Forming a supranational boundary-spanning policy regime – European intersectoral coordination in education and employment

While much attention has been paid to European policy arrangements in individual policy fields, European intersectoral policy coordination has been mostly an overlooked phenomenon, especially within the sectors of education and employment. Thus, in the introductory paper for this Special Issue, we offer a contemporary discussion of European intersectoral policy coordination. We firstly review the literature on intersectoral policy coordination, and secondly look at the application of concepts related to intersectoral policy coordination to supranational arrangements, especially the European Union. We then employ the concept of boundary-spanning policy regime and the related ‘I’ framework (issues, ideas, interests, and institutions) to discuss the individual pieces’ contributions. This serves to explore the strength of the intersectoral perspective when analysing European policy coordination in education and employment. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of this approach and offer a research agenda to study supranational intersectoral policy coordination (in education and employment).

Intersectoral policy coordination has garnered considerable attention in the study of the European Commission (EC) over the past few decades. Within the EC, a logic of hierarchy and a logic of policy portfolios coexist, often leading to a conflictual and complex relationship. While the literature has extensively explored the internal dynamics of the EC, there has been less focus on the role of external dynamics in influencing intersectoral policy coordination. This paper addresses this gap by examining the case of European policy coordination in education and employment and how both internal and external dynamics can hinder or facilitate policy coordination within the EC. Based on the analysis of interviews with EC actors and various EU policy documents, the paper discusses how these internal and external dynamics have affected policy coordination, highlighting elements of both positive and negative coordination.

This volume is devoted to the analysis of the insides of European Commission policy-making in education. A central theme of the book is the governmentality of European educational policy-making and, specifically, the role of private organizations within it — that is, the role of private companies in supporting the European Commission in its ‘policy-creation’ processes through the provision of policy advice and evaluation services. Such policy-creation processes have, since 2000, been framed by the use of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), an intergovernmental form of European Union (EU) governance based on the voluntary cooperation of member states and the EU through the use of common indicators and benchmarks, reporting and the sharing of best practice. As a result of this, the OMC as a policy tool to steer national governments (Lange and Alexiadou, 2007; Souto-Otero et al., 2008) and ‘governing by data’ have recently received much attention in the literature (see Grek, 2009; Lawn and Grek, 2012).

This qualitative research, which adopted a pairing of social constructionism and participatory paradigms, posed the question of how Educational Psychologists and Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators view the role of the Educational Psychologist in supporting mental health and psychological wellbeing in schools. The views of four Educational Psychologists and three Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators were explored through semi-structured interviews. A thematic analysis of the interviews led to two thematic maps being created. Educational Psychologists wished to support the mental health and wellbeing of both children and young people and staff and viewed it as part of their role. However, they were aware of the barriers to engaging in his type of work, which could have wide-reaching implications for practice. The Educational Psychologists gave examples of mental health and wellbeing support that they had given to schools at an individual, group and whole school level. The Educational Psychologists identified a focus on emotional wellbeing that was threaded through all their duties, but acknowledged that this focus was not always recognised or understood by other professionals or service users. The Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators had not previously considered the Educational Psychology role to include mental health and wellbeing within schools but rather carrying out assessment. The Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators called for clarity around the Educational Psychology role and the activities that the Educational Psychology service can offer. The Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators expressed that they would value more support from Educational Psychologists to deliver therapeutic interventions and set up supervision for staff in schools. A working party comprising the principal researcher and the three Special Educational Needs Co-ordinators co-researchers explored the thematic maps and worked collaboratively to agree next steps, including ways in which the role of the Educational Psychologist in supporting mental health and wellbeing could be communicated more clearly with other professionals within the local authority where the research took place.

This chapter outlines the institutional framework in the UK core executive and legislature on European policy coordination. It focuses on the institutional organisation in the analysed time period 1976–2007. Together with the attitudes to Europe integration held by the four prime ministers, their parliamentary parties, the media and the public, which are traced in Chap. 5, these are necessary preliminaries for the subsequent case study analysis. The institutional arrangements in European policy-making and the attitudes to European integration taken by actors in and outside the core executive are part of the leadership environment in which a premier’s political leadership unfolds.

EU Education policy is ‘an a priori very lightly Europeanized policy area’ (Alex Warleigh-Lack & Ralf Drachenberg, Spillover in a Soft Policy Era? Evidence from the Open Method of Coordination in Education and Training, 18(7) J. Eur. Pub. Pol’y 1000 (October 2011)), belonging to the weakest type of Union competence, and of all EU policies, it is the one most strongly influenced by open method of coordination (OMC) (Sacha Garben, The Future of Higher Education in Europe: The Case for a Stronger Base in EU Law, LEQS Paper No. 50/2012, 13 (July 2012)), a policy instrument known for its ‘soft’ character. Yet there is a tension between the soft education policy competence and the soft measure of OMC employed in its framework. EU soft competences are generally explained by Member States’ reluctance to attribute competences to the EU in sensitive policy areas, but the soft instruments used in these areas nevertheless ensure compliance, while evading and bypassing competence and decision-making constraints. This general finding, made clear with the help of fiscal federalism and public choice approaches to EU education policy is also relevant in areas of (exclusive) EU legislative competence where soft instruments are used (such as customs policy). The present article tries to shed light on the various manifestations of softness and their ambivalent relationship with the help of the fiscal federalism and the public choice approach.

Natural and non-natural disasters significantly disrupt healthcare systems, particularly obstetric and gynecological services, which are highly vulnerable to service interruptions and quality decline. Pregnant women, postpartum mothers, and newborns face an increased risk of complications and mortality without adequate medical care. Health professionals play a crucial role in ensuring the continuity of reproductive health services through the implementation of the Minimum Initial Service Package (MISP), emergency management, health education, and intersectoral coordination. However, challenges such as limited resources, psychological pressure, and lack of specialized training hinder optimal performance. Therefore, strengthening the capacity of healthcare workers, enhancing disaster preparedness, providing adequate logistics, and enacting supportive governmental policies are essential to maintain effective obstetric-gynecological care during crises. This literature review comprehensively discusses the role of health workers in ensuring reproductive health services in disaster settings as a strategy to improve access and service quality during emergencies.

Although higher education has always been regarded as a national matter, this relation is weakening due to increased student mobility. Moreover the Bologna Declaration introduces the dual Bachelor-Mastersystem, which uniformizes the structure of higher educational programs. This chapter deals with the question of whether recent developments in higher education might justify lifting coordination of higher education to a higher level, i.e. from a national to a European level. It is related to two other contributions in this book. In Chapter 6 Gerard (2008) discusses the issues of mobile students and mobile researchers and the implications for the assignment of competencies in these cases, based on a theoretical model. Van der Ploeg and Veugelers (2008) take a broader view and discuss the challenges and possibilities for reform of higher education in Europe as well as the subsidiarity perspective in Chapter 5. We follow Van der Ploeg and Veugelers in taking a broad view, but we focus more on carefully disentangling all possible arguments for European coordination of higher education and providing empirical evidence of their importance. In addition, we pay due addition to the developments and determinants of student mobility in Europe.

Despite a political climate demanding evidence-informed decision making in education both within individual countries and at the international level, empirically grounded European research in this field is scarce. This paper reports on a European Commission-funded study that sought to identify and analyze different initiatives across Europe aimed at furthering research-informed policymaking in education, one of a number of comparative analyses in this emerging field. The nature and extent of activity in this area is outlined and an analytical framework is developed to assist understanding. Potential reasons for the observed variation among countries are discussed, along with some of the methodological and conceptual challenges involved in undertaking empirical work in this area. Practically, it is hoped that the results of the mapping exercise and the framework provide a platform for further empirical and conceptual research on research use, an area of study that until recently has been largely ignored by education researchers.

The construction of the European education space has typically been attributed to European education policy makers, institutions, and networks. Rarely do scholars consider the role of outside, non-European actors in shaping the terrain of European education thought and practice. This article considers the construction of the European education space as a borderless project with multidirectional flows of ideas, policies, and academics. While this project has created an intellectual space for the emergence of new theoretical insights and policy instruments within Europe, it has also had inevitable consequences for the study of comparative education outside Europe. This article explores how American scholars have attempted to influence the development of comparative education as a field in the United States by purposefully constructing specific notions of European education during the cold war (1969–85). Drawing on content analysis of comparative education scholarship in Western European Education — a journal published in the United States — this article discusses the role of journal editors in the construction of European education spaces in order to advance not only a marginalized geographical area of study within the expanding American field of comparative education, but also a methodological vision for the future of comparative education, one free of positivist techniques, quantitative methodologies, and modernization ideologies.

This paper analyses, from the perspective of the political sociology of policy instruments, the adoption and re-contextualisation of School Autonomy with Accountability (SAWA) reforms in Spain, with a particular focus on the region of Madrid. Over the last few decades, Madrid has adopted a wide range of education policies that have contributed to consolidate a market-oriented approach in the governance of the educational system. This paper analyses the instrumentation and complex interaction between standardised tests, test-based accountability, school choice and school autonomy in advancing this governance shift. The main objective of the paper is twofold: first, to trace the policy trajectory of SAWA reforms in Spain and Madrid, and second, to identify the rationale of the reform and its related policy ontology in relation to the selection and articulation of different policy instruments as well as the governance implications of these choices. Methodologically, we have conducted a policy analysis case study, analysing data from a set of 35 original interviews with education policymakers and key policy actors, combined with document analysis. The results of our research show how the policy preferences of domestic political actors and the legacies of the politico-administrative regimes mediate the final form and uses of the SAWA policy instruments. These policy instruments can be conceptualised as ‘life objects’ whose development and uses are attached to context specific – and sometimes contradictory – political objectives and rationales.

The ambition of energy policy has long been to reduce carbon emissions, secure energy supply and provide affordable energy services. In recent years an increasing number of policy instruments have been introduced to promote energy efficiency in different sectors across the EU. While previous research has largely analysed the effectiveness of individual policy instruments and their impact on the diffusion of particular energy efficient technologies or practices, our analysis takes a broader view and examines the mix of existing policies aimed at stimulating reductions in energy use. The empirical focus of the paper is on policy goals and instruments aimed at stimulating energy efficiency in buildings in Finland and the United Kingdom (UK). We trace the development of the policy mixes during 2000–2014 and analyse their emerging overall characteristics. The analysis is based on a mapping of policy goals and instruments, documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews with stakeholders. We find that both countries have increasingly complex policy mixes, encompassing a variety of goals and instruments and make use of a range of different instrument types to encourage users to reduce their energy consumption. Despite the shared EU influence, the way in which the policy mixes have evolved in both countries were found to be quite different.

European Policy-Making in Education and Training

Sand and Dust storms (SDS) are meteorological hazards that are increasing due to climate change. Mitigation and adaptation are two main strategies that help to deal with this global concern. In the recent decades, Iran has been prone to SDS. Therefore, this study was conducted in 2018 in order to explore the SDS adaptation experiences and strategies in the Iranian community. Using content analysis approach and purposive sampling, three groups (including 14 experts, 8 authorities, and 23 individuals) were selected. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews. Data analysis was performed using Graneheim and Lundman's method. Finally, Gaba and Lincoln's scientific criteria were used for data validity. Two major categories emerged from the analysis. The first category was related to the adaptation experiences and included two subcategories: "citizens' experiences" and "experts'/ authorities' experiences". The second was related to SDS adaptation strategies and included five subcategories: "educational development", "public participation", "inter-sectorial coordination", "institutional development", and "environment preservation". Identifying the experiences and strategies that are implemented by a community to adapt to SDS is the core stone for developing a comprehensive local and national adaptation plan. This study suggests strategies and action plans for SDS adaptation that can be used in policy making.

Putting one health to the test: Operational challenges and critical reflections from the global South.