Network governance in Finnish higher education and science policy, 2012–2021

Abstract Finnish higher education and science policy has been characterised as corporatist, but reforms after the 1990s have created conditions for a more network-based governance mode of policymaking. These networks empower various stakeholders to participate in policy processes, but they also allow the government, particularly the Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC), to promote the government’s interests in and govern through stakeholder networks. In this paper, we ask what kind of network the government (the MEC) uses in higher education and science policymaking, and how it uses the network. We examined a network of organisations that participated in Finnish higher education and science policy in 2012–2021 via the working groups of the MEC. Our methods were social network analysis and expert interviews ( N = 23). Our results show that the network had a small core set of key actors that consisted of state ministries and agencies, universities and their associations, employer and employee unions, and student unions. The network was centralised around the MEC and stable over time, and it was used for knowledge exchange, interest intermediation, and policy advocacy. These are traits of traditional corporatism. Nevertheless, we found that the MEC played a dual role of a coordinator and stakeholder-lobbyist, reflecting more horizontally equal relationships between the actors, especially at the network’s core, which is characteristic of networked governance.