The domination of the neoliberal ideology in the global context have brought market categories into higher education (Giroux, 2003). Over the last few decades various managerial tools have been widely used to solve quality, accessibility and equity problems in higher education. One of the most popular tools has become the consolidation of higher education institutions. The merger of higher education institutions is defined as the various forms of the consolidation of two or more higher education institutions, from the establishment of an umbrella organisation to full institutional integration in pursuit of higher education policy goals. There is a prevailing belief that by combining their potential, higher education institutions are able to achieve synergies that could lead to greater system efficiency and quality (Harkin and Hazelkom, 2015).

There is a common understanding that due to differences of higher education systems, policy, culture and social environment in each country, we can observe similar trends of reforms in different countries all over the world. For example, university consolidations and mergers has become a mass phenomenon both in Europe and worldwide. This leads to a question of whether this popularity of university mergers appears as an absolute necessity and depends on objective circumstances or if the global higher education policy discourse impacts the decision regarding university mergers in Lithuania.

It is widely agreed that the discourse of international organizations, such as European Commission, The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the World Bank and European University Association (EUA), influences local higher education policy. As Beerkens (2008) claims, the international organization’s’ “influence came from its ability to act as a policy entrepreneur and its ability to set and channel the discourse”. Through the discourse these organizations define and, sometimes limit, the agency of national governments who must follow the “best practices” to remain competitive in the global higher education market. Therefore, the aim of this research is to analyse the ways global policy discourses emerge and are reflected in national university mergers discourse.

To analyse this question, I use the theory of discursive framing and agenda setting which allows to explain how global policy transformation into national policy occurs. Agenda setting means that policy actors, in this case international organizations, escalate the issue by disseminating information and providing the normative frame to interpret it (Nokalla, Bacevic, 2014) in order to legitimate their goals. These frames are discursive – discourse in policy texts construct policy problems in particular ways and suggest particular solutions (Nokalla, Bacevic, 2014).

Policy discourse consists of meanings and concept frames which are positioned by policy actors. In many cases political actors use global political initiatives and discourses to cover their own political goals (Wells, 2005). They transform ideas according their political interests, so by the time a political idea reaches final consignee it has usually been transformed several times and has been implemented as a hybrid practice. Thus, concepts and meanings do not “float” freely in the public discourse but are used by particular actors who use them to convince the others of the credibility and reliability of their storyline (Leifeld, 2016; Hajer, 1997).

The aim of this analysis is to look at what international discourse does and how it influences the trends of national policy discourse. In order to answer the research question, we analyse international policy documents, reports and recommendations from the European Commission, the World Bank, OECD and the EUA in which the topic of university mergers is discussed. The examination of these documents relies on the discourse-historical analysis approach (Wodak, 2001). The selected policy documents are examined using the method of qualitative content analysis and investigating some linguistic features which make up the discourse. First, the passages that mention university mergers are identified in all the documents. The passages that mention university mergers only superficially, without discussing it as a policy issue, are noted but left out of further analysis. The international policy documents are contrasted with Lithuanian higher education policy documents from 2008 to 2019 in which university mergers are mentioned in order to identify resembling discourses. All this analysis has been conducted in the context of public discourse. This allows to analyse critically and juxtapose the international discourse and idea of university mergers in the discourse of the national policy actors and to reveal if and how international policy discourse is transformed into national policy discourse.

The preliminary analysis of this topic shows that international education policy via "best practices" and recommendations from the experts of international organizations determine the goals and measures of university mergers in Lithuania. Also, it shows that national policy actors frame and justify their agenda by using international policy discourse adjusted according to their political interests. This research is not complete yet, so the expected outcomes of this research are: • to assess the impact of international organizations' policy discourse to higher education policy related to university mergers in Lithuania; • to analyse the transformation of international education policy discourse in Lithuanian higher education policy; • to show how the international policy discourse was used by national policy actors to justify and legitimize the university mergers in Lithuania.

Beerkens, E. (2008) The Emergence and Institutionalisation of the European Higher Education and Research Area”. European Journal of Education, 43 (4), 427-425 Giroux, H. A. (2003) Selling Out Higher Education. Policy Futures in Education, Vol. 1, No. 1, P. 179-200, http://firgoa.usc.es/drupal/files/da1w26jh_0.pdf. Hajer, M. A. (1997). The Politics of Environmental Discourse. Ecological Modernization and the Policy Process. Oxford. Harkin, S., Hazelkorn, E. (2015) Institutional Mergers in Ireland // Mergers and Alliances in Higher Education: International Practice and Emerging Opportunities, Ch. 6, P. 105-122. Leifeld, P. (2016). Discourse Network Analysis: Policy Debates as Dynamic Networks. // In The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks (ed. Victor, J. N., Montgomery, A. H., Lubell, M.). 10.1093/oxforddhb/9780190228217.013.25. Nokalla, T., Bacevic, J. (2014). University Autonomy, Agenda Setting and the Construction of Agency: The Case of the European University Association in the European Higher Education Area. European Educational Research Journal, 13(6), 699-714. Wells, T. (2005). Educational Policy Networks and Their Role in Policy Discourse, Action and Implementation. Comparative Education Review, vol. 49, no. 1, p. 109-117. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/426163 Wodak, R. (2001) The discourse-historical approach // Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (ed. R. Wodak, M. Mayer). London: SAGE.