitted modules or a curricular core exemplify the effectiveness of those political strategies which demand autonomy and, at the same, are controlling this autonomy. If students are provided with a set of methods and a defined spectrum of meanings which enable (or force) them to come to prudent decisions within and outside the university, knowledge only counts under functional aspects and no longer under aspects of its systematic or historical legitimacy. How does this process go together with the political demands for an opening up of the national systems of studies and of scholarly traditions? Universities are not only obliged to foster efficiency, excellence and competition, but also to comply with new demands concerning mobility, language skills, openness for the other and jobs in European and international contexts (German Conference of University Presidents, 2001, p. 235). In particular, the social sciences and humanities are made responsible by the presidents of the German universities for the reduction of social friction, of exclusion and of xenophobia. In general, they insist on the preservation of cultural diversity in the process of constructing the European Higher Education Area, connected with a demand for openness for new members as a guarantee against a fortress Europe (German Conference of University Presidents, 2001, p. 235). Scepticism arises mainly from two aspects. First, European identity as a collective security strategy can transform openness into an internationalism defined on a territorial basis. This refers to the danger that people convinced of Europe are open only to an internal dimension, whereas the otherness of extra-European areas is excluded. Second, this kind of perception could well be

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Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities nourished by the fact that integrative activities under the guidelines of Europeanization are in opposition to the articulated aim of internationalization (Keller, 2004, p. 33). The pressure imposed on universities and their members to prove their competitiveness on a global and a European scale is, at the same time, intensifying and constituting competition. The General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the Bolkenstein Directive in the context of the Lisbon Strategy are of special significance. In connection with the public protests against the country of origin principle, this directive was opposed by the French and German governments and handed over to the EU Commission for revision. With regard to GATS, the danger prevails that the educational sector will be listed in the trade in services catalogue. From this perspective, it may be more beneficial for most countries to establish isolated isles of excellence than to develop forms of an open cooperation with universities within and outside Europe. The integration of the various strategies intended to stabilize the architecture of the new areas is achieved by a model of inclusion, which does not reveal its inherent modes of exclusion. The future members of the European Higher Education Area are perceived as part of the European Economic Area, whose knowledge is needed for the intended global leadership of this area. They are addressed as self-contained, prudentially consuming and producing subjects in analogy to what takes place within the territory of the European nation states. So, the German Agenda 2010 defines unemployed people as clients of the Federal Agency for Work, motivates legally insured people to enter into additional private contracts to take care of poverty induced by pensions or accidents, and it encourages all citizens to make learning a lifelong task in order to remain employed or to enter employment. This also characterizes the policy of governments in other European territories. The British policy is still more client-oriented than the German Agenda 2010. That is why the reform strategies of the former German Social Democratic government, the British Labour government and the EU policies are attacked by certain sections of the public as neo-liberal, because they risk sacrificing their political possibilities and potentialities to an economic supremacy. But the question is whether these ways of governance are indeed neo-liberal when the state fosters the functioning of market structures in all fields of its territory and, at the same time, endeavours to bring its territory into a state-monopolistic, globally dominating market position. The European welfare economy is subject to a wide spectrum of analyses. With regard to the development of the German discussion, it is interesting to see that Tony Blairs Third Way policy is interpreted as an attempt to go beyond neo-liberalism and its conflation of autonomy with possessive, individualized consumerism and to subordinate the security of the producer to the freedom of the consumer (Peters, 2005, p. 11). According to Leighton (2003), the goal is to save the welfare state but to do so by privileging the efficiency of the private sector and the sovereignty of the consumer (quoted in Peters, 2005, p. 11). For Peters, the fundamental question is to what extent, if at all, can the citizen-consumer shape privately funded public services in ways other than through their acts of consumption? (Peters, 2005, p. 13). This analysis shows the importance of a close observation of governance strategies with regard to all those who disappear, who are not part of collectivizing strategies, or are not able to comply with the conditions, whatever the reasons may be. In his attempt to discover the limits of government, Rose pays attention to the problem of governing the margins (Rose, 1996, p. 344). He observes that at the level of governmentality we are seeing the emergence of a range of rationalities and techniques that seek to govern without governing society, to govern through regulated choices made by discrete and autonomous actors in the context of their particular commitments to families and communities. (Rose, 1996, p. 328) Referring to Deleuzes analysis of the modern mechanisms of control that apply to all aspects of the conduct of the life of the individual (for example, lifelong learning/continuing education, continual retraining, constant job readiness and ceaseless consumption [Deleuze, 1995, pp. 177-182]), he argues that it is only in relation to these logics of inclusion through choice, autonomy and consumption that one can understand the new ways that are taking shape for conceptualizing and acting upon those subjects who inhabit [the margins] (Rose, 1996, p. 344). In the early 1990s, the European social democratic governments adopted a new view on the problem of inequality and social justice. They presupposed that the economic changes,

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Andrea Liesner exacerbated by policies, had led to the rise of a two-thirds, one-third society (Rose, 1996, p. 346). The persons of the excluded minorities were no longer perceived as part of a single group with common social characteristics, but as fragmented and divided (Rose, 1996, p. 346). This could neither be managed by a unified social service nor by the recognition of common roots of all social problems, but needed to be addressed through the activities of a variety of specialists (Rose, 1996, p. 346). At the same time, techniques were developed to perceive the excluded individuals as part of a whole. [The] abjected subjects are reunified ethically and spatially. Ethically, in that they are accorded a new active relation to their status in terms of strategies and capacities for the management of themselves: they have either refused the bonds of civility and selfresponsibility or they aspire to them but have not the skills, capacities and means. And spatially, in that the unified space of the social is reconfigured, and the abjected are relocated, in both imagination and strategy, in marginalized spaces. (Rose, 1996, pp. 346-347) From this perspective, we can speak of microsectors of the excluded which cannot be governed by the traditional welfare state, but by a new kind of management of private services, in part financed by public funds. These services are supplied, for example, by voluntary endeavours, self-help groups, concept houses, service providers and hostels, and they include the huge and murky industry of training unemployment, due to the lack of individual and marketable skills among the unemployed themselves and countered by a multitude of training organizations that are private and compete in a market for public contracts and public funds (Rose, 1996, p. 347). These new strategies of governing margins replace the social logics of welfare bureaucracies ... by new logics of competition, market segmentation and service management: the management of misery and misfortune can become, once more, a potentially profitable activity (Rose, 1996, p. 347). Considering Roses reference to Deleuze and to control societies, we might well question what Deleuze assumed to be a structural feature of capitalism: to keep three quarters of humanity in extreme poverty, too poor to have debts and too numerous to be confined (Deleuze, 1995, p. 181). Meanwhile, the marginalized and abject persons and groups this new territory of exclusion seem to be part of the governmental territory. This is illustrated by the 2005 World Economic Forum and a workshop dealing with How to Tap the Bottom of the Pyramid, exploring business models that promise both profits and help for the poorest of the poor (World Economic Forum, 2005). The aim is to create those services and products that are needed most in the respective regions by the poor, potential consumers so that they can contribute to the improvement of their lives in an active and self-responsible way. These services and products are not supplied as charitable gifts but as a supply poor people can and should buy to expand their business: everything from soap to cell phones (World Economic Forum, 2005). The Bologna Process, the Lisbon Strategy and the Agenda 2010 are characterized by exactly those elements of political exclusion and inclusion Rose (1996) has discerned: autonomy, liberty as a liberty of contract and prudentialism, and the definition of all activities according to the principle of supply and demand. But is the dominant mode of governing really a project aimed at the creation of social reality, of a reality presumed to exist? This position, elaborated by the editors of a German standard collection on governmentality today, suggests that, as far as governmental dimensions are concerned, the European reform programmes refer to the very existence of those governmental territories which they are going to create (Lemke et al, 2000, p. 9). However, if we look back at the last big reconstruction of education and educational policy in the Federal Republic of Germany in the late 1960s, it is surprising to see that the agenda for expansion and equal opportunity was reflecting the socio-economic realities instead of initiating them. As early as the 1950s, according to Kremer, moments of an expansive structural change in the educational system could be observed. A growing number of pupils were moving from elementary schools to schools that promised further educational perspectives. In the early 1960s, the relative number of pupils at the nine-year elementary schools (Hauptschule) declined rapidly, whereas enrolments at the middle schools (Realschule) increased between 1961 and 1966 by almost 60%, and at the secondary schools (Gymnasium) by almost 40% (Kremer, 2003, p. 167). This means that the political programmes meant to avoid a German educational catastrophe (Picht, 1964) were asking for changes which, in part, were already taking place.

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Neo-liberal Reconstruction of German Universities Kremer emphasizes the fact that the quantitative changes of 1968 at the peak of the public campaigns for education were blocked, partly due to the restricted capacities at schools for further education and partly due to the 1966/67 economic crisis (Kremer, 2003, p. 168). He argues that the educational policy reforms were neither initiated by economic demands nor by an autonomous societal striving for equal opportunities (Bildung ist Brgerrecht: Education as a civil right). Therefore, this political discourse in favour of reforms can be seen as an ex-post-legitimation of the politically unrecognized internal structural reforms that had already taken place. The assumption is that, in this process, the expansion of the types of school that guaranteed further educational perspectives was secured so that they were not endangered by growing demographic pressures (Kremer, 2003, p. 168). If this retrospective analysis is to be valid, it would be interesting to see if, and to what extent, the present governmental reforms of the systems of higher education are reactions and ex-postlegitimations of changes that have already taken place. Would it then be appropriate to talk about the creation of a political reality which is already supposed to be in existence? Or we may even discover a limitation of governmentality studies a limitation that would signify that the creation of the new territories as quasi-markets necessarily asks for a perspective that takes into account the socio-economic processes of transformation and their relation to education which happen beyond the level of political discourses because their as-if status in the context of international tectonic changes appears to be extremely fragile, not only in universities (Lohmann, 2004b). (Translated by Dieter Keiner) Notes
[1] In addition to the 33 signatory countries of the Bologna Declaration of 19 June 1999, the ministers decided at the Berlin conference on 19 September 2003 to accept the requests for membership of Albania, Andorra, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Holy See, Russia, Serbia and Montenegro, the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia ... thus expanding the process to 40 European Countries and doubling the territory for the European Higher Education Policy (Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2003, p. 8). At the Bergen conference in May 2005 the ministers welcomed Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova and the Ukraine as members of the Follow-up Group, so 45 countries participate in the Bologna Process today (Bologna Follow-up Group, 2005, p. 6; Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education, 2005, p. 6). [2] For a comparable discussion about the national curricula in the USA and the United Kingdom, see Hursh (2005). [3] The term government, which here is primarily used in the context of actual political reform programmes, cannot be restricted to these contexts. With reference to Foucaults research on government in the sixteenth century, the term has a more comprehensive meaning: it designated the way in which the conduct of individuals or of groups might be directed: the government of children, of souls, of communities, of families, of the sick (Foucault, 1982, p. 221) and, today, of the members of universities as an indicator for the ongoing governmentalisation of the state (Foucault, 2004, p. 163).

References
Ash, M.G. (1997) German Universities: past and future. Crisis or Renewal? New York & Oxford: Berghahn. Bologna Follow-up Group (2005) From Berlin to Bergen. General Report of the Bologna Follow-up Group to the Conference of European Ministers Responsible for Higher Education. Bergen, 19-20 May. http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Bergen/050503_General_rep.pdf Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education (2003) Realising the European Higher Education Area. Communiqu, Berlin, 19 September. http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Docs/00-Main_doc/030919Berlin_Communique.PDF Conference of Ministers Responsible for Higher Education (2005) The European Higher Education Area Achieving the Goals. Communiqu, Bergen, 19-20 May. http://www.bologna-bergen2005.no/Docs/00-Main_doc/050520_Bergen_Communique.pdf

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ANDREA LIESNER is a lecturer at the University of Hamburg, Germany. Her PhD thesis was a historical and systematic study of the ambivalence towards security in educational thinking from antiquity to the present day. Her current research concentrates on the relationship between education and the economy, on the political management of higher education and on the educational reform of state schools. Correspondence: Dr Andrea Liesner, University of Hamburg, Faculty for Educational Sciences, Section 1, Von-Melle-Park 8, D-20146 Hamburg, Germany (liesner@erzwiss.uni-hamburg.de).

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