Workshop 1

Research review
Carmen Tanasie
Neliza Macapayag
Andrija Vii
Illya Kletskovskyy
This report is produced based on two sources: Who Decides What EU
Issues Ministers Talk About? Explaining Governmental EU Policy
Coordination research article and the MA Thesis Tracking
International Joint Degree Programs in Hungary.
Part I - The article
The article, written in 2014 by Anna Hyvrinen and Tapio Raunio,
tackles the issue of Finnish civil servants influence on which EU
policies should their government consider. It was published in Journal
of Common Market Studies, the leading journal in the field of European
Integration Studies.
The article takes a positivist approach to addressing the following
research questions: which European issues are debated by the
government, and who bureaucrats or political parties - determine
which EU matters are on the cabinet agenda. The authors are using
both, qualitative and quantitative methods, like surveys, interviews
and content analysis, to test the following three hypotheses:
1) The agenda of the ministerial EU committee and overall intra-cabinet
EU co-ordination are mainly driven by established administrative
procedures.
2) The agenda of the ministerial EU committee and overall intra-cabinet
EU co-ordination are mainly driven by interests of the leading PMO civil
servants.
3) The agenda of the ministerial EU committee and overall intra-cabinet
EU co-ordination are mainly driven by interests of the governing
parties.
The research question, although properly framed, only evaluates
influence of the two actors who dictate which issues are taken on by
the cabinet. It does not consider other actors that could influence the
policy makers. In their hypotheses, the authors considered three actors
or events that could influence the decision makers, but only two of
them are reflected in the research questions.

The methods used were described clearly and precisely. For example,
the article provided the three general topics covered by the interviews:
(1) Agenda formulation in the cabinet EU Committee, (2) Actual
conduct of ministerial EU Committee meetings and (3) governmental
EU co-ordination. Government protocols and agenda used to determine
which EU policies are taken on by the cabinet were simplified and
presented in a table format.
This quantitative data analysis of issues raised in the cabinet meetings
is only partially relevant to the research. Further research on other
countries is needed to give credence to the hypothesis of the EU
commission influence on the agenda. Moreover, the interviews do not
offer conclusive explanations to support the authors claims, and there
were not enough interviews conducted to make a representative
sample of the entire key Finnish civil service.
Considering the foregoing discussion and criticism of the article, it
offers limited generalization possibility, since the study was conducted
on Finnish civil servants only. It merely examines the agendas being
discussed at the Finnish government level and does not go beyond
whether the debates are being translated to real policies, treaties or
agreements. Thus, the articles contribution is that it opens up the
discussion on the influence of civil servants in governments agendas.
Part II - Thesis
The MA Thesis was written in 2011 by Julia Iwinska, in order to fulfill
graduation requirements at Central European University (CEU),
Department of Public Policy (DPP). The Thesis concentrated on joint
degree programs and their development in Europe, Hungary and at the
University of Corvinus. The structure was presented as follows: (1)
Literature and Methodology, (2) Much Ado About Joint Degree
Programs, (3) Internalization Through Cooperation, (4) On The Path to
Joint Degrees in Hungary, (5) What Have we Learned plus Conclusion &
Recommendation.
After the review of the thesis, the following outcomes were evident:
The introduction aims and goals were clearly defined and sounded. The
research question states: Following an overview of the key elements
of the recent debates about internalization process at higher education
institutions and forms and evolution of international collaborations, the
paper implements a case study approach to track the development of
joint degree programs in that context.

The analysis of the first chapter revealed an enormous literature

review. Furthermore, throughout the thesis, citation of two particular
scholars is prominent (Knight and Beerkens). Thus, not enough
research was done by the author, especially in the first three chapters,
that were entirely dedicated to historical processes and evolvements of
education and internalization in Europe.
Moreover, the first three chapters and partial relation of the fourth
chapter, to the research itself, were peculiar due to the way the
information was narrowed down. Such jump from the historical aspects
to the one case study on the CUBs dual and joint degrees is irrelevant.
Even though evidence and background were provided efficiently, the
analytical part is lacking due to the following: insufficiency of the case
study in the broad context, lack of substantial research (concentrated
around the interviews only) and missing criteria of international
exchange students to complete internalization term understanding.
The recommendation of the thesis author is not supported by data, but
rather derived from a similar case, thus, making the recommendation
not suitable.
Further notable problems:
The thesis failed to address the questions of whether
internationalization is a good thing and why CUB needs to change its
strategy and make the centralized office that will deal with all dual
degrees.

To conclude our assessment, we summed up the failures of the

imposed criteria:
Argument
Coherence
Consistency
Clarity
Style and Grammar
Referencing of Sources