How New Philanthropy is Co-producing Education Policy: heterarchical relationships in Brazil

• In Event: The Dissemination and Enactment of Global Educational Reforms in Brazil: unpacking the political economy and (undesired) impacts of test-based managerial accountability

Proposal

Private actors increasingly participate in the provision and management of public services, in a shift that is often referred to as a change from government to governance, or from hierarchy to diverse networks - also named heterarchies. Concomitantly, philanthropy is adopting corporate practices, known as new philanthropy. This paper aims to explore how new philanthropy is actively co-producing education policy-making with governments, analyzing the work of foundations within heterarchical structures of governance. The mobilization of material, social, and temporal conditions in heterarchies is complex, and involves on-going negotiations, commitments and compromises (Jessop, 2011). Diverse public-private relationships are created and ended, a series of services and products are offered by different foundations, and the same institutions play different roles at different points in time and space. This paper aims to illustrate this complexity in practice, exploring the labor invested in heterarchies and how heterarchical relationships are being organized in the Brazilian education. Following the method of network ethnography (Ball and Junemann, 2012), this research has employed online searches, document analysis and interviews with representatives from influential Brazilian foundations.
The paper first presents a working definition of heterarchies, that is openly provisional and instrumental yet a useful tool to analyse the complex relationships between foundations and public organizations in Brazil. Then I consider how foundations in Brazil have been enrolled in the processes of heterarchical governance in different states of the country. Namely, two examples from Lemann Foundation and Unibanco Institute are presented to illustrate the variety of services and relationships that are concomitantly maintained in heterarchical structures across the country. The programmes described are large-scale and aim at structural changes in entire systems of education, bringing about results-based management with policy solutions. Findings indicate that new philanthropy is developing different kinds of relationships with all administrative levels in Brazil (municipal, state and federal authorities of education), and foundations provide programmes and services that are aimed at pedagogy or at policy, and can resemble a "ready-made" logics or resort to a "bespoke" approach. In other words, foundations may aim to affect classroom practices or public management practices, and to do so may offer "pre-fabricated" policy solutions or create new initiatives in the format of a consultancy. To conclude, I ponder on how this indicates a move of foundations from the context of practice (school focused programmes), to the context of influence (advice/consultancy) and to the context of policy writing (partnerships), and thence again to context of practice (municipal and state focused reforms) (Bowe et al., 1992), showing that new philanthropy is now active in all policy contexts. The examples show the longer reach of philanthropy, and a deeper, multi-layered development of heterarchies. They also exemplify a vast diversity of types of relationships that can be involved in such heterarchies, as well as the mundane activities employed to maintain them. Heterarchies are complex, ever changing, ephemeral and "certainly uneven" (Ball and Junemann, 2012). This extensive account of types of activities involved in heterarchical governance gives flesh to this complexity.

Author

• Marina Avelar, Institute of Education, University College London