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211 9 The End and the Beginning The contest over affirmative action at UC reveals a great deal about the contemporary politics of higher education organization and governance. As a complex and multilayered public contest over an important policy, one in which the preferences and strategies of a wide variety of interests were revealed , it offers answers to the question, “How should we understand contested policymaking in higher education?” The analysis of this contest suggests that contemporary higher education policy is made in a dynamic that moves well beyond our understanding of bureaucratic expertise, interest articulation, and organizational culture, as the contest encompassed far more than the institution itself. While those elements are part of the process, so are broader forces, driven by political actors, interest groups, and the State itself. Key to understanding this contest is acknowledging the instrumental and symbolic value in broader political contests of control over policymaking for a public university. While theories that account for the emergence of public political institutions explain much of the contemporary policy environment in higher education, it is also imperative to recognize the important role of resistance by those who are disenfranchised in a pluralist policy dynamic. THE LIMITATIONS OF INTEREST-ARTICULATION MODELS In its earliest stages, the contest unfolded in ways that were in keeping with understandings from the interest-articulation and institutional-cultural frames of higher education organizational behavior. The struggle over SP-1 and SP2 was shaped early on by a public challenge by Regent Connerly to his fellow Regents to become more effective in their role as overseers and policymakers at the university. In keeping with longstanding norms of administrative articulation of demands for changes in university policy, President Peltason responded by attempting to preserve the leadership role of the university’s administration in planning and analysis. When the Cooks brought the question of fairness in UC affirmative action to Regents Burgener and Connerly, and subsequently through them to the board, the contest over affirmative action was effectively divided into two struggles. One was over the question 212 Burning Down the House of whether the university should continue to use affirmative action. The other question, which was fought most intensely in the early months of the contest, was over who should decide whether the university should continue to use affirmative action. ADMINISTRATION AS AN INTEREST GROUP This case offers another significant challenge to the interest-articulation model. While institutional leaders in higher education are certainly called upon to mediate and articulate competing interests and demands, it is also the case that they have a stake in the outcome of a conflict, and interests that may shape how they approach the broader contest. The pursuit of an administration’s own agenda, as potentially distinct from their efforts to use expertise and authority to mediate demands and shape policy, was an issue addressed by Baldridge (1971; Riley and Baldridge, 1977), that has rarely been addressed in research on higher education since. Baldridge proposed that the legitimacy of bureaucratic expertise was sufficient to overcome resistance that might grow out of the perception of self-interested behavior by the administration. That proposition cannot be supported by an analysis of this case. The Regents ’ perception of administrative self-interest on the part of UCOP and campus leaders was a key factor in the UC affirmative action contest. Whether or not the systemwide and campus leaders had a distinct interest of their own, many of the Regents expressed the belief that administrative actors did pursue their own agenda. That belief shaped the way the Regents perceived information they received over the course of the contest, and it was a factor in Regent Connerly’s success in building a board coalition to eliminate affirmative action. COMPLEXITY Another limitation of contemporary models of postsecondary policymaking became apparent as the case unfolded. The process of articulation, of spanning boundaries in the interests of mediation and compromise, is more effective when fewer interest groups are involved, and the parties are closer to the institution. The UC administration is generally called upon to shape policy within the institution, or between the institution and the state of California. When the administration has been involved in national and international policy arenas, it has generally done so as the legitimate voice of the institution, with the backing of the Regents.1 As the contest over affirmative action at UC unfolded, it became increasingly complex and was increasingly contested by...

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