Federalism and Education

Global policy mobilities in federal education systems

“…The point of departure for this special issue is a gap that we have identified in the literature on education policy. Existing scholarship analyzing global policy mobilities tends to focus on how global influences are adopted and adapted at the national level, paying less attention to the complex power relations and policy dynamics between different political scales within federal education systems (Wong et al, 2018). As scholars have recently argued, research on education policies in federal systems rarely considers the intricate ways that global policy flows interact with and contribute to shaping national and sub-national political and bureaucratic structures, and the relations between these (see Savage et al, 2022;Savage & Lewis, 2018).…”

“…Across the issue, it is clear that what a federal system "is" also differs across national contexts. At a basic level, federations can be understood as political systems that rest on a division of power between national and subnational governments, with the latter designed to embody principles of self-rule and autonomy, while the former seeks to govern matters of national interest and steer the nation as a whole (see Savage 2021;Wong et al, 2018). Power is shared, therefore, between the national government and the nation's constituent subnational units (e.g, states, territories, provinces, regions, autonomous communities), usually with an explicit division of roles and responsibilities that is defined and protected by a constitution or other legislative framework.…”