The role of European (transnational) business actors in the emergence of a boundary spanning policy regime in European education and employment

ABSTRACT

Although research on European education policy has aptly focused on the role of supranational and intergovernmental actors, less attention has been devoted to its analysis as a policy arena in which legitimacy can be created and power can be exerted in sophisticated ways. Specifically, the role of non-state actors as agenda-setters for European education and employment policies is still unexplored. By combining a neo-Gramscian approach of political economy with Jochim and May’s boundary spanning policy regimes’ perspective, which captures activity across policy subsystems that seek to manage ‘wicked’ policy problems, this paper looks at the role of private and business actors, and specifically the European Round Table of Industrialists (ERT), in European education during the 1980s and 1990s. The findings show how this period can be considered a foundational period for the emergence of a BSPR in education and employment, and in which specific goals and directions were set out in the European education agenda more fine-tuned with employment goals and industry’s needs. Moreover, the paper illustrates why private and non-state actors shape boundary policy spanning regimes at the nexus of education and employment, which in this case reflected the economic interests and preferences of European transnational companies.

KEYWORDS:

• European education
• employment
• boundary spanning
• transnational companies
• Gramsci

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the constructive comments provided by the participants of the ECER 2021, held online on 6-10 September 2021 as well as panel participants of the virtual workshop “Education and Training Policies in Europe” organised by the Educational Governance Team, Hertie School - Berlin’s University of Governance. I am also extremely grateful to the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence for the support of the research through the Vibeke Sørensen grant. Finally, special thanks to Lukas Graf and Tore Sorensen for their fruitful and attentive comments on earlier versions of the draft and to the former and current editors of the Journal.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. I thank the reviewer for this important point.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marina Cino Pagliarello

Marina Cino Pagliarello is Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellow at the European University Institute and Honorary Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, UCL. Her research focuses on education policy, with a specific focus on internationalisation of higher education. She has published a monograph on Ideas and European education policy 1975-2020 for Palgrave MacMillan in 2022.