The Entanglements of Neoliberal Bureaucracy: Privatization of Education Reform in Paraguay

• In Event: Global Education Reforms Across Time and Space: Tendencies, Drivers, and Explanations In Comparative and Historical Perspective (Part 1)

Proposal

Studies about privatization in education in Latin America have overlooked the historical entanglements between the public and the private sectors in Paraguay. In this paper, we delve into current processes of education privatization in the country and explain how these are deeply rooted in the historical design of the state bureaucracy and its evolution through time. Drawing on the notion of ‘neoliberal bureaucracy’ (Hibou, 2015) combined with the ‘dimensional publicness’ approach to institutions and policy (Bozemman, 2013; Moulton, 2009), the study analyzes the recent adoption of pro-privatization education reform policies in the country. Data for this research come from document analysis, a comprehensive literature review, and semi-structured interviews with over fifty key informants conducted in Paraguay in March 2022.

The findings focus on two aspects of recent education reform initiatives: the Fund for Educational and Research Excellence (FEEI) and the Programs and Projects Executing Unit (UEPP). We argue that these entities have extended the bureaucracy of the Paraguayan education system based on norms, arrangements, and formalities that are characteristic of the business world and not necessarily driven by public values. Beyond reflecting global trends related to privatization ‘in’ and ‘of’ education (Ball & Youdell, 2007), this paper shows how the hybrid forms of privatization observed in Paraguay are more accurately understood as an organic continuation—and contemporary manifestation—of logics and incentives that are internal to the state itself. The lack of clear boundaries between the public and the private are a consequence of the fact that the ‘publicness’ of the educational system in Paraguay was never solidified. Resonating with Hibou’s work, this study evidences how, in the context of political and economic globalization, the state bureaucracy adapts not only to external factors, but also to internal ones. This adaptation, however, is not characterized as a loss of control in favor of non-public actors, but rather as a choice for indirect governance, which uses private intermediaries on an incremental and intricated way that challenges the publicness character of public administration. We conclude by stressing that what Hibou (2004) has named the ‘privatization of the state’ is the result of multiple and multilayered strategies—not necessarily harmonized—which evidence distrust in public institutions. We explain this lack of confidence turning back to the political history of Paraguay, deeply marked by the long dictatorial period: four decades of centralized, personalized and clientelistic style of governance that has had profound, longstanding effects over policymaking processes until nowadays.

Authors

• Edgar Quilabert, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, VAT ESQ0818002H

• Mauro C Moschetti, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• D. Brent Edwards, University of Hawaii

• Patricia Grillet, University of Hawaii / East-West Center

• Alejandro Caravaca, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

• Rodolfo Jose Elias, FLACSO Paraguay