Populism and the Losers of the Knowledge Economy: Who Frames Educational Goals?

• In Event: Populism, Privilege, and the Complex Purposes of Public Education

Abstract

A huge amount of scholarly attention has been devoted to the study of populism since 2016. It was the ‘annus horribilis’, to be remembered for the Brexit vote in the UK, the election of Donald Trump in the US, and the rise of challenger parties especially in the European context (Hobolt and Tilley, 2016). Whether populism can be considered an ideology, a movement, or simply a rhetorical exercise that then ends in a policy vacuum, the juxtaposition of the (ignored) people versus the (powerful) elites are at the core of this notion (Canovan, 1999). While an expanding literature is providing a deeper understanding of its symptoms and implications in terms of the failures of democracy (Mair, 2013), research on its causes is still unsatisfactory. The rise of populism is explained as a consequence of globalisation processes and the inevitable divide between winners and losers of globalisation (Cox, 2017). By contributing to these debates, this paper argues that one fruitful way to look at the causes of populism is to analyse it from the perspective of an educational issue.
Specifically, my paper argues that the current content and policy orientation of education has generated a fertile ground for the ‘losers’ of this process to be galvanized by populist leaders and trends. Its emphasis on standardised tests and the focus on employability of students as the ultimate goal, so as to promote the ‘knowledge economy’, rather than focusing on more social aspects and critical skills. In this respect, education is indeed inherently political, with curricula and educational objectives legitimating some forms of knowledge and content while excluding others. Whereas existing scholarship has focused mainly on the effects of this policy orientation in terms of inequality and redistributive implications, the involvement of non-state actors, and in particular market forces, in diffusing education reforms and policy goals has been largely unexplored (Komljenovic and Robertson, 2017). The paper asks: what is the role of private and business actors in framing the education agenda and acting as ‘problem entrepreneurs’ in pushing forward specific goals of education policy to the detriment of education intended of ‘common good’ and, ultimately, having an impact on those who remain excluded from these goals?
The paper sets out theoretical propositions about how conditions are defined as problems by policy actors and how a winning problem definition impacts on the policy debate by combining two strands of literature, one on agenda setting (Schattschneider, 1960; Kingdon, 1984; Mintrom and Norman, 2009) and the other on social construction of problems/framing (Weiss, 1989; Cobb and Elder, 2001; Stone, 2002). It argues that, once a condition has been successfully defined as a problem, it impacts on the political landscape in two respects. First, new groups that accept and share the dominant definition of a problem are formed. Second, actors who have successfully defined a specific problem are more likely to be empowered to speak in the policy debate.
These propositions are tested against a case study on the policy orientation of European education policy characterized by a dominant discourse that links education to economic growth, with the framing of education as a supplementary market and workforce tool at the expense of its social aims such as fostering critical thinking and promoting democratic behaviour (Walkenhorst, 2008; Holford and Spolar, 2012). Through the use of ‘explaining outcome process tracing’ (Beach and Pedersen, 2013) and primary and secondary historical sources over a period of three decades (1985-2015), the findings reveal the role of European business as crucial player in setting the agenda and policy priorities of European education policy towards pro-market aims and towards an idea of education that enhances the skills and opportunities of the ‘winners’, namely a highly skilled workforce able to improve Europe’s economic competitiveness. The paper concludes by highlighting the implications of the role of business actors in framing educational goals and, in particular, to what extent their policy agendas potentially cause the discontent of the ‘losers’ of the knowledge economy within populism.

Author

• Marina Cino Pagliarello, London School of Economics