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Conjunctions of power and comparativeeducationRoger Daleaa
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol,
UKPublished online: 18 May 2015.
To cite this article: Roger Dale (2015) Conjunctions of power
and comparative education,Compare: A Journal of Comparative and
International Education, 45:3, 341-362,
DOI:10.1080/03057925.2015.1006944
To link to this article:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1006944
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KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Conjunctions of power and comparative education
Roger Dale*
Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol, Bristol,
UK
This paper develops the basis of a comparative sociological
account ofthe present state and potential of Comparative Education
(CE) as a eldof study by examining the mechanisms and contexts
generated by threeconjunctions of power and CE. The rst of these
concerns issues ofpower over the eld, how it has been, and is
being, framed by theoperation of power of various kinds. Power over
what counts as CEemerges through three forms of strategic
selectivity, based on: (1) itsmissions, locations and wider
contexts; (2) its political, discursive, theo-retical,
methodological and valorisational opportunity structures; and
(3)its institutional locations within the structures of university
governanceand national and international funding bodies, and the
conditions ofknowledge production that they frame. Next, it
addresses issues ofpower in CE, how it is and has been conceived,
by whom, and withwhat analytic and political consequences. Finally,
the paper directs atten-tion to the potential power of CE. It
focuses on two contrasting formstaken by the outputs of CE, the
production of expertise and of explana-tion, which together suggest
something of the nature of the dilemmas ofthe relationships between
power and CE. Expertise concerns the powerof the eld as a source of
comment and advice on the development ofeducational policy, based
on qualitative and quantitative comparisons ofeducation systems and
their performances. The second, by contrast, con-siders the
potential of a comparative approach to the explanation ofsocial
phenomena.
Keywords: comparative education; power; opportunity structures;
exper-tise; explanation
Introduction
In this paper I will be attempting to demonstrate the nature,
basis andconsequences of power in, over and through Comparative
Education (here-after CE) by means of what might be seen as a
sociological analysis of CEitself as an object of study. This will
entail taking CE itself as a kind ofcase study of the operation of
different forms of power and their outcomesin an academic eld. In
essence, the purpose of the paper is an attempt todemonstrate the
explanatory potential of CE which I take to be by far its
*Email: [email protected]
2015 British Association for International and Comparative
Education
Compare, 2015Vol. 45, No. 3, 341362,
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2015.1006944
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greatest contribution by advancing a basis for an explanation of
its owncurrent practices, status, achievements, forms and outputs.
I will do this notby comparing those practices and so on directly,
or by providing a gener-alised account of them based on common
patterns or bundles of attributes,but on the basis of the method of
abstraction. Thus, the basic argument willbe that theories do not
explain empirical situations in this case the prac-tices and so on
of CE directly, but indirectly, in terms of the structuresthat
produce them (Sayer 1982). In this case, I will attempt to
elaboratewhat this might mean by identifying and elaborating what I
shall refer to asthe key opportunity structures that frame CE as a
eld of study in the UK.
Specically, my starting point is that the complexity and
signicance ofthe relationships between elds of study as distinct
and collective academicendeavours, with that which they seek to
explore, comment on, understandand explain, are relatively rarely
addressed. Exponents of such elds oftenseem to proceed on the
assumption that they are purely driven by the setsof methods,
theories, concepts, approaches and so on that have been devel-oped
in the name of CE. However, they tend to do so without fully
takinginto account what relationships there might be within and
between thesebodies of approaches (which do, of course, frequently
conict with eachother, a fact that is typically put down to
internal methodological, theoreti-cal, etc. differences), on the
one hand, and, on the other, what might bemore abstractly referred
to as their conditions of existence (what MariaManzon [2011] refers
to as power relations associated with social structuresand human
agency, and discourse [211]), their relationship to what they
doand, especially, why they do what they do.
In particular, I want to argue here that such conditions of
existence sig-nicantly shape what CE does and is, especially as
they relate to issues ofpower. The key questions become what
factors inuence what we chooseto do when we say we are doing CE, in
what terms do we justify thosechoices, and in what forms and with
what consequences do issues of powerarise? So, underlying my
argument is an eschewal of both denitional andperformative
ontologies of CE, in favour of what might be seen as apolitical
sociological account of CE, the fulcrum of which will be
variousconjunctions of CE and Power.
The most important source in relation to the objectives of this
paper isnot the number of times that power appears in texts or
indexes in theexisting literature, but what that literature reveals
about the purposes andambitions of CE, and the place and
understanding of power as structureand process in those
assumptions. I will address these issues through afocus on
different conjunctions of power and CE. There are two
keymethodological bases to this strategy. First, I will adopt
theethnomethodologists crucial distinction by making CE topic
rather thanresource, or, to put it another way, take it as
explanandum, in need ofexplanation, rather than explanans,
providing explanation. The other is the
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distinction John Seeley (1967) made between the making and
taking ofsocial problems. The basis of the distinction is that the
nature of an issue,and the expectations of how it might be
addressed, are taken more or lessunproblematically, as they are
identied by various interested parties, whilethere is, rather, a
need to (re-)make them as problems that can beapproached from a
less pre-determined (and hence less interested) stance,a process
that starts from problematising the categorisation itself.
What this entails in the context of this paper is: (1) to
consider how,when, in what circumstances and conditions and with
what consequencesboth (what everybody knows about) CE and power are
taken asresources, rather than made into topics in their own right,
and (2) toindicate some ways that these circumstances, conditions
and consequencesdepend as much on the institutional and power
relationships over and withinCE its conditions of existence as they
do on internal disciplinarydebates. In brief, the main aim of the
paper will be to make CE, by estab-lishing some of the bases on
which it has been taken, in particular byfocusing on its
conjunctions with power.
I will attempt to develop this argument in three stages, taking
up particu-lar conjunctions between CE and Power power over CE,
power in CE,and power of CE.
Power over CE
By Power over, I refer to the ways that CE itself as a eld of
study hasbeen, and is being, framed by the operation of power of
various kinds. Irst advanced the argument I will develop here in an
analysis of the sociol-ogy of education in England (Dale 2001).
That analysis drew on Karabeland Halseys (1977) argument that,
sociology of education has been inu-enced more by its social
context than by any inner logic of the develop-ment of the
discipline (28).1
I suggested that the social context of the discipline could be
seen asformed across three axes of what I referred to as a
selection principle thatinforms practitioners foci, justications
and activities, and frames theconditions of knowledge production in
the eld. These axes were:
a broadly shared Project, or Mission; a shared Location;
shifting political/economic/cultural Contexts.
If we approach CE through these axes, we see that what is
distinctive aboutthe Projects of all Education sub-disciplines is
their desire to improve theworld, to demonstrate the capacities and
value of education, rather than treatit merely as an academic
exercise. Comparative Education is no exceptionhere, being driven
by what we might refer to as a modernist/meliorist
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(usefulness according to Cowen [2006]) Project (as seen in its
historicalassociation with Modernisation), in harness with the
pursuit of amethodology/methodologies that would enable that
progress to be achieved.
Its Location, at the heart of the institution and practice of
Education inEducation Faculties means that the assumptions and
conceptions of realitythat CE is based on and the purposes towards
which it is bent, have tendedto be shared with the practitioners
and policy makers they are studying.
Together, its project and location suggest that CE2 tends
essentially to:(1) take the nature of the eld of education for
granted and (2) regard itunproblematically as a good thing, with a
consequent focus on enablingimprovements in its practices,
organisation and administration and processes.This has led CE to
focus particularly on issues like the identication andpromotion of
good practice, and the identication and removal of barriers,be they
pedagogical, administrative, organisational, conceptual, logistical
orideological, to the full realisation of Educations promise and
potential,which are themselves rarely, if ever, questioned.
Such commitments have also made up an important element of the
widerpolitical Contexts within which CE operates, especially,
perhaps, in its con-tinuing commitment to improving education in
the developing world.Although their nature and forms may have
varied considerably across time,those commitments have continued to
frame its justications. These haveincluded a progressive shift from
largely national, formal, state Educationsystems and institutions,
to addressing the nature and consequences ofglobalisation, which is
seen as both a challenge and an opportunity forCE, for instance in
the form of methodological nationalism (see Dale 2005).One other
key contextual factor has been the availability of signicant
andhigh-prole quantitative databases, producing competitive
comparative datathat politicians need to respond to.
In the remainder of this section, I will attempt to articulate
the natureand consequences of CEs current Project, Location and
Context throughaddressing the ways that they jointly frame what is
taken as the core busi-ness and strategies of CE. The idea of a
selection principle is elaboratedhere in the form of what I will
refer to as the main Opportunity structuresthat together shape the
eld of and practice of CE.
The fundamental basis of the concept of opportunity structures
is Marxs(1852) famous dictum: Men make their own history, but they
do not makeit as they please; they do not make it under
circumstances of their ownchoosing, but under already existing
circumstances, given and transmittedfrom the past (7). Those
already existing circumstances include and framethe possibilities
for present and future action, with some of them morepowerful and
signicant than others. Opportunity structures can be seen asderived
from and reections of those existing circumstances. They are
col-lections of rules, institutions, conventions, practices and
discourses thatrestrict or enable different sets of actors and the
actions they take; they
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embody and exemplify what is to be regarded as sensible,
realistic andlegitimate (Koopmans and Statham 1999, 228), they
frame conceptions ofthe desirable, the possible, the attainable and
the unattainable. The largestbody of work taking up the opportunity
structure paradigm is that devel-oped by social movement theorists
who were interested in the ways thatexisting political systems,
elites and capacity for repression frame the possi-bilities of
success for new social movements; together these constitute
andshape the selection of means available to social movements
wishing tomake a political impact. An educational example is
provided by the sociolo-gist Ken Roberts (2009), who argues that
[Occupational] opportunity struc-tures are formed by the
inter-relationships between family origins,education, labour market
processes and employers recruitment practices(355) and uses this
framework as the basis of comparison and explanationof historical
changes in school-to-work transitions.
In the case of CE, these could be seen as ideas and practices
believed tobe sensible, realistic and legitimate in the particular
facets of the activitiesof CE, which its Project, Context and
Location provide for its exponentsthrough the kinds of investments
they have in and through their wittingor unwitting
adherence/attachment to particular conceptions of what CEis, how it
should be practised and to what ends.
The nature and signicance of opportunity structures has been
wellcaptured by Colin Hay (2002):
These structures are selective of strategy in the sense that,
given a speciccontext, only certain courses of action are likely to
see actors realise theirintentions. Social, political and economic
contexts are densely structured andhighly contoured. As such they
present an unevenly distributed congurationof opportunity and
constraint to actors. They are, in short, strategically selec-tive,
for whilst they may well facilitate the ability of resource- and
knowl-edge-rich actors to further their strategic interests, they
are equally likely topresent signicant obstacles to the realisation
of the strategic intentions ofthose not similarly endowed.
(380381)
That is, they have a shaping effect on the degree to which, and
the forms inwhich, what count as policies, for instance, or
methodologies, andultimately CE itself, are to be implemented
through them.
Methodologically, we might see the idea of opportunity
structures as pro-viding a level of abstraction from which we may
be able to understand andexplain the nature and forms of CE more
effectively including the differentnational forms taken by CE for,
after all, theory is concerned not withempirical events, but with
the structures that brought them about. To put itanother way, the
opportunity structures approach leads us to focus on how themenu of
choices is formed, as a preliminary to choosing within it. It
shouldalso be clear that opportunity structures are analytic
categories, not empiricalones; comparative educationists do not
consult lists of possibilities, but
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necessarily act within opportunity structures that legitimate,
favour and priori-tise some forms of decision and action over
others. Decisions and understand-ings about what counts as CE are
not random, but not necessarilyconsciously follow particular
framings of the possibilities over others.
One crucial point to be made here is that the various
opportunity struc-tures that I will discuss in this section are to
a degree nationally based, anddiffer from each other on that basis,
though with considerable elements incommon (this point is developed
further below, especially in the section onmethodological
opportunity structures). Thus, a major rationale for adoptingthe
opportunity structure strategy is that it does provide a means
ofcomparing different national models of CE, and isolating and
explainingthose differences and their consequences.
In the remainder of this Power Over CE section, though it will
not bepossible to go into them in any depth, I will briey outline
and consider theforms taken by four different opportunity
structures, whose contents andcombinations to some extent underlie,
among other things, different nationalunderstandings and practices
of CE. In particular, these opportunity struc-tures provide the
frameworks within which conceptions of power within CEare formed,
and the potential of CE is delimited. The four
opportunitystructures are Political, Discursive, Theoretical and
Methodological.
Political opportunity structures of CE
To exemplify what is meant by political opportunity structures,
it might beuseful to consider their value in making sense of the
work and inuence ofthe Organisation for Economic Co-operation and
Development (OECD) andProgramme for International Student
Assessment (PISA) in particular. Oneimportant way of understanding
why and how PISA arose in the forms itdid and when it did is to see
it as a response to a particular set of politicalopportunity
structures. The political opportunity structure within which
theOECD operates is one framed in part by competition between
advice sup-pliers. The OECD competes in this arena with other
organisations, such asthe World Bank, the United Nations
Educational, Scientic and CulturalOrganisation, the Institute of
Economic Affairs and the European Union,and increasingly with
private organisations such as McKinsey, Pearsonsand international
rankers of Higher Education so that what it chooses todo is framed
not only by what it might like to do, but by the need to com-pete
in a certain area and according to a particular set of priorities.
Forinstance, OECD, too, works within a particular political
opportunity struc-ture, one key element of which is that well over
half its funding comesfrom two member countries, the USA and
Japan.
In this section, I will emphasise three key components of CEs
politicalopportunity structure: funding, focus and standing, and I
will brieyconsider CEs relationship to three important areas where
political
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opportunity structures shape it in signicant ways. The rst of
these is con-cerned with the traditional relationship between
education and development,which has been a signicant element of CEs
political opportunity structurefor several decades, to the point
where it could be claimed that the changingnature of that
relationship has been a dominant feature of the
politicalopportunity structure. Aid and development are central
elements of thisrelationship, which inuence all three of the
components of the politicalopportunity structure. They provide, for
instance, on the one hand, a power-ful rationale for CE, and, on
the other, a steady ow of doctoral studentswho are to learn what is
current in Western education and how it mightbenet the education
systems to which they will return with that knowledge;and this
mission, though it may vary somewhat in specics over the
years,remains a central feature of what is to count as CE.
In terms of the second area of CE activity that is shaped by its
politicalopportunity structure, it seems fairly clear that at what
might be seen asmacro-level policy, of Politics with a large P, or
possibly, as structurallyselective (see Jessop 2012), CE has
attracted more attention and movedcloser to the limelight in recent
years as a result of the proliferation of com-petitive comparative
measures of school performance at an internationallevel. It seems
like the obvious place for governments to seek expertadvice on
these matters, whether concerned with their technical standing
orthe interpretation of their meaning.
It could appear that these two sets of activities are not only
framed bypower, in the shape of the political opportunity
structure, but could becomebeholden to it, as what the political
opportunity structure enables and offersmay become somewhat
constraining and restrictive, as focus follows funding.There is
clear evidence of this in the UK Research Excellence Framework,
akey element of CEs political opportunity structure, which
powerfully shapesand polices the terrain of legitimate academic
knowledge production.
The third element of the political opportunity structure of CE
operates atan entirely different level, that where standing becomes
important. Likeany other discipline or eld of study, CEs prospects
depend to a consider-able degree on the elds general standing
within academia. And here,notwithstanding the generally low
prestige of education within universities(certainly in most Western
countries), CEs academic standing may be apositive aspect of its
political opportunity structure, certainly by comparisonwith
Teacher Education, for instance. The major bases where CE
ispractised include many of the most prestigious universities in
the world Stanford, Columbia, Toronto, London, Hong Kong and
Beijing Normal, toname but a few. Such associations offer a serious
degree of political con-nection and protection to the practice of
CE elsewhere.
Perhaps the best example of shaping of issues by political
opportunitystructure is Novoa and Yariv-Mashals (2003) celebrated
account of thedilemmas caused for CE by the shifting political
opportunity structures that
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confront it. These present polarised opportunities for CE as, on
the onehand, complicit in, the handmaiden of, the ofcial political
opportunitystructure, as reected in its potential as a tool of
governance, and, on theother, the difcult-to-realise possibility of
making it a potentially emancipa-tory historical study.
Discursive opportunity structures
Ruud Koopmans and Paul Statham (1999) distinguished discursive
opportu-nity structures from the broader concept of political
opportunity structure onthe grounds that the latter tends to
neglect cultural dynamics that also playa pivotal role in movement
outcomes (228); that is to say, they focused onhow the content of
policies, as well as their processes, was shaped strategically
selected by the political processes through which it wasformed. As
they explain it in a later paper:
Political discourse analysis takes the emergence and public
visibility of framesas an indicator for the meaning giving side of
challenges to dominant politi-cal and cultural norms, values and
problem denition, relating framing [ofproblems] to the dominant set
of cultural and political norms, i.e., to discur-sive opportunity
structures. (Koopmans et al. 2005, 23)
Thus, as one leading theorist of social movements, Myra Marx
Ferree(2003), put it, the concept of discursive opportunity
structure as an institu-tionally anchored gradient of opportunity
provides [the] missing linkbetween discourse and power, and it also
claries the difference betweendiscursive context and strategic
choice (339). Ferree (2009) also points outthat ofcial texts such
as policies:
never speak for themselves, but need to be interpreted,
implemented andenforced they offer a discursive structure an
institutionalized frameworkof connections made among people,
concepts and events that shapes theopportunities of political
actors by making some sorts of connections appearinevitable and
making others conspicuously uncertain and so especially invit-ing
for debate. (89)
One example of how the concept of discursive opportunity
structure mightbe used in comparing aspects of national education
systems comes from aneight-country European study of educational
transitions (into and out oflower-secondary education), which I
have been involved in. One major dif-culty that we confronted was
that of nding a way that we could compare andnot merely juxtapose
the various countries policies on transition. Since theywere
strictly not comparable at the empirical level, we adopted the
strategy ofconstructing a tertium comparationis, a third element,
on the basis of theirrelationship to which we could compare all the
countries. The element we set-tled on was the countries
understandings of, and responses to, migrant young
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people. We chose this issue because though it was not at the
centre of anycountrys education policy, they all recognised it as a
problem that they had tond a means of tackling. It was in
addressing this problem that the value ofthe discursive opportunity
approach became apparent. In essence, the coun-tries all construed
and constructed the problem, what it was a problem ofand how it
could be solved in quite different ways. One key basis of
thesedifferences in construing and addressing the problem was the
ways that theywrote and talked about it and, especially, how they
tried to categorise andrelate it to existing and available
problems. That is to say, their responses wereall framed, at quite
a deep level, by the different (national) political and dis-cursive
opportunity structures available to them. This was most
clearlydemonstrated in the ways that they categorised and named the
migrants. Forthe Dutch, they were Allochtoon meaning from
elsewhere, but subject toseveral meanings entailing forms of
otherness; the Italians referred to non-Italian speakers and the
British to ethnic minorities, while the FrenchRepublican tradition
effectively prevented them from naming differences thatwere not
supposed to exist. One fundamental and exemplary difference wasthat
found between countries like France, where citizenship is based on
iussoli (country of birth), and Germany, where it is based on ius
sanguinis (thelaw of blood). Recognising these differences enabled
us to provide muchmore nuanced accounts not just of countries
attitudes to migrant children, butalso, for instance, to compare
the nature and consequences of conceptions ofthe national within
the education system.
Colin Hay (2011) summarises the interplay of what we are
referring toas discursive opportunity structures as follows:
established ideas become codied, serving as cognitive lters
through whichactors come to interpret environmental signals also
concerned with the condi-tions under which such established
cognitive lters and paradigms are con-tested, challenged and
replaced access to strategic resources and toknowledge of the
institutional environment is unevenly distributed actorsperceptions
about what is feasible, legitimate, possible and desirable are
shapedboth by the institutional environment in which they nd
themselves and byexisting policy paradigms and worldviews. It is
through such cognitive ltersthat strategic conduct is
conceptualised and ultimately assessed. (69)
Here, the feasible, the legitimate and the possible can be seen
as elementscontained within the discursive opportunity
structure.
Theoretical opportunity structures
Trying to identify and account for the different kinds of
theoretical opportu-nity structures that frame CE is a formidable
task indeed, well worthy of astudy in itself, which means that this
section will tend even more to theillustrative rather than
substantive than the rest of the paper. To this end, Iwant to
establish from the start that my focus will be on the
assumptions
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about power on which theories rest rather than on their
explanatory effec-tiveness though, of course, these things can be
separated only for pur-poses of exposition.
It is useful to start by returning to Karabel and Halseys (1977)
argumentabout what might be called the sources of theory choice,
which they locateoutside disciplines rather than internal to them
and which, of course, isfundamental to the opportunity structure
argument in general. We mightthen start with the location of CE
within the academy, which, notwith-standing the prominent sites
mentioned above, may more generally beregarded as a sub-eld of a
low-status area of study that struggles with itsown disciplinary
distinctiveness and claims. Indeed, agonising over claimsto and
denitions of its scope, purpose and identity has constituted a
signi-cant strand of work within CE since its beginnings. This has
often entaileddifcult entanglements between concepts and
consequences of the relation-ships of theory, methodology and
methods.
One major consequence of these two things (academic location and
fail-ure to agree on what identies the eld in terms of approaches,
etc.) is thattheories tend to be appropriated from a range of
disciplines and theoreticaltraditions. (Lest we think this
necessarily casts a long shadow of piecemealeclecticism over the
process, we should bear in mind the enormous successof the
development of world culture theory, which was very largely
accom-plished within the eld of CE). However, as I have just noted,
the issuehere is not so much the effectiveness of theories as the
opportunity struc-tures that frame their choice, and the
consequences of this for their assump-tions about the nature and
consequences of power.
The most directly useful tool of analysis here is Robert Coxs
(1996) dis-tinction between problem-solving and critical theories,
and the ways inwhich these have been appropriated whether
implicitly or explicitly in CEconstitute a major element of its
theoretical opportunity structure. Cox distin-guishes what he calls
problem-solving theory from critical theory, where:
The general aim of problem solving is to make [social and power]
relation-ships and institutions [into which they are organised]
work smoothly by deal-ing effectively with particular sources of
trouble. The strength of theproblem-solving approach lies in its
ability to x limits or parameters to aproblem area and to reduce
the statement of a particular problem to a limitednumber of
variables which are amenable to relatively close and precise
exam-ination. (88)
By contrast:
Critical theory, unlike problem-solving theory, does not take
institutions andsocial power relations for granted but calls them
into question by concerningitself with their origins and how and
whether they might be in the process ofchanging. It is directed
toward an appraisal of the very framework for action which
problem-solving theory accepts as its parameters. (8889)
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Partly inspired by this distinction, around 10 years ago I (Dale
2004) wrotea brief commentary on what could be seen as some
parameters of the theo-retical opportunity structures of education
policy studies an appropriatecomparator for CE in many ways. In
addition to the Coxian distinction, Ipointed to three other sets of
metatheoretical or pretheoretical assump-tions made in the study of
education policy, which are directly relevanthere. These were the
degree of disciplinary parochialism (which in that casewas
determined by the existence of the word education in the title of
thearticle or the journal in which it was published); the level of
ethnocentrismthey contained; and the relationship between analysis
and advocacy in thetexts. In the case of contemporary CE, we could
say that disciplinaryparochialism has been replaced by something of
a disciplinary smorgasbord,drawing, sometimes rather promiscuously,
on a variety of elements culledfrom a range of approaches.
These issues emerge in somewhat different ways in what we might
seeas the major substantive elements framing CEs current
theoretical opportu-nity structures: the availability of
large-scale international educational data-bases, on the one hand,
and the nature and consequences of globalisation,on the other, both
of which, albeit in somewhat contrasting ways, contributestrongly
to the theoretical opportunity structures.
In terms of the second, ethnocentrism, especially in the form of
method-ological nationalsm, had to give way to developing
understandings of therelationships between globalisation and
education, which is clearly an issuethat is absolutely central to
CE. However, while a range of theories havebeen advanced, the
dominant approach in CE over the past two decades hasbeen the
world-polity or world-culture theory advanced in particular byJohn
Meyer and Francisco Ramirez and colleagues. This approach has
setthe agenda for CE and laid down a theoretical opportunity
structure that hasbecome an orthodoxy that has until relatively
recently been almost unchal-lenged. While I do not have time or
space to go into the details of theapproach (but see Dale 2000), it
is crucial for the current argument to try toisolate the
assumptions about power that underlie this dominant framework.
These are especially important since they have consequences not
just forwhat counts as CE, but also implications for the
understanding of power.
The theoretical opportunity structure framed by World Culture
Theoryhas a number of key features with consequences for conception
of powerwithin CE. First, it posits and assumes a preference among
nation-stateactors for the principles of market economies and
democratic polities, sothat:
Instead of describing and explaining, world culture scholars
have beenincreasingly involved in selectively identifying and
advocating for the globaldiffusion of particular education models
[which] reect particular Westernand, especially, North American
ideals, thus legitimizing dominant
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educational paradigms and compromising the possibilities for
understandingactual processes of global convergence in education.
(Carney, Rappleye, andSilova 2012, 368)
Second, it has little or no conception of agency. Institutional
theory restson an assumption of how conformity occurs and is by its
nature antitheticalto the notion of agency (Fligstein and McAdam
2014, 28) and has notheory of change.
Third, Fligstein and McAdam argue that:
[The world polity theorists] view of institutional action is
that once a set ofrules and resources becomes institutionalised
they become taken for granted,so that [I]nstitutions take on a life
of their own, and people are reduced toautomatons, who download
scripts that tell them what to do. (179)
while:
their conception of actors is to remove them from mattering by
making thempassive recipients of scripts from outside about what
people like themshould or should not do. This substitutes a
cultural kind of structuralism for amore resource-based view of
structure. (219)
Fourth, there is no recognition of any interests apart from a
commonglobal interest that is contained within the world culture
framework.
The signicance and consequences of recognising the nature and
impor-tance of its theoretical opportunity structures on the
understanding of powerand its consequences for CE as an activity
could not be made clearer.
Methodological opportunity structures
It has often been suggested that its methodology is what
particularly distin-guishes and denes CE as a eld of study, and
this is reected in several ofthe accounts of the historical
development of the eld. This has created astrong tradition of
methodological discussion, much of which seems to bedevoted to
denitively describing the eld of CE. It is particularly when wecome
to consider CEs methodological opportunity structures, then, that
weencounter what might be called internal opportunity structures,
for instancein the path-dependent consequences of the central
debates. However, evenhere, we nd external factors at play. The
most signicant of these maybe the nding/claim that CEs have
signicantly differing national originsand (associated)
methodological opportunity structures, which themselvesbecome a
topic for comparison. One good example of this is ChristopheCharles
(2013) comparison of and explanation of the differencesbetween
different countries (mainly France the assumed base of
thecomparative endeavour Germany and the UK) conceptions of
comparativeand historical sociology. He starts by pointing out that
there is very little
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comparative work in French studies of social issues, and this,
he suggests,is largely due to:
the local and regional focus of most history theses, the
politicization of his-torical debates mainly on a national basis,
and the assumed uniqueness ofFrance based on the Revolution, an
exceptionalism that limits the possibilityof comparison with other
countries. (68)
Such prejudices have been a decisive obstacle to comparison
(69), espe-cially, perhaps, as they may also be found in other
countries (in the case ofthe UK, its whig approach to history).
Alongside such different genealogies, we nd much more mundane,
butalso much more pressing, inuences on methodological opportunity
struc-tures. These relate most importantly to the need for funding
to carry outstudies in CE. It is possible to carry out very
successful and valuablelibrary-based studies in CE, of which
Charles own, and that of Schreiwerin the same volume are notable
examples, but such studies are not sufcientin themselves to carry
the whole weight of CE inquiry as the merestglimpse at the contents
of the elds journals quickly attests. The fact is thatalmost any of
CEs methodologies and methods carry major implications oftime and
resources, generating considerable funding requirements,
necessi-tating explicit and implicit trade-offs. At its most basic,
in order to com-pare different countries it is useful to have
rst-hand knowledge of them,and to know them well enough to base
academic comparative analyses ofthem, it is highly desirable to be
able to visit them, preferably for extendedperiods of eldwork,
which is very expensive. And, of course, similar casescould be made
for other forms of data collection and analysis in CE.
Thus, issues of nancial feasibility are central elements of CEs
method-ological opportunity structure, with at least three serious
implications. Oneof these is the likelihood of serious cost-benet
trade-offs in designingresearch. The second is even more signicant.
It is that comparativemethodologies, like practically all education
research methodologies/meth-ods, have been subjected to
considerable direct political control over thepast two decades at
least. The extreme example of this was the US Depart-ment of
Educations refusal to fund any research on the No Child LeftBehind
programme that was not quantitatively based. Similar, if slightly
lessextreme, examples can be seen in the very high emphasis placed
on evi-dence-based research, where what counts as evidence is
similarly closelypoliced. At the very least, we may expect such
patronclient relationships(which is not putting the nature of much
research funding too strongly) tofrequently generate explicit and
implicit methodological trade-offs.
And, third, it is crucial to recognise that where it is possible
to accessadequate funding, it rarely comes without a
(methodological) price. Beyondtight funding and political
constraints on CEs methodological choices, we
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frequently nd conditions of access, to research sites, or
databases, forinstance, made subject to conditions that have
signicant methodologicalimplications. This can have signicant
consequences, for instance, for whatis probably the most popular
methodology in CE, the case study (not leaston the grounds of its
strong suitability as a basis for PhD study, which is akey means of
securing CEs place in academia). Within case studymethodology, the
choice of case(s) can frequently be crucial, yet frequentlythis may
turn out to be a Hobsons choice, with signicant
methodologicalimplications.
Finally in this section, it is impossible to ignore the arrival
at the centreof the CE enterprise of PISA. Like other huge
quantitative cross-nationaldatabases that have long provided a
major source of CE research, theirattraction seems to be based on
their availability and potential for forms ofcompetitive
comparison, rather than any strong theoretical rationales. And
ithardly needs pointing out that such data are very much taken by
CE,rather than made by it.
These examples are intended to be illustrative of the relevance
of exter-nal, sometimes apparently extrinsic, constraints on CEs
methodologicalopportunity structures. In some ways this may be the
most immediatelyimportant of the opportunity structures we have
discussed in this section,because it is the most visible, the most
deeply rooted and the closest to theheart of the practices that
compose CE.
Power in CE
By power in CE I am referring to the ways that it (power) has
historicallybeen conceptualised in academic work in the area. My
intention is not topoint to what might be seen as typical
deployments of the concept, but tofocus as far as possible more
broadly to the forms and assumptions aboutthe nature and operation
of power within the eld. There is no shortage ofreferences to power
in CE textbooks and articles but, with a few notableexceptions,
often the concept is somewhat ineffectively problematised. Thefocus
and contexts of references to power tend to refer to discussions
aboutpower in Education, rather than to Comparative studies in
other areas ofsocial science, where power may be differently
problematised. Meaningstend to be somewhat implicit and
consequential, typically assuming Lukes(1974) rst dimension of
power,3 the ability to prevail in decision-making,and based on
forms of methodological nationalism and methodological stat-ism,
and it may be signicant in this regard that one of the commoner
waysthat the term seems to be used is as a means of referring to a
national state as in Western powers (see Dale 2005).
However, there are clear signs that this situation may be
changing. Inparticular, there has been a retreat from the
state-centred assumptions that
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tended to associate power with (government) policy as the key
mode ofgoverning education, which seemed to prevail until the turn
of the century,and their replacement by such different
transnational output-based forms ofgoverning as New Public
Management and, especially, the turn to quantita-tively based and
transnationally created and supported competitive compar-ison
between education systems. These are largely based on
thequantication of qualitative differences, typied and emblematised
in thePISA studies, which have extended the depth and reach of
competitive com-parison to a point where it can clearly be seen to
be shaping national prefer-ences and expectations.
A second major shift in conceptions of power has been to move
awayfrom the conventional state-centred, top-down model of
education policymaking to embrace much more of its operation in
conditions that are oftenreferred to as the messiness of power as
cultural, or as a function ofknowledge, where power is seen as
productive rather than structural. Oneproblem that arises here,
however, occurs when these different approachesare seen as
competing, zero-sum alternatives, rather than as at least
mutuallycompatible, as I argue below.
Given this, it becomes very useful to draw on wider power
literatures,as a means of distinguishing these quite different
meanings and uses ofpower in CE. These can be distinguished across
two, interlinked, dimen-sions.
The rst dimension has been most effectively advanced by Ann
SholaOrloff (2012). She distinguished between two analytic
approaches that arebased on what she refers to as power and
politics, and discussed howthese have been deployed in social
science. Her argument is that these twoapproaches represent
different responses to changing conditions of whatmight most
usefully be referred to generically as post-Fordism. What sherefers
to as politics (as conceived in the political science literature)
isfocused on structural issues of the state, broadly conceived. The
alterna-tive, power, is associated with the (broadly Foucauldian)
cultural turn,which tends to see power everywhere. We might see
this reected in CEin (albeit frequently tacit) discussions about
whether the eld should con-cern itself with politics or with
policy. Another way that this has beenrepresented is as different
modalities of power sovereignty and biopower.In particular, she
points to the somewhat impoverished conceptions of poli-tics
adopted by those who followed the cultural turn, where too often
poli-tics is anything that reproduces, reects or resists existing
distributions ofresource and power (8) and where power had no
empirical referents.Quoting Linda Zerilli, Orloff points out that
the word political signies arelation between things, not a
substance in anything (10), and goes on toemphasise that:
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while it is necessary to recognize the potential political
character of all socialrelations, [since] power is constitutive and
productive of these and other rela-tions, we can distinguish
individual resistance or the everyday reproduction ofsocial
structures from politics, which is public and collective. (11)
So, while the focus of this paper will tend in the direction of
the struc-tural, rather than the cultural, it is crucial to bear in
mind that these arenot to be seen as mutually exclusive
alternatives, in the sense of having topick sides, as often appears
to be the case in social science, but rather asnot only mutually
compatible but potentially mutually productive. Thesearguments draw
considerably on the work of Andrew Sayer (2004), whoexplains the
mutual compatibility of the two approaches through demon-strating
how they can both be understood through the medium of a
realistapproach. He proposes that:
[What we have been referring to as cultural approaches] in the
form of ideassuch as performativity, governmentality and capillary
power can all be theo-rized in a realist way [i.e., as mechanisms]
[and this] avoids the kind of iden-tity thinking which assumes that
discourses and their effects correspond. Discourses can be
performative [which implies that they cause change],though they can
fail as well as succeed in producing intended effects. Poweras
productive ts well with critical realist accounts of causal powers
[for real-ists, a cause is whatever produces a change] concepts of
governmentalityand capillary power can be seen as forms of
dispersed power which operatepartly through processes of
internalization and self-discipline by actors ratherthan internal
pressure. (17)
Power of CE
The potential power of CE lies fundamentally in providing
different ways ofseeing the world, of going beyond and behind
concrete examples of educa-tional practice, with a view to
indicating how they might be improved orhow they might be
explained. These reect, reproduce and generate, respec-tively, two
quite different forms and purposes of the potential value of CE,on
the basis of a distinction that has run right through this
presentation,which we might refer to here as the distinction
between CE as a producerof expertise and CE as a producer of
explanation.
However, the nature and forms of power that CE is able to
exercise arethemselves subject to opportunity structures, and in
this case the crucialopportunity structure framing the power of CE
is essentially the marketfor CE knowledge. We might refer to this
as a valorisation opportunitystructure, which frames the ways that
CE knowledge and understandings arerealised and deployed in the
world. The evidence below suggests that thisopportunity structure
comes down decisively on the side of the productionof expertise
rather than of explanation.
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As with the other opportunity structures we have discussed,
recognitionis mainly achieved through perceived policy relevance,
continuing thetime-honoured commitment [of] CE to policy-oriented
research relevant tothe world around it (King 1997, 90, quoted in
Crossley 2000, 323), thoughthis might be seen to be regularly
changing fashion in development policy(McGrath 2001, 394) as part
of the basis of shifting valorisation opportunitystructures.
The medium for this opportunity structure is constructions of
expertise,and markets for such expertise, which becomes a key part
of the vocabularyof CE.
Expertise has been seen as an attempt to produce symbiosis
betweenscientic and political authority, to be politically
subservient, but epistemo-logically authoritative (Davies 2011,
346). The major attraction of expertise,however, may be that, like
quantication, it can be presented as an antidoteto partiality and
this has a number of clear consequences for the forms itmay take,
such as evidence-based policy. The potential signicance of theuse
of expert groups becomes clearer when we consider how extensively
theyare used, especially by the OECD and the European Commission.
In termsof the former, it is important to heed Sotiria Greks (2013)
conclusion thatthere now exists an expertocracy that specialises in
expertise and the sell-ing of undisputed, universal policy
solutions have now drifted into one singleentity and function
(695), and she goes on to suggest that the OECD hasbecome a site of
coproduction of both knowledge and social order (Grek2014). In the
EU, according to Ase Gornitzka (2007), the:
DGEACs [Directorate-General for Education and Cultures]
structure of com-mittees and expert groups is a poignant [sic =
powerful?] indication of thenetworked administrative systems
dealing with education and training as apolicy area. The DGEAC has
a well developed committee structure that con-nects the European
Commission to education policy actors and expertiseacross Europe:
in 2006, it organized 70 expert groups, ranking it eighth of allDGs
in terms of number of expert groups. (12)
Romuald Normand (2010) concludes his account of the role of
expertise inthe construction of the European strategy in education
by emphasising that:
the expertise which presents itself as neutral and universal,
gives the impres-sion that policy makers manage public action with
method and rationality,[while] expertise also helps to elaborate a
common vision of public issues ineducation so the Commission can
act as an entrepreneur in the area of life-long learning without
risking any intrusion in the affairs of states. (415)
The consequences of these arguments for CE valorisation
opportunity struc-ture are that as experts, exponents of CE can be
seen to be triply detached from their academic roots, from their
national origins and from accusa-tions of partiality, a fairly
thorough deracination.
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Having pointed to the salience of conceptions of expertise, it
is impor-tant to consider the implications of this for social
science in general, as wellas for CE. Some of these implications
have been very well elaborated byBruno Theret (2005), who refers
to:
the autonomy of knowledge from power as a condition of the truly
demo-cratic exercise of scholarly comparison which is essential to
enable us totake distance from the societies we grew up in [but]
can be easily threatenedin multiple ways by political or
administrative logic because it is verydifcult for researchers
totally to free themselves from forms of statethought, where we are
thought by our own states. This state thoughtoccurs at an
individual level, in the organization of research, where it
takesthe form of academicism and is objectied in the research
instrumentsthat shape the political form of the problems that
science is called upon toaddress, and the information available to
do it. These forms of dependenceare experienced at several levels,
such as the status of the researcher role,means of access to
empirical information, and forms of recognition of aca-demic work.
The interplay of all these things can lead researchers to con-vert
themselves more or less voluntarily into experts, or at least make
such achange easier. (9192)
Theret concludes, The extent to which a researcher carrying out
the role ofexpert can still count him/herself as involved in the
logic of the scienticeld becomes a key issue for the scientic
community (92, all translationsmine, RD).
Summary and conclusion
It may be helpful at this point to indicate briey the directions
in which thevarious opportunity structures I have discussed might
direct the efforts andeffects of CE.
In terms of discursive opportunity structures, it matters
considerablywhich discourses are seen as dominant and most
compelling for exponentsof CE in seeking to carry on with their
trade. We might see here a clear dis-tinction between educational
and economic discourses.
The discussion of political opportunity structures suggests that
CE isunder pressure to move in the direction of expertise, with an
element ofpolitical dependence and possibly also
accountability.
Theoretical opportunity structures might be seen to frame CE as
essen-tially problem solving, and addressing external audiences
rather than thedevelopment of the eld itself.
And as we saw, methodological opportunity structures seem to be
mov-ing towards implementing a patronclient relationship, which
seems to bereinforced by a valorisation opportunity structure that
places an emphasison the need to provide policy-relevant
expertise.
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What role for CE?
To conclude, I will attempt very briey to specify more clearly
the kinds ofpossibilities afforded CE by its various opportunity
structures. I will do thisby employing Michael Burawoys (2004)
classication of forms of what hecalls sociological labour, which I
think provides a relevant and perhapsrevealing framework for
estimating where CE might nd itself, and howthat corresponds to how
it would like to nd itself. Burawoy plots forms ofsociological
labour across a 22 table, where one axis is made up of
socio-logical knowledge classied as instrumental or reexive and the
otherof audiences for the work of sociologists academic and
extra-academic.He draws four ideal types from the matrix:
Professional Sociology, formedby instrumental knowledge and an
academic audience, which provideslegitimacy, expertise, distinctive
problem denitions, relevant bodies ofknowledge, and techniques for
analyzing data (1609); Policy Sociology,which combines instrumental
knowledge with an extra-academic audience,and focuses on solutions
to specic problems dened by clients (1608);Critical Sociology,
formed on the basis of reexive knowledge and an aca-demic audience,
which questions the moral foundations of existing profes-sional
sociology (1609); and, nally, Public Sociology, based on
reexiveknowledge and an extra-academic audience, which engages
publics beyondthe academy in dialogue about matters of political
and moral concern(1607).
It is crucial to note Burawoys insistence that these four types
are notmutually exclusive, and can be expected to combine in
various ways.Nevertheless, while these are very much capsule
denitions, and Burawoyhas elaborated them in much more complex
ways, my hope is that they willprovide a set of alternatives that
is sufciently recognisable to enable expo-nents of CE to use them
as a basis for judgment of the value of the socio-logical approach
I have adopted, even if/as it may point to gaps betweenthe elds
aspirations and the constraints.
But, nally, the most important conclusion to be drawn about the
rela-tionship between CE and power in this context is the crucial
need, howeverinadequate the attempt made here, to establish the
point that not seeking todiscover the causes of things (which I
continue to believe is within thecapacity of CE and should be a
central part of its practice) entails ignoringthe nature of the
power that keeps them in place. There is, of course, noguarantee
that discovering such explanations will change the world, but itmay
possibly enable more of the reality of the world, and especially
ofwhat sustains it in its present forms, to be revealed.
AcknowledgementsPresidential Address at the British Association
for International and ComparativeEducation Conference, Bath,
September 9, 2014.
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Disclosure statementNo potential conict of interest was reported
by the author.
Notes1. There are afnities here with Maria Manzons (2011)
outstanding analysis of
CE as a eld constructed not purely out of an inner logic based
on cognitivecriteria, but also [by] power relations (2) and, in a
rather different way, withMichelle Schweisfurths (2014)
entertaining and insightful quasi-anthropologi-cal account of CEs
tribes.
2. I am quite aware that there are several different strands of
CE, but identifyingthem, and discussing their differences,
interesting and important as it would be,is not central to the
purpose of this paper, which is to identify some of thewider
elements framing the eld as a whole. Differences between
tendencieswithin CE are taken as different interpretations of sets
of external opportunitystructures that are broadly common to all of
them. However, it will be useful inthis context to briey indicate
the differences between what I will refer to asexternal opportunity
structures, which frame the eld as a whole, and inter-nal path
dependencies, which help explain the formation and continuities
anddiscontinuities of the ways that CE has responded to the
external opportunitystructures. Perhaps the simplest way of doing
this is to suggest that opportunitystructures frame all
possibilities for the eld, but they do not determine the out-comes
of the activities taking place within the discipline in (typically
tacit)response to them. Those responses themselves develop along
different lines ontologically, epistemologically, theoretically,
methodologically and so on and these different sets of responses
not only differentiate themselves from eachother, but separate
themselves into possibly quite distinct schools, or ap-proaches.
These schools and approaches themselves become sedimented
inparticular ways, in a process that can be seen as laying down
distinct pathsfor others to follow. Such a process is at the heart
of the theoretical approachknown as path dependency, whose central
argument is that initial sets of deci-sions and conditions affect
and may set limits to subsequent decisions andoccurrences, or that
the ways that things have previously been organised andimagined
inuence the ways they are organised now. So, to put it at its
sim-plest, the bottom line of this discussion is that opportunity
structures constitutethe external framing of CE, while the internal
responses to these framingsthemselves may be signicantly path
dependent. And it is in the interplaysbetween the two that the eld
develops, though it is crucial to note that theexternal framings,
opportunity structures of academic elds, are not constant
orconsistent, but subject to varying degrees and directions of
external pressure.
3. Lukes (1974) distinguishes three dimensions of power. In the
rst, the person withthe power in a situation is the person who
prevails in the decision-making process.In the second dimension,
shaping the agenda around which decisions are to bemade is an
important source of power. The third dimension applies to the power
ofshaping the preferences of those involved in political choices,
for instance.
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Abstract Introduction Power `over` CE Political opportunity
structures of CE Discursive opportunity structures Theoretical
opportunity structures Methodological opportunity structures
Power `in` CE Power `of` CE Summary and conclusion What role for
CE?
Acknowledgements Disclosure statementNotesReferences
