Disciplining knowledge: the emergence of an ideological–punitive regime in global higher education

This article argues that a new ideological–punitive regime is reshaping higher education governance by combining market instruments with increasingly coercive, identity-driven State interventions. It asks how a new ideological–punitive regime is reshaping higher education governance beyond neoliberal market logics, and through which convergent and divergent mechanisms this occurs across national systems. It draws on a qualitative comparative analysis of eight cases—Argentina, Brazil, Hungary, India, Israel, Poland, Spain/Madrid, and the United States—based on official policy documents, Scholars at Risk reports, and verifiable high-quality journalistic sources. Drawing on theories of hegemony, agenda control, and State power, it develops a framework explaining how coercive, organisational, and symbolic mechanisms recalibrate the balance between consent and coercion within universities. These mechanisms weaken collegial governance, erode peer review, and generate chilling effects that reconfigure academic work, institutional autonomy, and international collaboration. The findings show that contemporary interventions exceed the logic of neoliberal market governance, forming a hybrid order—neoliberalism-plus—in which metrics and competition persist but become subordinated to identity agendas and tests of cultural orthodoxy. By clarifying how punitive repertoires operate and circulate across contexts, the article contributes to scholarship on institutional autonomy, academic freedom, and the political economy of knowledge. It concludes by outlining strategies to strengthen organisational resilience and safeguard universities as critical, democratic, and globally connected public institutions.