LAUSR

offer illuminating insights into the societies themselves, as well as into what meaning the Bologna Process had for them (from the nugatory to clear commitment). But they also reach down to the impacts it could have at the institutional level, highlighting, in all cases, the distinctiveness of the universities’ responses, keeping alive the concept of the university as an autonomous and universal institution, even in authoritarian societies. The book’s concluding chapter is a little disappointing. It would have been useful if the author had given some overall assessment of the light these studies had shed on what this ‘quiet revolution’ had achieved in a relatively favourable climate, on what progress had been made then towards fulfilling the democratic aspirations of its initiators and perhaps, too, on the value of this kind of ‘transgovernmental’ approach to global challenges. Instead, partly due to the length of time before the book itself was completed, the author’s perspective had shifted from a not uncritical but optimistic inquiry into the Bologna Process to the threat from the rise in authoritarianism and populism to the democratic principles informing it, which there was no space to examine.