Translating Global Ideas: How Policy Legacies and Domestic Politics Shape Educational Governance in Latin America

Group Submission Type: Book Launch

Description of Session

International organizations have consistently influenced education reforms in Latin America, but not all countries have adopted the same policy recommendations. This book offers a unique comparative analysis of secondary education reforms in Chile, Argentina, and Colombia, with a focus on three key milestones in the global history of education governance ideas: manpower educational planning in the 1960s and 1970s, state-retrenchment during the 1980s and 1990s (market-based versus active-state), and ideas about having a right to a quality education in an era of government accountability during the 2000s and 2010s. While responding to similar policy recommendations, these countries have differed in how they have implemented decentralization, incorporated private actors, allocated authority over curriculum, and established instruments of accountability. By combining literature on the globalization of educational policy with theoretical and methodological approaches from comparative politics, the author traces the legacies of previous education policies and local struggles among stakeholders in reshaping—and sometimes rejecting—foreign recommendations.
Drawing on over 80 interviews and extensive document analysis, this book finds that when global ideas are compatible with domestic policy legacies and supported by powerful actors, the more likely result is the convergence of domestic decisions with foreign recommendations. In contrast, when global prescriptions are inconsistent with policy legacies and/or spark strong domestic opposition, the chances for global ideas to be modified, avoided or defied increase. The comparative historical analysis shows three different paths of translation of global ideas: 1) the Chilean path of conformity and compromise, facilitated by favorable policy legacies, strong domestic support for foreign recommendations, and the neutralization of potential opposition; 2) the Argentinean path of avoidance and defiance, produced by the inability of policy elites to neutralize a domestic opposition nurtured by previous policy decisions; and 3) the Colombian oscillation between conformity and rejection of global ideas, facilitated by the legacies of a historically weak role of the state in education governance and the extent to which global recommendations affected the interest of powerful groups. Translating Global Ideas will help practitioners and scholars interested in Latin American education to better understand the changing role of the state in education governance, the increasing participation of other non-state (and non-national) actors, the tension between policy convergence and variation, and the long-term consequences of particular translations of global recommendations. The book will be an invaluable resource for scholars of comparative politics and the globalization of education, particularly those interested in policy development in middle- and low-income countries.

Sub Unit

• Pre-Conference Workshops, Book launches, and Visual Art Exhibits / Book Launch

Chair

• Laura C. Engel, The George Washington University

Book Launch Presenter

• Claudia Milena Diaz-Rios, OISE University of Toronto

Discussants

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

• Antoni Verger, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona