This study describes a key feature of modern, democratic policy making, namely the relation between stakeholder input and policy output. In the Nordic countries, there are long traditions for and democratic values attached to the dialogue between the government and civil society when developing policies for the educational sector. The case presented here is the hearing process held by the Norwegian Ministry of Education and Research in 2017 prior to the launch of a white paper on quality culture in higher education. The potential coherence between input by stakeholder groups and the quality measures proposed in the white paper is investigated. The theoretical framework comprises the concept of ‘uploading’ borrowed from research on EU policy making and discursive institutionalism to analyse the representation of input by stakeholder groups when they attempt to ‘upload’ their priorities into the white paper. The methodological approach is content analysis of the hearing responses and the white paper. The findings show that stakeholders from the higher education sector and employer groups had a higher degree of coherence with the proposed measures in the white paper, and universities and colleges had a lower degree of input that was represented.

本研究描述了现代民主政策制定的一个关键特征，即利益相关者输入与政策输出之间的关系。在北欧国家，在制定教育部门政策时，政府与民间社会之间的对话有着悠久的传统和民主价值观。这里介绍的案例是挪威教育和研究部于 2017 年在发布高等教育质量文化白皮书之前举行的听证会。研究了利益相关者团体的意见与白皮书中提出的质量措施之间的潜在一致性。理论框架包括从欧盟政策制定和话语制度主义研究中借用的“上传”概念，以分析利益相关者群体在试图将其优先事项“上传”到白皮书中时的投入表现。方法论是对听力反应和白皮书的内容分析。调查结果显示，来自高等教育部门和雇主团体的利益相关者对白皮书中提出的措施的一致性更高，而大学和学院的投入程度较低。