Linking the supranational, the national and the institutional levels: Some methodological and theoretical issues

Nafsika AlexiadouInstitutionen Tillämpad Utbildningsvetenskap

What is policy?

What does policy mean?

What is it intended to do?

Who is making policy?

A ’rationality project’

• 1950s - a call for a ”policy science” which was to be applied, interdisciplinary, and normative

(Lasswell, H. D. 1951. “The policy orientation”. In The policy sciences, Edited by: Lerner, D. and Lasswell, H. D. 3–15. CA: Stanford Univ Press)

• Policy analysis concerned with identifying ways in which state power can be used to achieve collective purposes; policy analyst: ‘speaking truth to power’

(Colebatch, H.K.) Governance as a conceptual development in the analysis of policy, Critical Policy Studies, 2009, 3(1)

Some ’old’ definitions

“Policy is design: a projected programme of goals, values and practices … …the exercise of authority to achieve collective purposes”

An authoritative allocation of values – by governments

Policy science as a field to help government develop programmes and assess their effectiveness

Gradually: focus more on technical and bureaucratic forms – less on politics and values

(Colebatch, H.K. 1998, Policy, University of Minnesota Press)

’Policy cycle’ (John, Peter (1998) Analysing Public Policy, Pinter)

A different ’kind’ of policy …

Look at two EU benchmarks for 2020:

•At least 95% of children (from 4 to compulsory school age) should participate in early childhood education;

•at least 40% of people aged 30-34 should have completed some form of higher education;

-There is no legislation or other enforcement-There are no resource incentives-There are no programs / interventions -Is this still relevant for national education?-How can we research ’impact’ on national level?

A broad conception of policy analysis

• Policy text – any vehicle or medium for carrying and transmitting a policy message

• Policy discourse – with material implications / social relations

• Policy as non-linear, as translated and mediated

• Practitioners not just as recipients, but as potential policy makers

Jenny Ozga (2000) Policy Research in Education Settings

A broader conception of policy space

“decoupling policy space from the territoriality of the state”

“policy space has constitutive properties and thus real effects for education systems and actors” (Gulson & Symes 2007)

“space having a role in constructing the social “in the sense of locations, distributions, flows and patterns of social interactions”, and also including what is “contained within these spaces: histories, cultures, social processes” (Oke 2009: 316)

In Alexiadou N. & van de Bunt-Kokhuis (2013) Policy space and teh governance of education, Comparative Education, 49(3)

Globalisation pressures

• Policy agents and agencies beyond the nation state

• Global in reach, international organisations that set the agenda

• Policy production and policy implementation much more fuzzy and difficult to trace

Robertson S. (2012) The new spatial politics of (re)bordering and (re)ordering the education-state-society relation. International

Review of Education, 57, 277-297 Sassen S. (2006) Territory, authority, rights. Princeton Univ Press

Asking different questions

• Where do the ‘goals’ of policy come from?

• What are the values that underpin them?

• Who benefits?

• Positionality

Attention to Context, Power, & alternative (often unexpected) outcomes of the policy process

Positionality …

• Who is doing the policy analysis?• For what purposes? (utilitarian,

legitimating, illuminating…)• Within what context?

1)Location of researcher2)Thoeretical and political stance3)Spatial location in terms of global

geopolitics

(Rizvi & Lingard (2010), Globalizing education policy, Routledge)

Example from the Bologna process:

Political science research is asking:

•How does the Bologna process work?•What are its domestic effects? •How are particular policies ’transferred’ to national systems?•Is there policy convergence?

Critical sociology approach

Need to ask different questions of Bologna developments:

•What kind of work does the Bologna process do?

•For whom?

•What is the framework through which it realizes this?

Dale R., Robertson S. 2012, “Toward a critical grammar of education policy movements”, in G.Steiner-Khamsi & F. Waldow (Eds) World Yearbook of

Education 2012: Policy Borrowing and Lending)

Policy movements

• Harmonization (eg. EU)• Dissemination (OECD work)• Imposition (World Bank)• Policy Borrowing / Policy transfer

(specific policies from country to country),

• Policy Learning (theories of human capital, theories of learning)

Dale R. (1999) Specifying globalization effects on national policy: a focus on the mechanisms, Journal of Education Policy, vol.14

Steiner-Khamsi, G. (2004) The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending, Teachers’ College Columbia.

The challenge of researching ’global’ policy movements…

• How to generate analyses of movements of education actors and policies (in their varying forms; ideationally, materially, institutionally…) across time and in space

• Policies that are complex and multi-layered

• Range of policy actors who are geographically dispersed, engaged in diverse governance activities, involving different accountability communities …

In Robertson S. (2012) ”Researching global education policy: Angles In/On/Out …”, in A. Verger et.al (Eds) Global Education Policy and

International Developmetn, … Continuum Books.

‘… the real social effects (impact) of a law are not determined by the wordings of the laws and statutes, but instead are generated primarily as a consequence of social disputes and conflicts, for which state policy merely establishes the location and timing of the contest, its subject matters and ‘the rules of the game’

(Offe Claus 1984 Contradictions of the Welfare State)

Implementation – Recontextualisation - Embedding …

However forcefully (‘outside’) policy designs may be introduced into schooling systems, they have to interact with traditions, ideologies, forms of organisation and cultures of practice that have developed locally, although of course these have themselves in part been shaped by international contexts and influences.

•Education organisations have to carry the task of institutionalizing the global themes and discourses and integrating them with the national agendas for change

•Need to consider the role of institutions (nationally, and locally embedded actors) and the social and political nature of their framing action

(for the concept of ‘embeddedness’ see Polanyi (1944) The Great Transformation)

Linking levels – The concept of governance & multilayer analysis

A move away from state-centered policy production & implementation, to use of multiple agents: both public and private organisations

“the increasingly limited capacity of national political systems to achieve desired outcomes, due to the changing nature of social transactions that transcend the confines of the state” (Kohler-Koch, B. & Rittberger, B. (2006) Journal of Common Market Studies,

Vol.44. Annual Review, pp.27-49)

The ’vertical case’ – paying attention to micro, meso, macro levels to enable vertical comparison. Paying attention to historically situated comparisons

(Vavrus & Bartlett, 2006, Comparatively knowing, Current Issues in Comparative Education, 8(2), 95-103.

Features of Governance

• Continuous negotiation

• Nested levels of government (supranational, national, regional, local)

• Non-state actors involved in the process

• Policy orientation: task-problem solving

In education: benchmarks, league tables, performance indicators, etc.

Policy analysis involves

• Discourses and ideological shifts / changing assumptions about the role of the state and the relations between state-citizens-education

• International & global organisations and their role

• Political international elites and experts involved in policy making/implementation

Cont.

• National institutional patterns, and policy elites

• Connections between institutions and sectors (education, labour market, other public sectors)

• Institutional frameworks & mechanisms of education governance

• Individuals and units within education organisations

• New forms of knowledge production and knowledge regulation / legitimation and accountability

TaskIn small groups or pairs:

•Think of the policy framework that is relevant to / frames your topic (eg. HE governance, or Early childhood education, or curriculum reform).

•Who are the local, the national, the international actors who are relevant in that policy area? Are all of them ‘state’ actors?

•Relate this to 1 or 2 of the ’questions for analysis’ from Figure 3.1 (Rizvi & Lingard)

•Think of an appropriate level of analysis or/and method for collecting data