Revolving doors: Social Network Analysis of the OECD, UNESCO, and World Bank Education Nexuses

• In Event: Highlighted Session: The ‘practice turn’ in global governance: Analysing the changing role of international organizations in education policy-making

Proposal

In line with the ‘practice turn’ framing of this panel, the purpose of the presentation is to unpack the historical configurations of the “revolving doors” between UNESCO, OECD, and the World Bank in the field of education. The paper unravels some of the intersections – including antagonisms and collaborations - between epistemic communities and the constituencies shaping the historical course and content of global governance in education.

More specifically, the paper investigates the creation and development of networks across the three organizations drawing on the methodological approach of prosopography. Prosopography is a variant of Social Network Analysis which systematically examine the structures that emerges from ‘social patterns with the objective of understanding the ways in which this structure contributes to specific outcomes.’ (Pizmony-Levy and Baek 2022, p. 60). Prosopography means the investigation of collective biographies understood as networks and organisations, and this has the potential of situating agents, events, and practices spatially (Keats-Rohan 2007). This opens the possibility of looking at spatial distributions of agendas, priorities, and knowledge floating in the global education space and thus the re-interpretation and rearticulation of ideas, practices, and institutions (Verboven et al. 2007). The use of prosopography indicates a focus beyond an intra-organisational frame of reference and allows the tracing of interorganisational and transnational imaginative spaces that intersect with multiple places.

International organisations are obvious objects for this kind of analysis because they by their very mode of operation are hubs that bring together various actors and networks. One example is the Dutchman Albert Tuijnman who was affiliated with the Swedish recurrent education group in the OECD who came to work on the indicators programme and had connections to UNESCO. Another good example is Philip Hall Coombs who as an American government representative established relationships with UNESCO, the World Bank and the OECD, which he mobilized around the creation of the International Institute for Educational Planning.

Empirically the paper draws on interviews with key actors from the researched organisations as well as archival documents from the organisations’ archives. The paper’s findings revolves around the creation and development of nexuses between the three organizations including the collaborations, positions, antagonisms, and strategic agency of key actors as a platform for critically understanding how IOs shape education policy-making.

Author

• Christian Ydesen, Aalborg University