Policy Networking: Examining the Social Relations of Global Governance in ESE Policy Programs

• In Event: From ESE policy to practice and action in the global/local nexus

Proposal

Objectives:
This paper will report pilot study findings from interviews with a diverse range of global policy actors on their views on factors influencing the development and mobility of significant Environmental and Sustainability Education (ESE) policy programs led by international organizations (IOs) of the United Nations (UN) system. Our objective is to better understand the drivers of global policy mobility both within and across ESE policy programs, and in particular how policy actors and their networked social relations influence the development of international ESE policy initiatives driven by UN IOs.

This topic is of significant importance to both global ESE policy studies, and to the field of Comparative and International Education (CIE) more broadly. Since the early days of the Environmental Education movement in the 1970’s, ESE policy and practice has continued to grow in prominence in the international development arena. On the heels of the 2005-2014 UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD), UNESCO renewed its commitment to this policy agenda by launching the Global Action Programme (GAP) on ESD (UNESCO, 2014). UNESCO’s 2016 GEM report, “Education for people and planet: Creating sustainable futures for all,” was the first of its kind focusing on environmental sustainability in education. The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development includes an unprecedented focus on education in addressing sustainability issues. National governments also gave unprecedented attention to the importance of education at the 2015 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) COP 21 meeting in Paris, and since then have launched the Action for Climate Empowerment (ACE) Programme (UNFCCC, 2016). Supported by nearly 200 nations, these ESE policy programs are a clear indication that policy shifts are taking place, marking a new era of educational policy reform and innovation attuned to the sustainability imperative of the times. However, there remains a significant knowledge gap regarding the influences on these and other UN IO policy programs - both in the programs’ initial development and in how they evolve over time. In particular, we do not know much about how or why UN staff or secretariats, national governments, non-governmental organizations, policy experts, report authors, or other ‘policy actors’ influence the priorities and details of ESE UN IO policy programs, thus affecting program quality, a gap this paper begins to address.

Theoretical Framework:
Our theoretical approach to the study of the production and circulation of global policy through networks is informed by work on ‘policy mobilities’ (Peck, 2011; Peck, Theodore, & Brenner, 2012) and, more broadly, follows the ‘network governance’ turn in policy studies (Ball, 2012). This body of research examines how policy development and transfer can occur in dispersed and fluid ways via global networks. In this paper, we focus in particular on policy actors and the ‘meetings’ and ‘materials’ through which they interact to influence UN IO policy programs (Peck & Theodore, 2015; Wood, 2016). Paying attention to these relational dynamics can shed light on the means through which global policy programs develop and travel through networked institutional spaces as they are produced, circulated, promoted, contested, negotiated, or legitimized across geopolitical contexts.

Our theoretical approach is also informed by related theories of policy networks, particularly in relation to the governance of international organizations (IOs), or what others term, international public administrations (IPAs) (e.g., Busch, 2014). Interdisciplinary research on UN IOs suggests their legitimacy is based on expectations of consensus decision-making and shared global governance (Haunss, 2007; Speth & Haas, 2007). This involves collaborations with national government representatives, non-governmental sector organizations, and academic consultants, who provide funding, sit on decision-making committees, attend key meetings, write reports, or otherwise participate in the governance of UN IO policy programs (Ayre & Callway, 2013; Burnett, 2011; Heyneman, 2011). Thus, it is necessary to look not only at the IOs themselves, but at the broader policy program networks and their interactions and influences on the respective policy programs. The involvement of such policy networks operates as forms of “network governance” in the development and evolution of policy programs (Rhodes, 2006). Yet, there is considerable opacity in how these policy networks function, with the existing broader literature describing the structures of such networks, rather than elucidating the hows, wheres, or whys of their influences on policy (Ball & Junemann, 2012).

Methods, Findings, and Significance:
Data were collected through semi-structured interviews conducted with 13 national and international policy leaders engaged with global ESE policy programs. These interviews were part of a pilot study for a larger, qualitative ‘network ethnography’ (Ball & Junemann, 2012; Ball, 2016) of ESE policy programs. The purpose of the interviews was to gain insight into the hows, wheres, and whys of the influences on the development and evolution of ESE policy programs, including the “exchanges and transactions between participants in global education policy networks and the roles, actions, motivations, discourses, and resources of the different actors involved” (Junemann et al., 2018, p. 458).

Preliminary analysis points to a number of ways in which policy actors have observed or experienced the functions and characteristics of ESE policy networks, including:
• the role of personal and professional relationships in the constitution of policy networks;
• the importance of face-to-face interactions at ‘field-configuring events’ such as international meetings or conferences;
• the roles of UN IO staff and secretariats in shaping policy programs and networks;
• the local/national political calculus that informs actors’ engagement with networks;
• the policy network implications of financial incentives from certain nations that have outsized influence in UN ESE policy programs.
Together these factors begin to illustrate the means of influence that various ESE policy actors exert through networks associated with UN IO policy programs. We find that policy actors involved in national and/or global ESE policy-craft engage in context-generative networking, or the act of producing, expanding, and mutating networks rather than merely navigating the previously established circuitry of social and institutional relations. This paper contributes to furthering our qualitative understanding of the social relations of global governance that remain a gap in empirical ESE policy studies.

Authors

• Marcia McKenzie, University of Saskatchewan

• Nicolas Stahelin, School of International Training

• Alan Reid, Monash University