Power, politics and transnational policy‐making in education

Abstract

This paper analyses the relation between power and politics under the conditions of economic globalisation and transnational policy‐making in education. The paper argues that power lies not only with the producers of the dominant educational discourse nor simply with the very discourse which is circulated and reproduced in national legislations, local policies and pedagogic practices; it lies with the increasingly global endorsement of a specific perception of what education should be about: to maintain or increase ‘economic competitiveness’, ‘growth’, ‘development’ and ultimately ‘progress’. Progress remains the central signification of societies today, as the paper argues, and, therefore, the main source of power, namely of widespread consent around a largely common set of education policies promoted across countries.

Keywords:

• education policy
• power
• politics
• international organisations
• progress

Notes

1. By ‘transnational institutions’ we mean in this paper the major governmental International Organisations (IOs) and the European Union (EU), which is of course not an IO but a unique political and economic inter‐state entity.

2. See the whole document in EU – Czech Presidency (2009). The document is the outcome of an ‘Informal Meeting’ of the EU Ministers of Education held in Prague in March 2009. The Ministers of Education agreed on eight ‘key points’ with regard to their education policies: (a) effectively using the existing resources and maintaining or increasing investments into education and training; (b) focusing on skills and key competences supporting people’s employability, flexibility and adaptability; (c) fostering entrepreneurship and promoting creativity and innovation; (d) developing dialogue and cooperation with social partners, particularly with employers and enterprises; (e) strengthening the role of education from the perspective of the knowledge triangle and its connection to research, development and innovation; (f) promoting lifelong learning and supporting further education and retraining; (g) supporting social cohesion, active citizenship and the sense of social responsibility; (h) promoting European cooperation in education and training.

3. This number refers to the membership of The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD), one of the institutions constituting the World Bank. The other institutions are: The International Development Association (IDA), (169 Member States); The International Finance Corporation (IFC), (182 Member States); The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), (175 Member States); and The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), (144 Member States). See http://www.worldbank.org/.

4. In their summit in London, in April 2009, the G20 produced a ‘Global plan for recovery and reform’ to deal with the financial crisis. One of the measures taken was to treble the resources available to the IMF, which was also given a prime role in monitoring economic reforms at a global scale. See the meeting’s communique (G20, 2009). The G20 is comprised of governments and heads of national banks of 19 countries plus the European Union. The countries are: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Russia, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, South Korea, Turkey, the UK and the US.

5. See the World Bank’s webpage: http://web.worldbank.org/WBSITE/EXTERNAL/TOPICS/EXTEDUCATION/0,,contentMDK:20040939~uPK:282393~pagePK:148956~piPK:216618~theSitePK:282386,00.html.

6. See the same webpage of the World Bank, as above.

7. The GATS (the so‐called Doha Round) has been suspended since 2006. See Moutsios (2009).

8. It was not long ago that the above leading institutions and individual governments decided to state this priority explicitly and at the most formal level. At the summit of the G8 (i.e., Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the UK and the US) in 2006, which took place in Moscow, an education policy statement was announced, named the ‘Moscow Declaration’. The Declaration was signed by the G8 Ministers of Education, and by representatives from the EU, the OECD, the World Bank, UNESCO, China, India, Brazil, Kazakhstan, Mexico and South Africa. The Declaration does not omit to state its interest in ‘human development’, ‘civic engagement’, ‘social cohesion’, and development of ‘social and intercultural skills’, but the emphasis is clearly on the following: education should contribute to economic growth and market productivity; there should be more investments in research, innovation and skills development; the private sector should have access to education systems; educational institutions should be managed with systems of accountability; high standards should be pursued in mathematics, science, technology, foreign languages and ICT; emphasis should be given on vocational training; lifelong learning should aim at skills updating and be linked with enterprise training and the labour market; higher education should adjust to the needs of labour markets; there should be international cooperation on quality assurance and accreditation; cross‐border mobility and immigration policies should be based on the formal recognition of skills and educational qualifications (G8 2006). These are clearly policy proposals which educators and, in general, citizens in many countries see introduced, along with other related proposals, in education reforms – on the argument that the education system would, thereby, become more productive and the economy more competitive.

9. See Castoriadis’ thorough analysis of Plato’s Statesman where he unfolds the rhetorical manner by which the great ancient Greek philosopher presents politics as episteme (Castoriadis 2002).

10. There is currently a debate about whether contemporary managerial bureaucracies are ‘post‐bureaucracies’, because they employ some novel forms of organisation (ICT‐based, ‘networked’, ‘knowledge‐based’, project‐oriented, ‘flexible’, etc.). However, a careful examination of the Weberian corpus of analysis about bureaucracy, with which current forms are juxtaposed, does not indicate a departure from the main characteristics of bureaucracy as described by Weber (e.g., hierarchy, impersonality, rationality, technical expertise). Such an examination is made by Höpfl (2006) who notes: ‘it is not surprising that bureaucracy/post‐bureaucracy discussions have generally concluded that both bureaucracy and “modernity” continue, albeit not quite as we have known them. Given this point of reference, the advent of “post‐bureaucracy” would require either the complete disappearance of hierarchies, which is inconceivable, or the identification of some arrangements as inherently incompatible with bureaucracy, and it is hard to see how this could be shown’ (19).

11. CEDEFOP: European Centre for the Development of Vocational Training; ETF: European Training Foundation; CRELL: Centre for Research on Education and Lifelong Learning; EENEE: European Expert Network on the Economics of Education; and NESSE: Network of Experts on Social Sciences in Education.

12. See, for example, the analysis of Murphy (2001). As the author remarks: ‘Increasingly, the model for the “successful” NGO is the corporation – ideally a transnational corporation – and NGOs are ever more marketed and judged against corporate ideas. As part of this trend, a new development “scientism” is strangling us with things like strategic framework analysis and results‐based management, precisely the values and methods and techniques that have made the world what it is today’ (80).

13. As Shivji (2007), reports in an insightful analysis of NGO presence in Africa, it is not unusual that an NGO is assigned by a foreign government to promote a certain policy by ‘raising awareness’ amongst a local population, and is funded by a donor agency. NGOs can then be part of a policy‐making network consisting of governments, IOs and private funding agencies.

14. Quoted in and translated by Beck (2005, 58). Original source: Parsons (1970).

15. See the OECD’s website on ‘Measuring the Progress of Societies’ (http://www.oecd.org/pages/0,3417,en_40033426_40033828_1_1_1_1_1,00.html) as well as the material of the following event organised by the OECD on this project, titled ‘3rd OECD World Forum on “Statistics, Knowledge and Policy” – Charting Progress, Building Visions, Improving Life’, in Busan, Korea, 27–30 October 2009, at: http://www.oecdworldforum2009.org/. The ‘Global Project’ is set out to establish a ‘knowledge base’ and ‘comparative analyses’ of ‘existing progress measures’, to construct ‘ICT tools to transform statistics into knowledge’, to ‘promote the development and use of progress indicators’, to make ‘a global web‐based technical infrastructure where progress indicators would be made accessible’ to make ‘recommendations on how to build initiatives aimed to measure the societal progress’, etc. (OECD 2007c).

16. See the ‘taxonomy for societal progress’ proposed by the OECD in Giovannini et al. (2009).