Neave, G. The evaluative state, institutional autonomy and re-engineering higher education in Western Europe: The prince and his pleasure. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke, 2012. ISBN: 978-0230348035. Pages: 264.

This study provides an alternative framework for reflecting on the changes in Western Europe's higher education systems over the past quarter century. It focuses on profound shifts in the external relationship between higher education, government and society and the effect of changes in external relationships on the revision of the internal institutional balance of power. The publication builds on two basic concepts – the rise of the evaluative state and the shifts in meaning and definition of positional and institutional autonomy - and further charts how autonomy has mutated from being of integral value in higher education to becoming an instrument of policy.

Palgrave Macmillan