Politics of Comprehensive School Reforms - Cleavages and Coalitions

Why are school systems structured differently across countries? The Politics of Comprehensive School Reform examines this question through an in-depth analysis of school politics in Germany and Norway during the post-war period of educational expansion. Using a Rokkanian theoretical framework, the book argues that school politics can only be understood in light of the cleavages, or political divides, that shape actors' interests, ideologies, and inclinations for who they want to cooperate with - or not. The book analyzes cross-cutting cleavages connected to religion, geography, language, anticommunism, and gender, and demonstrates how Norwegian social democrats and German Christian democrats built successful coalitions by mobilizing support from different social groups. Extensively researched and expansively applicable, this book contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on the politics of education, and to the field of comparative welfare and education regime research. This book is also available Open Access on Cambridge Core.

List of contents

1. Introduction; 2. Back to the roots; 3. Political playing fields: Actors' power resources and social base; 4. The class cleavage: Struggles over comprehensive schooling; 5. The crosscutting cleavages: struggles over religion, centralization, language, anticommunism, and gender; 6. Conclusion.

About the author

Katharina Sass is Associate Professor of Sociology and Didactics at the University of Bergen.

Summary

Why are school systems structured differently across countries? This book examines this question through an in-depth analysis of school politics in Germany and Norway during the post-war period of educational expansion. It uses a Rokkanian theoretical framework to make sense of the cross-interest coalitions behind important school reforms.

Foreword

This book provides a comparative-historical analysis of school politics in Norway and Germany, inspired by Rokkanian cleavage theory.

Product details

• Authors: Katharina Sass, Katharina (Universitetet I Bergen Sass
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press ELT
• Languages: English
• Product format: Hardback
• Released: 31.10.2022
• EAN: 9781009235181
• ISBN: 978-1-0-0923518-1
• No. of pages: 320
• Series: Cambridge Studies in the Comparative Politics of Education
• Subjects: Humanities, art, music > Education > General, dictionaries; Social sciences, law, business > Political science > Political science and political education; POLITICAL SCIENCE / International Relations / General, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Comparative Politics, EDUCATION / Educational Policy & Reform / General, Comparative Politics, Educational strategies & policy, EU (European Union), International institutions, EU & European institutions, Educational strategies and policy