Multiple paths towards education privatization in a globalizing world: a cultural political economy review

Abstract

Over the last two decades, education privatization has become a widespread phenomenon, affecting most education systems and giving place to a consistent increase in private school enrolment globally. However, far from being a monolithic phenomenon, privatization advances through a variety of context-sensitive policy processes that translate into multiple policy outcomes. This paper aims at understanding why and how education privatization unfolds in a broad variety of settings and, to this purpose, examines the different manifestations of education privatization on the light of Cultural Political Economy (CPE). The conceptual and analytical tools provided by CPE prove to be particularly well suited to explore such a multi-faceted and multi-scalar phenomenon. CPE has helped us to capture the intersect and tension between different drivers (global and local, material and ideational) of education privatization through the evolutionary mechanisms of variation, selection and retention. On the basis of a systematic literature review methodology, encompassing 227 research papers, the article identifies and systematizes six different paths towards education privatization – understood as groups of frequently associated circumstances, mechanisms and courses of action leading to privatization. Conceived as ideal types, these different paths ultimately allow for a richer understanding of education privatization and show that the international diffusion of education privatization norms and discourses is far from producing policy convergence at a global scale.

Keywords:

• Comparative
• politics
• education privatization
• cultural political economy
• systematic literature review
• public-private partnerships
• vouchers
• charter schools
• low-fee private schools

Notes

1. In this respect, we exclude from the review other possible educational activities that are also increasingly privatized, such as policy consultancy, testing services, teacher training, etc.

2. The list of search terms is presented in the Annex. In general terms, the search strategy was based on the combination of 4 broad categories of keywords, corresponding to the different dimensions considered by the review: (1) cultural political economy framework, (2) privatization reforms/policies, (3) policy actors, and (4) general education terminology.

3. Although this section uses the denomination United Kingdom, the literature analysed mainly focuses on the cases of England and Wales.

4. See Fallon and Poole (2014) for a description of the British Columbia case.

5. See Bosetti (2000) for an overview of the Albertan case.

6. However, after more than two decades of the voucher system in place, the reality is rather different: the number of private providers has multiplied by ten and the vast majority of them have a for-profit orientation (Böhlmark and Lindahl 2012)

7. Programa de Educación con Participación de la Comunidad.