Transnational Policy Networks and Coercive Education Reform: The Integration of Media, Corporate, and Political Circuits

• In Event: Roundtable Session 53
  In Roundtable Session: Democracy, Policy Reform, and Activism

Abstract

This paper analyses the growing influence of transnational policy networks, pointing to a tight integration of media, political and corporate actors in the Australian setting. Building on previous work showing the spread of a global neoliberal imaginary through mechanisms such as think-tanks, I seek to show how the influence neoliberal policy networks often by-passes engagement with public opinion to influence, and benefit from, policy reform. The paper draw’s on Gramsci’s notion of hegemony, and its development in the work of Apple and Lipman, in order to trace policy networks involving media players, government, think-tanks, and philanthropists. The analysis shows how such networks establish relationships between market-based reforms in the US and schooling for Indigenous and socially disadvantaged populations in Australia.

Author

• Joel Austin Windle, Monash University