This edited volume introduces readers to the relationship between higher education and transnational politics. It aims to show how higher education is a significant arena for domestic political struggles as well as regional and international transformation. Our starting point is that the political science literature on globalisation and inter-state relations largely neglects the study of higher education and its role in polity transformation.

Introduction: the Transnational Politics of Global Higher Education Meng-Hsuan Chou, Isaac A Kamola, and Tamson Pietsch 2 Between the local and the universal: academic worlds and the long history of the university Tamson Pietsch 3 Situating 'The Global University' in South Africa Isaac A Kamola 4 The political economy of international higher education and the academic labour in the Persian Gulf Neema Noori 5 'We come in peace': ideology and higher education policy in Latin America J. Salvador Peralta and Thiago Pezzuto Pacheco 6 Contestation over integration and autonomy of universities in the former Yugoslavia: how global and European ideas are used in domestic politics Martina Vukasovic 7 Human-capital strategies to build world-class research universities in Asia: impact on global flows Anju Mary Paul and Victoria Long 8 Administrators and the free movement of researchers in Europe Meng-Hsuan Chou 9 Global University Rankings and Transnational Politics of Higher Education Tero Erkkilä

Meng-Hsuan Chou is Nanyang Assistant Professor in public policy and global affairs at NTU, Singapore and an Associate Fellow at the European Union Centre Singapore. Her publications have appeared in the Journal of European Public Policy, Politics and Governance, and PS: Political Science & Politics.

Isaac Kamola is assistant professor at Trinity College, Hartford, CT. His scholarly work has appeared in International Political Sociology, African Identities, Journal of Higher Education in Africa, British Journal of Political and International Relations, Third World Quarterly, and Transitions as well as a number of edited volumes.

Tamson Pietsch is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow at the University of Sydney. Her research focuses on the imperial and international histories of universities in the 19th and 20th centuries. She is the author of Empire of scholars: universities, networks and the British Academic world, 1850-1939 (Manchester, 2013).