Description: Among the topics dealt with in the Symposium, the so-called Bologna process represents a peculiar case. To begin with, this process was not launched by Global Players, such as OECD, the World Bank or other IGOs. It was launched, rather, by a group of European policy makers linked with EU member states, but not representative of the EU as an emerging trans-national polity. Therefore, the impressive diffusion of the Bologna model across the wider European space should reveal to be particularly instructive. Neo-institutionalist concepts are instrumental in analysing the construction of an "imagined model" fuelling the diffusion process. Finally, the adoption and stepwise implementation of the model in different European countries are no less informative. An analysis of corresponding processes allows one to see at work the complex interweaving of abstract models devised at a trans-national level with country-specific problem constellations; with diverse national legitimation patterns; with differing symbolic representations of academia, rooted inter alia in the collective experience of nation-building processes; with distinctive legal traditions linked with constitutional law; as well as with different levels of action-taking. Inevitably, then, these implementation processes will be accompanied by forces of resistance, and will not fail to produce counter-productive effects.