Policy Sociology Research Articles

Política y gestión institucional del turismo argentino: logros, desafíos y propuestas

This research analyzes the effects of public policies and programs implemented by the Argentinian government between 2003 and 2019, to strengthen the institutional management of tourism. The main objective is to generate critical thinking and offer -from a theoretical perspective of the sociology of public policies- a set of guidelines that help mitigate conflicts, improving the effectiveness of programs and the quality of management. The analysis of public policies and the operational sequential method are used as an approach. The results provide a situational diagnosis that details the institutional advances of the period and pending problems. Regarding them, a set of proposals for improvement is defined. As a conclusion, it may be said that the Argentinian tourism sector has advanced towards a certain institutional consolidation, motivated by the Law 25,997/05. However, there are still unsolved structural problems, such as (i) the lack of information, internal control, and accountability; (ii) the incorporation of technologies and new government paradigms, (iii) and the achievement of a federalism that allows a more balanced and inclusive territorial development.

Ethics in neoliberalism? Parental responsibility and education policy in Chile and Australia

This article questions the diverse and, in some cases, contradictory ethical forms present in contemporary neoliberal policy frames. In particular, we analyse the demands of responsibility – as a form of ethical commitment – requested of parents by education policies in the contexts of Chile and Australia. Assuming neoliberalism as a contextualised and multivocal form of governing, we applied a policy sociology approach to study the ethical implications for parents of two recent educational reforms developed in the national contexts of this research. Our analyses show that the emerging demands on parents for responsibility in the educational field exceed univocal forms of individual responsibilisation, encompassing expressions of responsibility that respond to collective and public goals.

Response: Matters of (im)mobility: beyond fast conceptual and methodological readings in policy sociology

ABSTRACT In this special issue response paper, we pick up from prior discussions to suggest areas where we think policy sociology can benefit from further conversation and research. In particular, we bring together our respective readings and work on policy mobilities, in conversation with the contributions of this special issue, to think further about what policy mobilities and related orientations can bring to the development of policy sociology. We specifically focus our attention on four areas for further conceptual and methodological extension in relation to policy mobilities and related approaches in policy sociology of education: (i) temporality, (ii) scale, (iii) land, and, finally, (iv) methodological diversity. In doing so, we advocate against ‘fast’ readings of literature from other fields, while emphasizing the value of transdisciplinary work in policy sociology and critical policy studies.

Response: Policy? Policy research? How absurd?

There is no way that I can address the wide range of issues raised in the exemplary collection of papers on policy sociology. These are cutting edge pieces by world-class scholars that lay out anal...

The evolving state of policy sociology

When scholars name what they do or associate their work with a particular research field, it is invariable that discussion will follow about what that name or field means. When definitions are stro...

Policy Sociology in the Contemporary Global Era: Continued Importance and Pressing Methodological Considerations

The intensities of the contemporary moment continue to prompt reflections on the strengths and limitations of approaches typically used to study education policy reform. The central contention of this essay is that policy sociology and its application within education offers needed vantage points on contemporary pressing global policy problems. Future studies would do well to keep the footprint of existing frameworks, which emphasize policy networks and mobilities, power dynamics within these flows, and the focus on doing research that speaks to concerns of stakeholders. The next generation of policy sociologists can further strengthen the relevance and rigor of the analytic scheme by leaning into methodologies that further attend empirically and descriptively to power asymmetries within policy networks.

Multiple temporalities in critical policy sociology in education

ABSTRACT This paper argues that more focus on the temporal is needed in critical policy sociology in education. In so asserting, the paper extends the concept of ‘historically informed’ as included in the foundational definition of policy sociology in education proffered by Jenny Ozga. There are four foci to this extension to encompass the temporal, taken to refer to the complex relationships between past, present and future, namely: the changing historical concept/definition of policy; policy histories; the temporal construction work of policies; and changing spatio-temporalities and timespaces of policy in the context of globalization. To a considerable extent these have been neglected in policy sociology in education research and theorising and as such demand new research and theoretical work in the field. Looking back in time will help us understand the present and possible futures.

The politics of critical policy sociology: mobilities, moorings and elite networks

ABSTRACT This article reflects on what doing critical policy sociology means in shifting theoretical, empirical and methodological contexts of education. We focus our analytical lens on two primary considerations. First, we reflect on the politics of criticality, examining differing claims and debates about what it means to do critical research and be a critical researcher of education policy, paying particular attention to how critical policy sociologists position their work in relation to elite power and policy networks. Second, we build on these foundations to consider the trend towards researching mobilities within critical policy sociology, arguing that contemporary ‘follow the policy’ research risks orienting researchers to the problems and agendas already established by elite policy agents and organisations, while obscuring the not-so-mobile forces that continue to define education policy and practice. We also raise questions about the elite networks and privileged levels of resourcing typically required to conduct this kind of research. In conclusion, we invite further discussion on the politics of knowledge production and challenges for policy sociologists seeking to be critical in shifting contexts.

How to achieve a ‘revolution’: assembling the subnational, national and global in the formation of a new, ‘scientific’ assessment in Japan

ABSTRACT This paper traces the complexities, contingencies and tensions involved in the creation of a new, ‘scientific’ assessment in what we call Prefecture A in Japan. We start with a thick, granular description of the complicated and ongoing narrative of a new policy emergence. This descriptive account serves as a precursor to our application of an Actor Network Theory (ANT) approach, particularly the concepts of assemblage and assembling, while at the same time eschewing its depoliticising effect of a flat ontology. Our account details that much work and strategising went into achieving the new assessment but also into holding it in place. This included, strategising inside and across the Prefecture, with the National Ministry, with edu-businesses that had psychometric expertise, with politicians and the board of education and with the OECD and the Director of its Education and Skills Directorate. The analysis illustrates the complex, multi-directional and topological cartographies of power that now work in contemporary education policy processes. As such, we suggest a way to transcend the binary of methodological nationalism and methodological globalism evident in much policy sociology in education work.

Excluding veiled women from French public space: the emergence of a ‘respectable’ segregation?

ABSTRACT The controversies around Islam in France have given rise to a series of public policies. Such measures have led to an expansion of what is usually referred to as ‘public space’ and a generalization of the principle of ‘neutrality’ which was previously only required of public officials. Limitations on the visibility of Muslim religious practice are intrinsically gendered since the controversies that led to political decisions were aimed at Muslim women, particularly those who wear a marker of Muslim religiosity: the hijab, a garment that covers their head. This article draws on the sociology of public policy to analyse concepts such as ‘laïcité’, ‘dignity’ and ‘fundamental values’ that have been used to legitimize the legal exclusion of veiled women from public space, paradoxically in the name of their emancipation.

Test-based accountability, standardized testing and minority/racialized students’ perspectives in urban schools in Canada and Australia

ABSTRACT This paper focuses on the perspectives of minority/racialized students in urban high schools. It is based on findings of interviews with 85 students in six secondary schools in Toronto and Vancouver, Canada, and in Melbourne, Australia, during 2016–2019. While there has been increasing attention to closing the racial achievement gap and some minority students’ underachievement in education, there are limited studies that centre the voices of students and their experiences with provincial and nationally mandated testing. This paper is not an investigation into minority students’ achievement; rather it seeks to understand how minority students perceive and experience this new form of test-based accountability. Grounding the analysis within theories of policy sociology and neoliberal accountability, this paper concludes that current policies of standardized testing have catalysed further inequities and segregation of students based on their ‘race’ and social class.

Environmental perceptions and pro-environmental behavior – comparing different measuring approaches

Measuring environmental perceptions and pro-environmental behaviors (PEB) is an enduring interest in several research fields, including environmental education, marketing, policy sociology and innovation studies. A variety of tools have been developed to measure both environmental perception and PEB, challenging researchers to choose from the tools on offer. This study compares several measures, and finds that two widely used ones – the New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scale and the Two Major Environmental Values (2-MEV) scale – overlap, but have some significant differences. Combining the scales into a unified framework is possible, by retaining the ‘Preservation’ and ‘Utilization’ factors from 2-MEV and including an additional factor, ‘Eco-crisis’ sensitivity, which is uniquely covered by NEP. Results of analysis of PEB also suggest that the validity of Rasch model-based tools, which consider estimates of behavioral difficulties, is superior to those of widely used composite variables. Insights on other measurement issues are also discussed in order to inform researchers and future developers of measurement instruments.

Legitimising EU Governance through Performance Assessment Instruments

The article addresses the production of indicators as policy instruments in European public policy. It discusses the relevant literature on sociology of quantification and European public policy and applies this theoretical framework to the case of European judicial administration policy. Presenting the historical and institutional premises to the creation of two projects of judicial performance assessment by the Council of Europe and the European Commission, as well as their methodology, the article argues that the selection of indicators is a litmus test of debates over the strategies and institutional goals of the organisations proposing them. Connecting the previous analysis with the use of these instruments in the policy-making sphere, the article points out that evaluation tools in European policy, rather than serving merely as informative tools, produce empowerment side-effects in the policy arena for the organisations that developed them. In European judicial policy, indicators provide a sufficiently loose framework to solve vertical and horizontal cooperation problems at the international level, determine policy goals through the selection of areas of measurement and evaluation, and provide proof to influence local and national policy-makers over reforms either through lesson-drawing, persuasion or conditionality.

The turn towards policy mobilities and the theoretical-methodological implications for policy sociology

ABSTRACT This paper reflects critically upon how the ‘mobilities turn’ in the social sciences, and its subsequent contribution towards ‘policy mobilities’, offers theoretical and methodological resources that can be usefully harnessed in education policy sociology. Just as there are new ways in which policy is being made and moved, there are equally new ways to be a researcher of education policy who seeks to understand these processes. My purpose here is to help crystallise and make explicit these new mobilities-informed approaches, not only for the purpose of considering how mobility can help reconsider how to think and practise policy sociology, but also to better reflect and accommodate the empirical changes inherent in contemporary policymaking and enactment. I first survey the literature around the mobilities turn and emphasise its implications for social science research, before turning to how policy mobilities theories and methodologies can be employed within policy sociology. Finally, I close the paper by reflecting on the implications of conducting policy sociology with a policy mobility lens and outline the issues that come from foregrounding movement in the research of education policy.

Las transiciones a la educación secundaria post obligatoria en Cataluña: Un análisis desde la sociología de la política educativa

Las transiciones a la educación secundaria post obligatoria son centrales para explicar el grado de selectividad social de diferentes sistemas educativos. El caso de Cataluña es especialmente relevante porque el sistema educativo se organiza de forma comprensiva hasta el final de la educación secundaria obligatoria, momento en que por primera vez se separa a los estudiantes en dos itinerarios diferenciados: el académico y el profesional. El objetivo del artículo es analizar desde una perspectiva de la sociología de la política educativa, cómo se configura esta transición desde un punto de vista estructural, institucional y discursivo. En concreto, se exploran tres grandes ámbitos de análisis: la estructura del sistema, la planificación de la oferta educativa y los modelos de orientación. El análisis se basa en 28 entrevistas en profundidad a policy-makers y stakeholders del área de educación postobligatoria de Barcelona. Los resultados ponen de manifiesto la importancia que adquiere la articulación político-institucional de diferentes sistemas educativos, con sus contradicciones, tensiones y omisiones, en la configuración de diferentes oportunidades de transición educativa.

Una economía política y cultural de las subvenciones estatales a la educación privada en Argentina

En comparación con otras modalidades de alianza público-privada (public-private partnerships o PPP) en educación de surgimiento más reciente como los programas de vouchers o escuelas charter inspirados en los postulados de la teoría de la elección pública, las políticas de subvención estatal a la oferta suelen responder a teorías del cambio menos explícitas. La mayoría de estas políticas son abordadas por la literatura como arreglos singulares y altamente idiosincrásicos, en lugar de ejemplos de una variedad particular de PPP. A partir de una revisión de la literatura y del análisis de los debates legislativos del período 1947-2006, este artículo procura examinar el proceso de adopción del marco político-regulatorio definido por la política de subvenciones a escuelas privadas en Argentina desde una perspectiva evolutiva de economía política y cultural. Se distinguen tres períodos a efectos analíticos entre los cuales prima una lógica evolutiva de continuidad no lineal sujeta a los vaivenes contextuales e impulsados por distintos actores en el campo de las ideas y la práctica política.

The Discursive Politics of Education Policy in China: Educating Migrant Children

AbstractThis article explores the discursive functioning of education policies, bringing into consideration community perspectives regarding policy enactment in contemporary China. With the intention of building upon ongoing discussions surrounding both the conceptions and purposes of policy sociology, we critically analyse policies directly related to the education of migrant children living in and around China's largest urban centres, with a specific focus on those implemented in Beijing. We emphasize two important aspects that previous studies of China's education policies have tended to underplay given their focus on social-economic perspectives. The first argument is that education policies have an underlying agenda that extends beyond that of simply addressing the educational needs of migrant children – evidenced through the discursive functions of policy texts. The second argument is related and seeks to raise questions about who is best served by these policies and for whom these policies are intended.

Otto Neurath’s Relevance for Science Policy Debates

Debates about the role of science in policy making have highlighted the uneasy relationship between knowledge and decision making. Recent high-profile examples include climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic. On the one hand there is an intertwinement between facts and values. On the other hand, there is a tension between the acknowledgement of scientific uncertainty and the justification of political action. This sometimes finds political solutions that are perceived as unsound and unsatisfactory. Some perceive the policies as too weak, some as too strong. Both appeal to fundamental values such as health, wealth, security, freedom, equality, or solidarity. In this article I will argue that we need a more open debate about these issues and a deeper understanding of what is at issue in science policy debates. I shall do so by referring to a Neurathian framework. Neurath’s legacy survives mainly in the history and philosophy of science but is largely forgotten in policy studies and sociology. This needs rectifying, especially in light of the fact that he anticipated central insights that have been attributed to later authors such as Fleck and Kuhn.The paper has the following structure. I first provide some historical and intellectual context by looking at the Vienna Circle and some biographical background about Neurath’s views, and his political engagement. I then examine his epistemology, especially his view of science and the social sciences, leading to his anti-foundationalism. Finally, I turn to the public policy literature which has produced results that partly overlap with, and partly contradict Neurath’s views.

Una sociología discursiva de la política educativa: rastreando las tensiones del gobierno neoliberal de la escuela pública

This work presents the epistemological frame and the methodological-analytical approach deployed to address the neoliberal enclosure of public schooling in the Community of Madrid from 1999 –when Madrid assumed the competence in education– to 2018 –when we finished our qualitative research. We discuss that the progressive introduction of market logics into the public schooling is one of the faces of the current neoliberal enclosure, whose ultimate effect is sharpening the social divide between the included and the excluded within the schooling. In order to address this process of enclosure from a critical perspective, we have deployed a research based on the discourse studies and the works and theoretical categories used within the area of research known as “educational policy sociology”. Drawing upon the poststructuralist contributions of Foucault and Laclau and Mouffe, we have deployed an investigation that, combining the genealogic and the ethnographic approaches, focuses on the contradictions, tensions and dilemmas produced by the neoliberal government of the school. Keywords: Education policy. Neoliberal governmentality. Discourse.

Problematising policy: the development of (critical) policy sociology

ABSTRACT This paper revisits and reassesses the influence of the context of production on the origin, development and use of the term ‘policy sociology’ in research in the sociology of education in the UK from the 1980s to the contemporary period. Starting with the first use of the term ‘policy sociology,’ and its definition as ‘rooted in social science tradition, historically informed and drawing on qualitative and illuminative techniques’, the paper considers the established knowledge production traditions in education policy studies that policy sociology was responding to in the 1970s and 1980s in the UK. It foregrounds the implication of a critical stance towards policy contained in that usage, as well as considering what was and is meant by the term critical in the now dominant usage (critical policy sociology), before considering how policy was and is defined, and the specific and particular contribution that sociological enquiry can make to the study of education policy.