COMMUNICATION NETWORKS AND COOPERATION REGIMES OF INTERNATIONAL DISTANCE EDUCATION ORGANIZATIONS

Increasing transnational cooperation in open and distance education provides opportunities for non-state actors to meet around common interests, objectives, values. Besides transnational cooperation, these actors also motivate intergovernmental cooperation processes. International organizations and professional networks in the field, share common normative values and lead to the construction of cooperation regimes. Project UZENET (A Comparative Analysis of the Communication Networks and Cooperation Regimes of the International Distance Education Organizations) aims to make comparative analyses of communication networks and regimes of international distance education organizations, with an eye to the conceptual framework of international regime theory. The major research question asks “the extent to which decision making procedures of organizations can be transformed into regimes and provide tools for sustainability of international cooperation”. The institutionalization of cooperation under organizations within common norms, values and rules are determined and discussed, in order to project light to the actors that are active in regime structures. The theoretical framework is epistemic regime theory which concentrates on epistemic communities towards cognitive regime building processes. Twenty (20) different distance education organizations are taken as a sample in this comparative case-study. According to the findings, the developments in the information and communication technologies bring forth knowledge-based regime approaches in international cooperation.