Approaches to policy and governance in higher education.

The chapter deals with the general approaches to policy and governance as presented in the literature and as applied to the field of higher education (HE). It examines issues related to both politics and polity. Politics means the focus on the resolution of conflict and development of consent, resulting in decision-making processes (the procedural dimension). Polity means the focus on state organization and the management of the system to obtain political order and stability, through laws, regulations and institutions in different types of politically organized communities (North, 1990; March and Olsen, 1984). The aim is to guide the readers systematically through key concepts used in the general policy and governance literature and in the higher education literature as 'steering', 'government' and 'governance', highlighting the differences between them when appropriate.