Who embodies the Evaluative State? Programmatic elites in the Chilean and the Colombian policies of quality assurance in higher education

Juan Felipe Duque (1)

1 PACTE - Pacte, Laboratoire de sciences sociales

Based on the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF), this article presents a comparative analysis of the Chilean and the Colombian policies of quality assurance (QA) in higher education. Despite their instrumental commonalities, these policies actually reflect two contrasting approaches to quality: a flexible approach in Chile versus an excellence-based approach in Colombia. The article shows that both policies were initially developed by programmatic elites formed by prestigious academics who shared a common policy program, and that the contrasting approaches to quality of these policies arises from the divergent evolutions of the original policy programs: the policy of QA was subject to an instrumental layering in Chile while, in Colombia, it followed a path-dependent evolution. The study shows that sociological perspectives like the PAF can provide a more complete and dynamic understanding of the Evaluative State that takes into account the instrumental and the social dimensions of quality-related activities.

Mots clés: Programmatic action; quality assurance; higher education; Chile; Colombia

Domaines: Sciences de l'Homme et Société

Juan Felipe Duque. Who embodies the Evaluative State? Programmatic elites in the Chilean and the Colombian policies of quality assurance in higher education. Virtual General Conference of the ECPR, European Consortium for Political Research, Aug 2020, Innsbruck, Austria. ⟨hal-02948045⟩