Decoupling and the Reconfiguration of Higher Education Governance in Georgia

Abstract

Since joining the Bologna Process in 2005, Georgia has aligned its higher education system with European Higher Education Area (EHEA) standards, including three-cycle degrees and external quality assurance. This article examines the 2025 National Concept for Reforming the Higher Education System, introduced amid stalled EU accession negotiations, the quality assurance agency's suspension from the European Quality Assurance Register, and university protests. Because the reform remains before parliament, the analysis concerns its design rather than its realised effects. It argues that the reform retains the formal instruments of European participation while its centralising measures weaken the institutional autonomy they were intended to protect.

To account for this pattern, the paper applies the External Incentives Model in reverse, from rule adoption to rule retreat. For two decades, Georgia adopted European rules because the expected rewards of EU integration outweighed the domestic costs. As the credibility and proximity of those rewards have declined, while the political costs of conceding university autonomy have risen, the incentive for substantive compliance has weakened. Yet because openly abandoning those structures would forfeit the legitimacy already accrued, the government retains them while reducing their substantive function. Drawing on neo-institutional theories of isomorphism and decoupling, the paper shows how formal structures can persist after the purposes they served are withdrawn. The Georgian case indicates that EU conditionality loses its effectiveness once domestic costs exceed the benefits of integration.