This thesis analyses the transformation of the university systems of England and Japan since the early 1980s, with particular reference to the changing modalities of university autonomy and the power relationships between central authorities, the universities, and the market. The analysis compares the various policy positions of the relevant stakeholders in the two countries, highlighting the ideologies of neo-liberalism, university autonomy, new managerialism, and vocationalism. These ideologies coexist in both the English and the Japanese university systems. However, the interpretations of these ideologies made by stakeholders, the patterns of the interrelations between them, and their contextualisation as elements in the policy and stance of each stakeholder, differ between England and Japan. The thesis argues that convergence between the English and Japanese university systems are, to a large extent, explained in the 1980s transformation of the university system in England, and the continuity of the Ministerial jurisdictional mechanism in Japan. In England, the transformation of the university system has been related to changes in government policies and ideologies — around the themes of neo-liberalism, new managerialism, university autonomy, and vocationalism in the era of the global economy — and changes in policies and functions of the University Grants Committee, and of the universities. In Japan, the continuity of the Ministerial jurisdictional mechanism has been largely linked to the establishment of anti-neo-liberal consensus within the Education Ministry in the early 1980s, the close anti-neo-liberal stance between the Education Ministry and the national universities in the 1990s, and confrontation and compromises between neo-liberal and anti-neo-liberal groups since the 1980s. The thesis suggests that the continuity of distinct and divergent features between England and Japan can be explained contextually, giving attention to political, economic, socio-cultural, and historical differences between the two university systems.