Pavel Zgaga and Bologna actors:policymaking on the external dimension and the Bologna policy forum, 2003–2009

Pavel Zgaga is one of the best-known Bologna actors of the early years. This chapter takes his experience as a starting point to recount and theorise policymaking on the external dimension for the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) as a case of policy change. Drawing on the EHEA archives relating to the Bologna Follow-up Group (BFUG) this account shows an informal ‘club’ of long-term Bologna actors working together to advance the Bologna Process. It challenges the scholarship on the supposed controlling role of the European Commission within the Bologna Process, suggesting that within the Bologna arena, a socialising process operates in which members in general accept the informal and as well as the formal rules and different actors have crucial inputs at different stages of the policymaking process. Pavel Zgaga is an example.