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Montesquieu in the University: The Governance of World-class Institutions of Higher Education and Research

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 January 2018

Lars Engwall
Lars Engwall*
Affiliation:
Department of Business Studies, Box 513, Uppsala University, Sweden. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The point of departure for this article is the principle of the separation of powers, formulated long ago by the Frenchman Charles-Louis de Secondat Montesquieu. It is argued that this principle is important for the governance of universities, entailing a balance between university boards, university presidents and university senates. To this end, the article presents evidence about the governance structure of two highly-ranked US universities, UC Berkeley (UCB) and Stanford University. It reports on board compositions, the selection of presidents and the role of academic senates. The conclusion is that the principle of the balance of powers (‘shared governance’ as it is called at UCB) has served the two universities well. Therefore, despite differences in other conditions, such as their endowments, other universities might benefit from the evidence reported.

Type
Conflicts and Dialogues between Science and Humanities
Information
European Review , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 285 - 298
Copyright
© Academia Europaea 2018 

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References

References and Notes

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3.I received invaluable help with my interviews in California from Professor Emeritus Arthur Bienenstock of Stanford, Swedish Consul General in San Francisco, Barbro Osher, and Professor Emeritus of UCB Sheldon Rothblatt. I am also very grateful to Sheldon Rothblatt for his most valuable comments, which contributed considerably to the improvement of an earlier version of this paper.Google Scholar
4.For information about the Board of Regents of the University of California, see http://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/.Google Scholar
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