A tale of two worlds: the interstate system and world society in social science textbooks, 1950–2011

Imagining the World: Conceptions and Determinants of Internationalization in Higher Education Curricula Worldwide

“…These revolve around an interstate or comparative model, 1 a regional or area model, and a global or earth model. These three models resonate with conceptual debates in international relations and have previously been identified in secondary school curricula (Bromley and Cole 2016). Findings show that models are differentially distributed across disciplines, with the interstate model prevalent in business, political science, and sociology; the regional model dominant in political science and law; and the global or earth model prevailing in development studies and the natural sciences.…”

“…For example, in a cross-national study, Frank, Wong, and colleagues (2000) found that early in the twentieth century, a mere 5 percent of the average university history curriculum focused on globalized forms of history (e.g., world history), but by the end of the century, this percentage had climbed above 20 percent. Internationalizing trends have also been reported in cross-national studies of secondary education curricula (Bromley and Cole 2016;Rauner 1998;Wong 1991). We expand on these studies with novel data on degree programs, capturing internationalization across a vast population of universities worldwide and in all fields of study.…”

World polity or world society? Delineating the statist and societal dimensions of the global institutional system

“…But a world polity – as well as a nascent world society – clearly antedated the mid-twentieth century. It is also true, however, that the global institutional system has become less statist during the postwar era: global civil society has thickened and strengthened tremendously over the past five or six decades (Boli and Thomas, 1999; Bromley and Cole, 2016; Schofer, 2003). Delineating between the statist and societal dimensions of the world system offers a foundation for understanding how it emerged and transformed over time.…”

“…Nearly 3700 nongovernmental organizations currently enjoy general or special consultative status. 6 A cross-national analysis of social science textbooks by Bromley and Cole (2016) suggests the validity of differentiating the world polity from world society, and also points to possible relations between them. Textbook depictions of international issues and processes coalesce around two distinct imageries -one more statist, the other largely societal.…”

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“…The GCE agendas of inter-/supra-national organisations such as the UNESCO or the EU (see above) can be understood as explicit manifestations of this more diffuse and imperceptible transformation, which, we argue, with Meyer et al (2010), is transnationally oriented and transnationally driven via trans/ national actors and networks. The result is a decoupling of educational contents and structures from the grip of the national, by reorienting the knowledge and skills to be taught and learned towards global or international problems (Bromley, & Cole, 2017). This contributes indirectly to the formation of "global citizens" who "think and act globally" and call for global solutions.…”