The emergence of European boundary-spanning policy regimes: analysing intersectoral policy coordination in education and employment

ABSTRACT

While much attention has been paid to European policy arrangements in individual policy fields, European intersectoral policy coordination has been mostly an overlooked phenomenon, especially within the sectors of education and employment. Thus, in the introductory paper for this Special Issue, we offer a contemporary discussion of European intersectoral policy coordination. We firstly review the literature on intersectoral policy coordination, and secondly look at the application of concepts related to intersectoral policy coordination to supranational arrangements, especially the European Union. We then employ the concept of boundary-spanning policy regime and the related ‘I’ framework (issues, ideas, interests, and institutions) to discuss the individual pieces’ contributions. This serves to explore the strength of the intersectoral perspective when analysing European policy coordination in education and employment. We conclude with a discussion of the strengths and limitations of this approach and offer a research agenda to study supranational intersectoral policy coordination (in education and employment).

KEYWORDS:

• Education and training
• Employment
• Intersectoral policy coordination
• Boundary-spanning-policy regimes
• Supranational governance

Disclosure statement

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

Notes

1. In this context, whether or to what extent governance process are shaped by some actor groups more than others is an empirical question (see, for instance, the contribution by Cino Pagliarello on attempts by organised business to shape European educational and employment policies).

2. ‘Issues’ have a long history in political science, especially in theories of the policy process such as the Multiple Streams Framework (Béland and Howlett 2016).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lukas Graf

Lukas Graf is professor at the Swiss Federal University for Vocational Education and Training and Head of the Swiss Observatory for Vocational Education and Training. He studies contemporary challenges related to skill formation and labour markets at global, European, national and local levels.

Marcelo Marques

Marcelo Marques is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Luxembourg. He is interested in comparative institutional and organisational analysis to understand transnational governance and Europeanisation processes.

Tore Bernt Sorensen

Tore Bernt Sorensen is postdoctoral researcher at the Hertie School. Tore’s work is characterised by three lines of research: Globalisation and education, public policy analysis, and teachers and teaching.

Xavier Dumay

Xavier Dumay is Professor of Education at UCLouvain, Belgium. His research interests include the globalization of education and educational policies, new-institutional theory, global politics, and changing forms of education.