Informality as a resource: A systems-theoretical take on the open method of coordination in education

Abstract

Several authors have underlined that processes of Europeanisation of education emerge despite the European Union’s lack of formal power in this area. This article argues on the contrary that its lack of power precisely enables the EU to open up a range of possibilities for its involvement in this sector, among which the ET2020 Working Groups (WG) of the Open Method of Coordination (OMC). Based on observations of WG meetings and interviews with key actors, and using Niklas Luhmann’s systems-theory, we aim to show how the distance separating the ET2020 WG from the formal circuits of European decision-making acts as a resource for the development of a European discourse on education. Alongside the ordinary legislative procedure based on voting and implementing collectively binding decisions, the alternative political circuit of the OMC is based on the irritation of a set of education sector stakeholders through the creation and dissemination of reports of ‘good practices’. In doing so, the ET2020 Working Groups illustrate how politics transforms itself and redefines its boundaries when it is structured at the European level rather than at the level of the nation-state.

Re-articulating the form of the political: Contemporary education governance in the European Union. Introduction to the Special Issue

“…Importantly, they point out that as the epistemic infrastructure of quality assurance in higher education has expanded, it has also become cyclical and repetitive, with new data routinely feeding into the infrastructure. In a similar manner, Gain (2023: 13) suggests that the ‘ ET2020 Working Groups aim to generate new horizons of possibilities in the form of a never-ending production of information and knowledge about education policies ’. In this respect, the very predictability and cyclical characteristics of launching WGs, tasked with gathering and discussing thematic information and knowledge from member states, help to consolidate a notion of these groups as being apolitical.…”

“…In the attempts to square the circle and overcome these tensions, Eeva (2021) and Gain (2023) both point to the importance of informal policy processes. Analysing the European Commission’s ET2020 Working Groups, Gain (2023: 11) thus identifies informality as a critical resource for EU policy-making, arguing that ‘ the relative informality of the WG is indispensable to their successful functioning: if they functioned as some people describe, with all the actors taking an equal part in drawing up the reports, they would very probably be paralysed by their high internal complexity ’. In other words, informality enables the management of the symbolic resources that form a foundation for the EU’s legitimacy in policy-making (Capano et al, 2015: 312).…”

“…In other words, informality enables the management of the symbolic resources that form a foundation for the EU’s legitimacy in policy-making (Capano et al, 2015: 312). According to Gain (2023), the informal processes of the OMC also involve structures and procedures, often developed and orchestrated by the European Commission, which results in ‘functional hypocrisy’ (Brunsson, 2007), when a discourse of participation and collaboration meets policy processes dominated by a few actors essentially producing the outcomes. This leads to the question of actor relations and agency in EU education governance.…”

“…Sorensen and Dumay (2024) show how the EU Treaty’s distribution of competences continue to shape the roles and interaction of field actors, including the opportunities and limitations for the European Commission in aligning and creating interaction between policy instruments. In combination, the papers suggest the centrality and breadth of the Commission’s activities, from orchestrating the European Semester (Eeva, 2021) and the ET 2020 Workings Groups (Gain, 2023), to its convening power and funding provision in European quality assurance (Grek and Russell, 2023), and as a boundary organisation maintaining and (re-)ordering boundaries towards other fields in the EU’s governance of teachers (Sorensen and Dumay, 2024). The papers thus show how the European Commission as a ‘purposeful opportunist’ (Cram, 1993: 141) has managed over time to create new policy arenas and stimulate demands for EU level action by its agenda-setting, funding incentives and stakeholder mobilisation (Harmsen, 2015).…”

“…Hence, Gain (2023) observes that the processes of the OMC take place in ‘the shadow of hierarchy’ (Cram, 2011; Peters, 2007). Yet, the papers also resonate with Harmsen’s (2015) argument that the very absence of such a shadow of hierarchy – understood in the sense of compulsion and imposed solutions – in fact allows the OMC to operate in the European Higher Education Area.…”