Linking the supranational, the
national and the institutional levels:
Some methodological and theoretical
issues
Nafsika Alexiadou
Institutionen 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 researcher
2)Thoeretical and political stance
3)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
Task
In 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