This article aims to show the value of the concept of policy trajectory to compare, from a long-term perspective, the transformations of education policies in the context of globalisation. After discussing the scope and limitations of the analyses of the concept in the literature -- descriptive, sequential, metaphorical and building on the works…

The Basque Country is a stateless nation located in the western part of the Pyrenees, divided between France and Spain. The romanticist nationalist trend that emerged in Europe throughout the nineteenth century gave rise to a nationalist feeling in the Basque Country that has been fed, among others, by children's literature. Children's literature…

Since the 1980s, right-wing extremism, radicalism, and populism have emerged as transformative forces in European politics. This unexpected resurgence has triggered an interdisciplinary scholarly effort to refine our understanding of the far right. Educationalists, however, have largely been absent from this endeavour, leaving us unable to…

In this article, the author outlines some of the defensive weapons with which schools fight to hold their institutional authority over knowledge in a changing educational landscape. If schools are gripped by a crisis of epistemic authority, what are their strategies of shoring up their jurisdiction? To explore this question, the author turns to…

The International Commission on the Development of Education set up by UNESCO in 1971 was chaired by Edgar Faure. The conceptualisation of a new social contract in his work between the 1960s and 1970s had a strong influence on the final report prepared by this commission. Published in 1972, Learning to be: "The world of education today and…

This article examines French and English average performances and educational inequality in the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) between 2000 and 2018. It asks why English average scores in 2018 are much higher than those of France when they were fairly similar in previous PISA assessments. It questions why the impact of…

This article builds upon Robert Cowen's (1996) work on educational coding in transitological settings and post-spaces by deciphering the efficacy of political and economic compressions in Tunisia from the French protectorate period to the 2011 post-Jasmine revolution. First, I diachronically decrypt and elucidate the specific experiences and…

Drawing on 45 semi-structured interviews conducted in four public universities as part of an international comparative project, we examine the cultural, political, social and economic forces at play in the way the 'public good' is perceived, translated and debated within the French higher education context. Our findings indicate that a variety of…

This paper retraces the evolution of the relationships between higher education institutions, the state and the academic profession in France since the French Revolution on the one hand and the parallel evolution of the societal expectations for their roles and missions, on the other. It in particular highlights the divide between the universities…

Discourses which seek to position different speakers/users of Breton through the use of labels such as 'traditional', 'new', 'learner', 'néo-bretonnant', 'brittophone', etc. draw on persistent essentialist ideologies of language and create, in the process, contested elites and counter-elites in Breton-speaking networks. These discourses can be…

Similarities between French and Italian political culture of student representation include a conflictual culture in a weak national system of intermediation of interests, and a mimetic relationship with national conflictual party politics. New international topics, such as the Bologna Process or the growing commodification of education, have…

The article compares the educational policy trajectories of four societies in the South-west Indian Ocean: Madagascar, Mauritius, Ile de la Reunion and South Africa. The main purpose is to trace the political pathways and differing educational policy trajectories of former colonies of Britain and France. Five metaphors are invoked in this paper to…

Examines the impact of teacher unions in two centralized educational systems--France and Israel--on school reforms. Document analysis and interview data suggest that, since 1970, teacher unions in both countries have been demanding and receiving more say in educational policy reforms. Despite similarities in tactics, French unions are more…

This paper explores the impact of policies and institutions on employment and unemployment of OECD countries in the past decades. Reduced-form unemployment equations, consistent with standard wage setting/price-setting models, are estimated using cross-country/time-series data from 21 OECD countries over the period 1982-2003. In the…

Using a 1995 national survey of 2,870 Chinese private entrepreneurs, this article examines collaboration between private business and government in times of economic transition. Much as in the late 18th century situation in France as described by Tocqueville, special moments occur when a newly emerging business class offers monetary payments for…