How university global partnerships may facilitate a new era of international affairs and foster political and economic relations

• University relationships shaping a new era of international affairs
• Building on the Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations
• New relationships clearly break traditional boundaries of “national systems”.
• University relationships as agent of change
• University relationships bring new challenges for institutional integrity.

A new paradigm of structured international university relationships is emerging as shaped by a new era of government and industry intervention in association with knowledge. It is driven not only by political and economic interests, but also by an increased perception of the growing perceived evidence of the potential benefits resulting from the economic appropriation of the results and methods of science by the society.This paper builds on the Triple Helix of university–industry–government relations and shows that structured international relationships may act as agents of change if associated with activities that are fundamentally different from the traditional role of universities, involving, most of the times, capacity building and various forms of social and economic appropriation of knowledge. They also require understanding the nature of international cooperation beyond the exporting/importing of “academic services” in all the institutions involved. In addition, they clearly break traditional boundaries of “national systems of innovation” and bring new challenges in terms of the necessary institutional integrity that universities need to preserve and foster.