Global Governance of Education and Training: as reviewed from Jomtien via Incheon to New York

Abstract

By applying the concepts, practices, and limits of the theories of global governance of education, this study tries to reveal the characteristics of education for all (EFA), the millennium development goals (MDGs), and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) from the dimensions of norms and rules, accountability, transparency, participation, and effectiveness and efficiency. For the retrospective analysis of the global agendas, the authors use the modified definition of Rametsteiner’s good governance to examine selected literature of academic analyses and publicized official documents and statistics. In doing so, the study postulates a complex web of power holders in the agenda-making process on the global level, which functions as a mechanism to exert significant influence to re-orient education agendas in the global community. The study finds that from the perspective of global governance of education, the governance of EFA was weak in the dimensions of accountability and effectiveness. MDG governance was stronger than EFA’s, but this strength cannot be interpreted as good, or ideal, governance. The actual process of MDG agenda setting, despite the pervading rhetoric of country ownership and development partnership, is overwhelmingly donor-centered, which contradicts the dimensions of norms and rules as well as participation. The analysis on the governance of EFA and the MDGs verify that power asymmetry is inevitable in a multi-stakeholder governance approach. Such contradictory relations among the dimensions of good global governance puts SDG 4 in a dilemma. Therefore, the study emphasizes the importance of securing effectiveness and accountability for SDG 4. Otherwise, the future of the education SDG will be unpromising.