Quality, competition and regulatory policies in the Bologna Process. Europe unified through competition

In this paper, we discuss the ideas of competition and quality prevailing in the BolognaProcess and in the Lisbon/Modernising Agendas. We briefly describe the institutional and political process establishing European Higher Education and Research Area and investigate the political economics that are implied. By using a critical approach to political science and economy, we discuss the way in which competition is regulated through a set of policy decisions which aim at enhancing the quality of higher education and research. In the final section, we place our research on the BolognaProcess and the establishment of a knowledge-based society within the attempt to bridge Cultural Political Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis.