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The chapter discusses Comparative and International Education (CIE) in Germany and reviews some recent developments that are seen to impact the field in important ways. The current state of CIE in Germany is characterized by three major developments. First, there are visible signs of intensified interest in comparative knowledge – both from policy and academic circles – as illustrated by external indicators such as publications, activities in academic-professional societies, etc. Second, there is an increasing diversification of CIE, with intercultural, international and development education attracting much attention. Finally, since the early 2000s, there has been growing significance and reception of large-scale international comparative assessment studies. The essay discusses these current developments in turn and poses questions as to their relevance and potential impact for CIE in Germany.

International rule-governed activity also includes nonstate actors on the national as well as on the international and transnational levels. This chapter first discusses the relationship between educational governance and regime theory, then some observations on the theoretical perspective and the analytical categories are outlined. Second, a concise discussion of regime theory is presented and a definition of an emerging international education regime (IER) is elaborated, including some of the key elements and features that illustrate the adopted theoretical framework. Third, the chapter addresses some methodological questions and presents one possible research design to discuss empirical implications of an emerging IER.

For the longest period of its history, the university was the guardian and transmitter – not the producer – of knowledge. This relatively recent change of transmitting canonical knowledge and generating new knowledge is normally associated with Wilhelm von Humboldt. Other highly influential university models were provided by France and Great Britain. The association of certain types of universities with particular countries is a strong indicator of the intricate link between nation-state and education. Hence, the history of tertiary education and its elite institutions, the research universities, must be considered in relation with a sea change in educational history – the gradual emergence of national education systems. Only under the conditions of the by now standard form of organizing modern societies as nation-states did education become a central institution (Meyer, Boli, Thomas, & Ramirez, 1997) collapsing individual perfectibility and national progress. The nationally redefined university was integrated into the education system as its keystone while also being considered the motor of societal development. From a social history perspective, the latter aspect in particular indicates the pragmatic (training professionals, imparting military and technical knowledge, etc.) and symbolic expectations, “myths” of the nation-state that have been so aptly described and analyzed in numerous macro-sociological neo-institutionalist studies (Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992; Meyer et al., 1997; Ramirez & Boli, 1987). In a macro-phenomenological perspective, the term “myth” is used to denote a fundamental change in the self-description of European society which since the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries no longer views itself as consisting of separate collectivities divided from each other by social origin – as was the case under feudal conditions – with each collectivity providing itself the necessary education for its members or being provided for by others in the case of neediness. Instead, as a result of a number of material and immaterial changes, society now defines the individual as its key unit, with the nation being consequently the aggregate of individuals and not of collectivities and the state redefined as the guardian of the nation. This conception might be taken as a kind of overlapping area which includes different approaches, such as Michel Foucault's concept of the disciplinary society (Foucault, 1977), Balibar and Wallerstein's (1991) deliberations on the relation between race, class, and nation, and Benedict Anderson's (1991) description of nations as imagined communities. All these studies could be taken as sharing the notion of “constructedness” (cf. Berger & Luckmann, 1972) of modern society with the neo-institutionalist perspective. The concept of a “world polity” which encompasses the “myths” society is based on, the overall notion of a cognitive culture, which takes Max Weber's concept of rationality as a point of departure, is identified as the basis of isomorphic change in the organizational structure of modern education systems (cf. Baker & Wiseman, 2006). However, the strong emphasis on international, world system embeddedness of nation-states and their education systems is not to be taken as a unidirectional dependence on external forces. While modern nation-states originate from and remain tied to international dynamics and developments, they are conceived as unique entities. For most of their history, modern nation-states have been preoccupied with making themselves distinct from each other. Thus, while international competition has always been present, looking abroad traditionally meant reworking, adapting, and reshaping what was imported, or borrowed (Halpin & Troyna, 1995; Steiner-Khamsi, 2004). This is true for education as well as for other areas of society.

In October 2008, a group of international scholars met at Hohentuebingen Castle, in Tuebingen, Germany, to discuss issues of international governance in education. At that time, governance as an analytical concept was just beginning to be more widely discussed in German educational science. These discussions were primarily in the context of new forms of organizational steering and with regards to a changing embeddedness of national education systems attributed to processes of globalization and fiscal austerity. In addition, a large interdisciplinary research project located at the University of Bremen, TranState, was already exerting considerable international influence with a decidedly comparative perspective on those areas of German educational science. However, in this early phase, the debate on international governance in education was limited and focused heavily on emerging theories of governance, among colleagues at the University of Tuebingen, both at the Institute of Education as well as in other parts of the faculty. To me, Frank-Olaf Radtke was the key person who had first drawn my attention to educational governance, and I was especially grateful for having had the opportunity to continue our previous exchanges in the context of the Tuebingen meeting.

S. Karin Amos is professor of education with a special emphasis on comparative and multicultural education at the Eberhard Karls University at Tuebingen. Her research interests include the role of education in the construction of societal membership, transnational educational governance, and cultural studies and education.

Informed by multiple disciplines, theories, and methods, higher education scholars have developed a robust and diverse literature in many countries. Yet, some important (organizational) sociological perspectives, both more established and more recent, are insufficiently linked. In particular, we identify two theoretical strands – institutional and relational – that, when joined, help to explain contemporary developments in global higher education and yield new organizational insights. We review relevant literature from each perspective, both in their general formulations and with specific reference to contemporary higher education research. Within the broad institutional strand, we highlight strategic action fields, organizational actorhood, and associational memberships. Within the relational strand, we focus on ties and relationships that are especially crucial as science has entered an age of (inter)national research collaboration. Across these theories, we discuss linkages between concepts, objects, and levels of analysis. We explore the methodological approach of social network analysis as it offers great potential to connect these strands and, thus, to advance contemporary higher education research in a collaborative era.