Government, Policy, and Ideology

Higher Education's Changing Boundaries in Two Island Kingdoms-Japan and England

Government, Policy, and Ideology analyzes the transformation of the university systems of England and Japan from the early 1980s, with particular reference to the changing modalities of university autonomy and the power relationships between central authorities, the universities, and the market. The analysis compares the various policy positions of the relevant stakeholders in the two countries, highlighting the ideologies of neo-liberalism, university autonomy, and new managerialism. These ideologies coexist in both the English and the Japanese university systems. However, the interpretations of these ideologies made by stakeholders, the patterns of the interrelations between them, and their contextualization as elements in the policy and stance of each stakeholder differ between England and Japan. The book argues that convergence between the English and Japanese university systems is, to a large extent, explained in the transformation of the university system in England during the 1980s, and the continuity of the Ministerial jurisdictional mechanism in Japan.