The Limits of Multistakeholder Governance: The Case of the Global Partnership for Education and Private Schooling

Abstract

This study investigates collective decision making within a multistakeholder partnership through a case study of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Analyzed through the theoretical framework of sociological institutionalism, this study applies the issue of private schooling as a lens to understand policy-related decision making between very different stakeholders within a single forum. A process-tracing analysis of document and interview data shows that the GPE has not substantively engaged with the issue of private education, indicative of “strategic avoidance” due to concerns that a debate could destabilize the partnership. Such avoidance is argued to potentially engender harmful impacts on the GPE. The absence of dialogue reflects broader GPE governance issues, where policy-related debates are rare. This conclusion is in accordance with evaluations of other similarly structured multistakeholder partnerships, calling into question the effectiveness of the partnership-based model.