Benavides, M., Chávez, C. y Arellano, A. (2016). La construcción política e institucional de la reforma universitaria: los casos del Perú y Ecuador. En S. Cueto (Ed.), Innovación y calidad en educación en América Latina (pp. 155-194). Lima: ILAIPP; GRADE.

Using secondary data and interviews, this comparative study shows how Peru and Ecuador have constructed their university education quality assurance policies (PAC para sus siglas en español) differently. The study documents the two types of PAC, while at the same time showing how in each country there was a different relationship between governments, civil society, rules of the game and historical legacies of each university system. It is found that while in the Ecuadorian case both the market and the universities themselves succumbed to the power of the State in the regulatory process, in the Peruvian case the institutional inertias linked to the power of the universities as a whole, with a market ideology still strongly present, rather weakened the State in its regulatory project. In this sense, it is pointed out that the different ideological contexts and arrangements between social and political actors lead, on the one hand, to a technocratic type of regulation (Peru) and, on the other, to a political type of regulation (Ecuador).