Claire Gordon

London School of Economics and Political Science | LSE · Eden Centre for Education Enhancement

Academic Freedom in Europe: The Central European University Affair and the Wider Lessons - Volume 58 Issue 3 - Anne Corbett, Claire Gordon

More than 18 months on from the UK referendum on continued EU membership, there is a question as to how far the paths of the UK higher education and research system and that of the European sector have diverged; or whether each side has discovered, as the dust settled, that they can continue do business much as before. This chapter looks at two iss...

Our evidence addresses the Committee’s question ‘How to mitigate the possible risks and take advantage of Brexit for UK higher education?’. The submission focuses on the often ignored dimension of the public role of the university, the values that lie at the heart of higher education and their impact on the individual and broader society and the qu...

Several politicians across Europe have voiced concern about academic freedom in Hungary following the passing of legislation that threatens the country’s Central European University. But do the EU’s institutions have any authority to act over the affair? Anne Corbett and Claire Gordon argue that a university coming under attack in an EU member stat...

The EU brought invaluable networks for research and collaboration to the UK. More than that, it fostered a shared democratic culture of openness and tolerance. But these links will have to change as Britain pursues a hard Brexit. Time is short, write Anne Corbett and Claire Gordon, and universities need to make the case for an ‘Intelligent Brexit’...

The research investigates the challenge of ensuring that educators and education-focused leaders in research-intensive institutions – whatever their job title – are appropriately rewarded for their work. At a time of growing emphasis on the importance of high quality student education nationally and internationally, this is vital not only for indiv...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee. It evaluates the implementation, impact and outcomes of National Roma Integration Strategies in a selection of Member States (Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain)...

This study was commissioned by the European Parliament's Policy Department for Citizens' Rights and Constitutional Affairs at the request of the LIBE Committee. It evaluates the implementation, impact and outcomes of National Roma Integration Strategies in a selection of Member States (Bulgaria, France, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, and Spain)...

The overall objective of this research project has been to improve the impact of vocational education and training (VET) at secondary school level on social inclusion and social cohesion in the countries of the Western Balkans, Turkey and Israel (WBTI) by deepening the understanding of the main barriers and potential opportunities for building incl...

The study presents a critical assessment of the national action plans, measures and instruments designed to promote the situation of Roma EU citizens in the EU, focusing on six new and six old member states. It identifies the legal instruments and policies which can be used and put in place at the EU level, outlines the elements of a European Strat...

This article investigates the Stabilization and Association Process as an instrument of post-conflict management in the Western Balkans. It explores the appropriateness of the fit of the modified Central and Eastern European accession template with the added stabilization component to the post-conflict countries of the region. In addition, the arti...

The project of European integration now spans Europe, but in becoming bigger and broader the European Union has brought on itself significant criticism. As the EU becomes deeper, wider, and more ambitious, so opposition and scepticism become more prominent for citizens and more problematic for elites. Concerns about a ‘democratic deficit ‘ and the...

The accession of eight Central and East European countries (CEECs) in May 2004 marked the beginning of a more direct and equal interaction between the political, economic and legal orders of the old and new Member States within the framework of EU policy-making. It also shifted the emphasis to the implementation and sustainability of the institutio...

When the EU first acknowledged that those associated CEECs that ‘so desire’ could become members, at the Copenhagen European Council meeting in June 1993, it expressed the political and economic conditions for membership in vaguely worded and normative statements of intent in the ‘Copenhagen criteria’. As we discussed in Chapter 1, the criteria lai...

For conditionality to be credible, it must be clearly benchmarked and be applied with consistency. Similarly, commitment to conformity and compliance with conditionality must be fairly evaluated. Regular monitoring was chosen by the EU as the means to communicate the criteria of accession and assess progress and to highlight shortcomings in adaptat...

Studies of transition generally focus more on the immediate events and processes and less on the historical background which shapes it. Nevertheless, historical legacies and the extent to which a transition state has a ‘usable past’ are generally recognized as having an important bearing on the transition outcome.1 The term ‘historical legacy’ and...

During the EU’s eastward enlargement the notion of ‘capacity’ has been of paramount importance for the Commission and the EU’s governing institutions more broadly. As we have seen in Chapter 4, the Commission employed the term as a generic label for the parts of the acquis that required new institutional structures, management and organizational ar...

During the initial post-communist transition years in most CEECs the issue of local government reform was high on the political agenda as a central theme of democratic state-building. As discussed in Chapter 2 most countries introduced democratizing and decentralizing changes to the structure of local government (see Table 2.1). In formulating thes...

Despite the importance of conditionality during the current EU enlargement, there are few theoretical or empirical studies of the concept. The study of EU enlargement conditionality is characterized by a concentration on the analysis of its correlation with macro-level democratization and marketization, rather than empirically tracking clear causal...

The two most widely employed concepts in the framing of the debates about EU enlargement and European integration are ‘Europeanization’ and ‘conditionality’. Yet, both concepts are employed rather nebulously and lack coherent explanatory frameworks. The term ‘Europeanization’ has been stretched to encapsulate phenomena beyond its original locus in...

Studies of EU conditionality assume one basic premise: that it exists and works because there is a power asymmetry which enables the Commission to impose the adoption of the "acquis" on the CEECs as a precondition of their entry to the Union. Thus this literature posits that there are clear causal relationships in the use of conditionality to ensur...

A major challenge for EU enlargement is how to communicate the benefits of membership to electorates. Given the weak penetration of party systems in the Central and East European countries, subnational elites have an important role in shaping voter preferences. Attitudes among subnational elites to EU enlargement are examined in three leading candi...

The process of European eastward enlargement is increasingly understood as one involving Europeanization, that is to say the spread and inculcation of EU regulatory norms, practice and capacity into the governance systems of the Central and Eastern European candidate countries (CEECs). EU membership conditionality, notably the adoption of the acqui...

In building any home location is key. Geography is widely regarded as the single most important reason why the post-communist countries of central and eastern Europe (CEECs) can realistically aspire to inclusion in a common European home that is democratic and prosperous (Przeworski, 1991: 190–1). This hypothesis may have sound structural foundatio...