Aligning policy ideas and power: the roots of thecompetitiveness framein European education policy

Abstract

How and why do some ideas attain agenda status while others do not? This paper seeks to explore these questions in the context of the policy changes observed in the evolution of European education policy. By drawing from the literature on agenda-setting and employing process tracing, the paper develops a theoretical argument to investigate the causal mechanisms through which a new problem definition is set. The central argument is that three factors affect the way in which a specific problem definition wins over another: (i) the presence of a policy entrepreneur; (ii) the ability to construct a convincing narrative to support a particular interpretation of a problem; and (iii) the specific zeitgeist of a given period, namely the social and political context within which ideas gain ground. The paper contributes to the literature on European education policy by examining how specific (economic) ideas about education emerged. It also contributes to the theoretical debate on agenda studies and how policy problems are set.

Learning outcomes: The long goodbye: Vocational qualifications in the 21st century

“…Since the 1980s, the EU has considered economic development to be one of the aims of educational policy (Cino-Pagliarello, 2020). However, education and skills development is not one of its competences; this rests with national governments.…”

Building the technological European Community through education: European mobility and training programmes in the 1980s

“…Furthermore, Corbett argued that COMETT, which clearly fell within the remit of the EC, was the gateway to the ERASMUS programme, which was much more likely to be perceived as falling outside the EU’s field of jurisdiction (Corbett, 2009). However, Cino Pagliarello (2017) has shown that despite the initial consensus, a very heated debate that revolved around legal, organizational and financial issues arose with regard to the legitimacy of the COMETT initiative. In the end, the adoption of the initiative meant that in 1986, for the first time, a concrete and far-reaching agreement was reached on greater European cooperation in the field of education.…”

“…Until the mid-1980s, the EC’s education policy had been predominantly social and redistributive in character. However, by 1985, an explicit link between education and economic growth had been established in the EC’s strategy to tackle the challenges of technological change, which indicates that its education policy was shifting more towards an economic orientation (Cino Pagliarello, 2017: 89). In the EC’s development of an action programme as a response to technological change, social policy problems took second place behind the main aim of boosting Europe’s economic competitiveness by creating a highly skilled workforce.…”

“…As far as the EC’s response to technological and social change was concerned, the shift towards a more economically oriented education policy is illustrated by the fact that priority was given to the needs of business and industry with regard to the provision of adequate training for workers and the development of new technologies. However, the requests of trade unions, which emphasized the need to safeguard low-skilled workers, women and the unemployed, were marginalized (Cino Pagliarello, 2017: 126). In other words, the economic rationale took precedence over the social rationale in the call for a European education policy response to technological change.…”

“…Rather, we believe that the education policy programmes in the field of technology and science must be understood much more in the context of a European competitiveness agenda that introduced several national initiatives to strengthen the domestic industries in the member states of the EC. As Cino Pagliarello (2020) has argued, the emergence of a narrative that connected education with concern over the lack of European growth and competitiveness was able to raise the agenda status of education in the mid-1980s and was in favour of the EC taking ownership of European education policy. Our research shows that the emergence of a comprehensive paradigm of lifelong learning has a background in the history of digital change and, so far, this area has received little attention.…”