ABSTRACT

The study examines an under-discussed aspect of academic freedom and university autonomy: the functioning of university democracy. The starting point for the research is that the state and circumstances of academic freedom and university autonomy are discussed in the relevant international legal and soft law documents, as well as in the academic literature, only from the perspective of the relationship between the state and the university. Thus, existing research focuses only on the interaction between the external political system and the academic world in relation to democracy-autocracy and democratization-autocratization. However, we argue that an essential element of university autonomy is the existence of an internal democratic order, which is almost completely ignored in the literature. In its literary foundation and methodology, the study combines legal approaches to academic freedom with political science approaches to democratic theory. It is a pioneering attempt built on classic works of democratic theory which aims at creating an analytical framework that allows the study of democracy within the university, identifying internal threats and proposing solutions in order to help sustain its democratic functioning.

KEYWORDS

academic freedom | university autonomy | democracy | autocratization | university management

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