This document summarizes a presentation on the governance of higher education institutions in Portugal. It analyzes how Portuguese universities have reacted to increased autonomy and new frameworks emphasizing elements of New Public Management (NPM) and New Governance. The presentation examines shifts from public to public-private partnerships; hierarchical to network structures; command-and-control to negotiation; and management to enablement skills. Through analysis of university statutes and other documents, it finds that New Governance has emerged to counterbalance NPM, with some loss of collegiality. Centralization remains challenging for fully developing New Governance models.

1. IMHE – General Conference
Paris 17-19 September
Governance of governance in higher education:
the case of Portugal
António Magalhães, Amélia Veiga, Sofia Sousa,
Filipa Ribeiro and Alberto Amaral (CIPES)

2. • Problem: Increasing autonomy of public
institutions (Universities 1988 and Polytechnics
1990) enhances the efficiency of decision-
making processes and the capacity of
institutions to respond more effectively to
changes which raises the issue of institutional
meta-governance.

3. • Goal:. To analyse the reaction of Portuguese
universities to the impact of NPM embedded in the
new legal framework by looking at the following
dimensions: shift from public vs. private to
public+private; b) focus on networks rather than
on hierarchy; c) shift from command and control
to negotiation and persuasion; d) shift from
management skills to enablement skills.

4. • Method: document analysis including the
statutes of 14 public universities, publicly
available information, minutes of the
meetings, deliberations, activity plans and
strategic plans.

5. New Public Management
and New Governance
Shift from public versus private to public+private
• External interests present by initiative of the
university
Emphasis on networks rather than on
hierarchical relationships
• Consultative boards to deal with academic
issues to overcome the under representation of
Schools and academic constitutencies

6. New Public Management
and New Governance
Shift from control to negotiation
• Top-down system (e.g. nomination) is not
promoted to select the members of the
governance structures
Emphasis on enablement skills
• Involvement of academic constituencies in
governance structures and processes depends
on institutional leadership

7. Conclusions
• New Governance counterbalance NPM
following an European trend
• Loss of collegiality explains the emergence of
the characteristics of New Governance
• The need for meta-governance requires
centralization and hierarchical relations which
does not help the development of New
Governance