This chapter seeks to explore and discuss enactments in the process of
piloting a part of the 2016 national evaluation and quality assurance
system, namely, the pilot of institutional reviews in which higher
education institutions’ internal quality assurance systems were
evaluated by the Swedish Higher Education Authority. The chapter
analyses the work and experiences of the different actors that took part
in these processes. It shows that the pilot includes extensive work
that links people, places, policies, practices, and power in particular
ways and that numerous translations are made at different stages and by
different actors. The results highlight the amount and forms of work
done in these processes in general and in particular by actors who we
have labelled “qualocrats”. Their embodied form of expertise is
mobilised as they move between and across different domains to enact and
promote certain knowledge in and of evaluation and quality assurance.
The chapter finally suggests that the deliberate temporal design as a
pilot study opened up for mutual adjustments, learning, and dialogue but
also gave rise to contradictory anticipatory governing signals.