Reformpolitik von Bildung und Ausbildung in westlichen Wohlfahrtsstaaten
Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse
This project studied the political and historical foundations of education and training systems in Western Europe and in other OECD countries from the perspective of comparative political economy and welfare state research. As already expected in the original funding proposal, we found striking similarities between the institutional design of education systems on the one hand and the prevailing welfare state regimes on the other. Thus, we were able to identify and verify the existence of different “worlds of education”, which we call the statist, the liberal, and the collective skill formation regimes. Moreover, we identified similar “worlds” regarding higher education systems. These regimes largely correspond to the well-known worlds of welfare state capitalism. In explaining these similarities, we make use of established theories in comparative political economy, in particular partisan theory, historical institutionalism, and power resources theory. However, in contrast to earlier studies we expand the perspective of partisan politics by taking into account the degree of economic coordination (“Varieties of Capitalism”) and institutional legacies, which influence the impact of partisan on education policy reform during the critical juncture of the post-war period. More specifically, where social democrats dominated the political arena in coordinated economies (i.e. in Scandinavian countries, in particular Sweden), school-based forms of vocational education and training (VET) were promoted and fully integrated into the general and comprehensive secondary school system, which corresponds to the universalist character of the social democratic Scandinavian welfare states. In the collective skill formation regime (to be found in many Continental European countries, e.g. Germany), the political dominance of Christian democrats in the post-war period in interaction with the institutions of coordinated capitalism contributed to the preservation of firm-based VET (apprenticeships), which also had consequence for the future development of higher education. Finally, where VET was based on the class conflict between employers and craft unions such as in the United Kingdom, political attempts to establish collective skill formation schemes often failed due to the liberal voluntarist character of liberal market economies. As a consequence, these systems are characterized by a strong focus on academic higher education and by a high private share in education financing. The institutional and policy choices taken during the critical juncture of the post-war period have strong implications for contemporary patterns of social inequality. For instance, we find that levels of social inequality (in terms of income and wage inequality) are lower in countries with a welldeveloped VET system, because this type of education caters to the educational and labor market needs of those in the lower half of the academic skills distribution. Another important finding is that inequality is significantly higher in countries with a high share of private spending in education. The latter aspect is of course related to the complex politics of student tuition fees and subsidies. One subproject within this project therefore focused on exploring this issue in depth. Combining qualitative case studies with quantitative analyses of aggregate- and individual-level data, the findings of the subproject correspond to the overarching theoretical framework: Partisan politics – in particular during the critical junctures of the postwar decades – matters for the contemporary design of systems of student finance. In a second subproject, we studied the impact of partisan politics on the establishment of collective skill formation institutions in liberal market economies. Traditional institutionalist perspectives would lead us to expect that these attempts will be unsuccessful, but a closer analysis reveals that government parties can be partially successful in promoting collective skill formation even in a liberal setting, when they promote social partnership between unions and employers rather than class conflict. The project’s findings were disseminated widely in academic outlets (international peer-reviewed journals as well as edited volumes and English-language monographs). Furthermore, the most important findings were communicated in interviews with public media (e.g., the DeutschlandRadio, SWR1, DRadio Wissen, SPIEGEL Online) and short commentaries in journals and outlets with a focus on applied research (e.g., the Policy Network based in the UK, the Friedrich-Ebert Foundation and journals such as Personalführung and Berufsbildung in Wissenschaft und Praxis.
Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)
- 2013. "Who Owns Education? Cleavage Structures in the Partisan Competition over Educational Expansion." West European Politics 36 (3): 521-546
Busemeyer, Marius R., Simon T. Franzmann, and Julian L. Garritzmann
- 2014. "Partisan power, economic coordination and the variation of vocational training systems in European countries." European Journal of Industrial Relations 20 (1): 55-71
Busemeyer, Marius R., and Raphaela Schlicht-Schmälzle
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1177/0959680113512731) - 2014. "The Politics of Opting Out: Explaining educational financing and popular support for public spending." Socio-Economic Review 12 (2): 1-26
Busemeyer, Marius R., and Torben Iversen
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwu005) - 2014. The Political Economy of Skills and Inequality, Special Issue of the Socio-Economic Review (Volume 12, issue 2)
Busemeyer, Marius R., and Torben Iversen (Eds.)
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwu013) - 2015. "Socio-economic institutions, organized interests and partisan politics: The development of vocational education in Denmark and Sweden." Socio-Economic Review 13 (2): 259-284
Dobbins, Michael and Marius R. Busemeyer
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwu002) - 2015. Skills and inequality: Partisan politics and the political economy of education reforms in Western welfare states. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Busemeyer, Marius R.
- 2015. ”Attitudes towards student support: How positive feedback-effects prevent change in the Four Worlds of Student Finance.” Journal of European Social Policy 25 (2): 139-158
Garritzmann, Julian L.
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1177/0958928715573478) - 2015: Collective Skill Formation in Liberal Market Economies? The Politics of Training Reforms in the United Kingdom, Ireland and Australia. Dissertation, University of Konstanz
Vossiek, Janis
(Siehe online unter https://dx.doi.org/10.3726/b11227) - 2016. "Global convergence or path dependency? Skill formation regimes in the globalized economy." In The Handbook of global education policy, edited by Karen Mundy, Andy Green, Bob Lingard and Antoni Verger. Handbook of Global Policy Series. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 145-161
Busemeyer, Marius R. and Janis Vossiek
- 2016: ""Mission impossible?" Aufbau dualer Berufsausbildung in England und Irland", WSI Mitteilungen, 69 (4), 254-263
Busemeyer, Marius R. and Janis Vossiek
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.5771/0342-300X-2016-4-254) - 2016: The Political Economy of Higher Education Finance. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan
Garritzmann, Julian L.
- 2016: “Party Politics and Education Spending. Challenging Some Common Wisdom”. Journal of European Public Policy. 23 (4): 510-530
Garritzmann, Julian L. and Kilian Seng
(Siehe online unter https://doi.org/10.1080/13501763.2015.1048703)
