The rising influence of philanthropy in education across Argentina and Brazil: new private players and policy networks

• In Event: Recontextualizing post-bureaucratic reforms in different educational systems: private actors, public administration, and schools

Proposal

The international community has now ‘officially welcomed’ philanthropists as relevant actors within education policy. The Education 2030 Framework for Action for SDG4 conceives philanthropic organizations as actors that could strengthen education and development (UNESCO, 2015). More recently, the International Commission on the Futures of Education included philanthropic actors as contributors to ensure the right to education and safeguard social justice (UNESCO, 2021). Rather than following traditional forms of philanthropy, new philanthropic actors circulate throughout ‘glocal’ policy networks with their money, values, and models with effects on policymaking and policy discourses (Ball & Junemann, 2012). New ‘policy-spaces’ or ‘new sites’ are opened and sector-boundaries are blurred as new philanthropists operate in a ‘parapolitical sphere’ where they develop their own policy agenda (Ball & Olmedo, 2011).

The increasing role of philanthropy in education is no exception in Latin America. Global foundations have gained influence regionally by developing ‘partnerships’ with national and subnational governments to implement programmes, building legitimacy among policymakers and the public opinion (Matovich & Esper, 2023), and promoting local versions of global education networks (Box, 2006; Friedrich, 2014). More important for this work, local expressions of philanthropic development have resulted in national networks oriented to education and the creation of organizations under different legal configurations (non-governmental organizations, civil organizations, social-impact foundations) initially created and supported by philanthropic actors (Avelar, 2022; Diaz Ríos, 2019). Research has vastly addressed new forms of privatization in the region (Gentili, 2009; Verger, et al., 2018) and particular cases of philanthropic influence in local education policy (Avelar, 2022; Tarlau & Moeller, 2020). However, comparative and intra-regional studies on education policy and philanthropy are very rare.

Considering these emerging phenomena and the still under-developed comparative research in South America, this paper presents an overview of philanthropic networks in Argentina and Brazil’s education policy space. These spaces are approached by using network ethnography (Howard, 2002) through a hybrid combination of cyber ethnography and social-network analysis to map the form and content of policy relations in a particular field (Junemann et al., 2016). It implies tracking people and organizations in the forms of memberships, affiliations and shared initiatives (Borgatti & Halgin, 2011). In particular, it ‘follows’ philanthropic actors through affiliation networks in Argentina and Brazil through ‘education initiatives’ in the form of advocacy campaigns, implementation programmes, fundraising and the institutionalization of new networks. Based on this work, the paper identifies who are the central philanthropic actors, examines what type of state and non-state actors they establish connections with and analyzes the policy topography where these networks are developed.
This work provides insights about how philanthropic actors shape education governance and how the labor of networks creates opportunities for the mobilization of philanthropic resources, technologies and discourses oriented to education policy reforms. Furthermore, the comparative analysis contributes to examine more theoretical issues about the expansion of philanthropic actors and how these use different approaches to education governance in regard to the historical configuration of nation-states and the interplay of local reform trajectories and the recontextualisation of global policy discourses.

Author

• Ivan Matovich, Monash University