This is a submission (non-published) version. The published article can be found at http://www.springerlink.com/content/l8vh526528050503/ : EUROPEAN HIGHER EDUCATION AT THE CROSSROADS 2012, Part 5, 631-653, DOI: 10.1007/978-94-007-3937-6_34: The Changing Conceptions of Student Participa- tion in HE Governance in the EHEA. With kind permission of Springer. The changing conceptions of student participa- tion in HE governance in the EHEA 1 Manja Klemenčič Abstract: Student participation in HE governance is considered one of the foundational val- ues in European HE. It can be traced back to the medieval universities and it re- surged with the student revolts in 1960ies.Today, students as a collective body are in some way represented in HE governance in basically every European country. Accordingly we can find advanced – but also highly diversified – multilevel sys- tems of student representation. The issue of student participation in HE govern- ance has featured prominently in policy making within the Bologna Process. The European Ministers referred to student participation in affirmative terms in every Communiqué after the Prague Ministerial Summit in 2001. European Students’ Union [ESU], the representative platform of the European national unions of stu- dents, was granted a consultative membership and has participated in the govern- ing structures of the Process. Yet, despite this high political involvement, ESU continues to report deteriorating student influence when it comes to institutional governance. This raises questions about the interactions and interrelations between student participation as a concept and social phenomenon and EHEA policy de- velopments. The chapter addresses the ideational and normative foundations re- garding student participation emerging from the two – intertwined - policy devel- opments: the Bologna Process and the ‘modernisation agenda for universities’. In view of these developments, it investigates changes in the conception of student participation as depicted in the four main relationship constellations involving stu- dents: between the state and students, between university and students, between the academics and students, and between student representatives and students. Keywords: student participation/involvement, formal participation, informal par- ticipation, student representation, student experience, representative student organ- isations, quality assurance, student centred learning, HE policy, HE reforms, Eu- ropean Students’ Union [ESU], EHEA principles. Affiliation: Postdoctoral Researcher, Centre for Education Policy Studies, Uni- versity of Ljubljana 1 The author would like to thank Pedro Teixeira and Robin Middlehurst for their valuable input in the preparation of this chapter, and Harry de Boer and Hans Pechar for their helpful comments to the first draft.