This article analyzes how childcare vouchers were introduced in the context of the Swedish welfare state by examining vital political decisions from the prohibition of publicly funded private preschools in 1984 and onwards. Basing our argument on theories of political institutions and historical institutionalism, we argue that this remarkable…

Education privatization is a global trend that has nonetheless followed multiple trajectories. This article addresses the question of what explains this variation by demonstrating the role that political coalitions play in the re-interpretation of global privatization ideas. A political-coalitional approach helps us analyze from a long-term…

Following the Tomorrow's Schools administrative restructuring, a second wave of educational change installed globalised discourses as governmentality policies in Aotearoa New Zealand. Drawing on Foucault's "toolkit", this genealogical policy chronology traces the transformation of curriculum and assessment into a specific political…

This policy chronology traces the institution of globalised school curriculum and assessment discourses, as a vernacular and specific form of public rationalisation and educational governmentality in Aotearoa New Zealand. Without functional national standards or national testing, official discourses constructed an assessment-driven framework as a…

This article reflects on the desire to defend and claim public education amidst the educational policy effects of contemporary neoliberal politics. The defence of public education, from schools to higher education, undoubtedly provides a powerful counter-veiling weight to the neoliberal policy logic of education-as-individual-value-accrual. At a…