Global Policy Networks, Advocacy Coalitions, and the Neoconservative Turn in Education

Group Submission Type: Formal Panel Session

Proposal

Since the early 2000s, global governance has emerged as “a response to collective action problems that transcend national boundaries” (Stone & Moloney, 2019, p. 3), allowing more actors to participate in policy making. Non-state actors have grown increasingly more influential in policy agenda setting, monitoring, and evaluation. Decentralization of policy decision-making in global contexts and “delegation of authority to semi-private networks and non-state actors” (Stone & Moloney, 2019, p. 3) has supported the emergence of global policy networks. As a result, “public and private agents – whether business actors or civil society organizations – directly interact with policy making, policy design, and its delivery through policy experiments like global public-private partnerships and via the porous boundaries of transnational policy communities” (Stone & Moloney, 2019, p. 11).
With the support of venture philanthropies and corporate donors, intermediary organizations (IOs) – think tanks, non-profit and for-profit organizations, research institutes, and advocacy groups – have played an increasingly important role in reshaping educational policies in the US and around the world (Ball & Junemann, 2012; deMarrais et al. 2019; Tompkins-Stange, 2016). IOs’ growing impact on educational policies has been described through the lens of a hub and spokes with the central role afforded to philanthropies and foundations (Scott & Jabbar, 2014). Philanthropies set the agendas for policy directions, whereas intermediary organizations assemble reports, policy scripts, and implementation guides to set these agendas in motion. With extensive media coverage and social media campaigns, these groups’ policies emerge as a new common sense. Growing use of digital tools and resources in building or manufacturing consensus around policy issues has also contributed to the rise of their influences on global policymaking.
This panel brings together papers that adopt the theoretical lens of “network governance,” or “webs of stable and ongoing relationships which mobilize dispersed resources towards the solution of policy problems” (Pal 1997). Ball (2012) examined how global policy networks bring together philanthropies, corporations, international organizations, consultancies, as well as edupreneurs – individual policy actors selling policy. Actors in these networks offer solutions to educational problems they help construct and facilitate the movement of policies across regions and national borders. Their message of change is often rooted in neoliberal logic of individual responsibility and market solutions for addressing educational inequities (Ball & Junemann, 2012). Boundary spanners play an important role in facilitating policy mobility by moving between jobs in different sectors and by amassing influence across local, regional, national and global settings (Ball & Junemann, 2012). Conferences, forums, meetings, and events become sites of diffusion as they give consultants, edupreneurs, and other non-state policy actors opportunities “to speak to and establish relationships with ministers and officials” (Ball & Junemann, 2012, p. 79). Ball’s ground-breaking work has since led to the explorations of how global policy networks facilitate the spread of privatization agendas (Verger et al., 2016). However, what remains underexplored is the nexus between global policy networks and the advocacy industry that popularizes particular approaches to educational reform. Of great urgency is the question how global policy networks become the vehicle for transmitting agendas of corporate actors, philanthrocapitalists, as well as ultraconservative organizations that coopt educational systems into spreading far-right ideologies.
Papers included in this panel engage with this question by drawing on the tools of social network analysis, critical discourse analysis, as well as critical policy analysis. By mapping out the interconnections between various global actors and their state partners, the papers document the points of connection between various policy influencers and edupreneurs. By engaging with the policy designs and reform proposals, the papers note the spread of market-based and neoconservative agendas. Finally, by attending to the use of digital platforms and virtual spaces in global policy advocacy, the papers shed light on how ideas that lack empirical support and lean ultra-right gain support through public mobilization, social media campaigns, and strategic deployment of online opinion polling sold to the public as “research.”
The panel connects to CIES 2025 themes by analyzing how digital transformations enable and expand the influence of global policy networks. The points of connection between ed tech companies, corporate actors, philanthropic organizations, and ultraconservative organizations set in motion waves of global education policies that pursue ideological transformation of the educational sector. This transformation is supported through disinformation campaigns orchestrated by network actors and funded by major philanthropies.
The papers on this panel make an important contribution to comparative and international research by shedding light on the interconnections between various policy actors’ and the advancement of corporate agendas and neoconservative ideologies. The analysis of these interconnections illuminates how the pursuit of democracy through educational reforms is undermined and ultraconservative values become the new norm of global policy-speak.

Sub Unit

• Globalization & Education SIG

Chair

• Elena Aydarova, The University of Wisconsin-Madison

Individual Presentations

• Conservative Industrial Complex and Global Policy Networks - Elena Aydarova, The University of Wisconsin-Madison; Serena Salloum, Ball State University; Emily Hodge; T. Jameson Brewer, University of North Georgia

• Transforming Global Education Policy: Corporate Influence, Digitalization, and Equity - Moaaz Hamid, Indiana University - Bloomington; Christopher Lubienski, Indiana University

• Voices for Education in Uncertain Times: The Transformative Role of Education Coalitions toward the Right to Education in the Digital Age - Zain Ul Abidin, The University of Glasgow; Sundas Fayyaz, Independent Consultant