Converging Regional Education Policy in France and Germany

Claire Dupuy

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9783030408336
• eBook ISBN:
  9783030408343
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Educational Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

How have regionalization processes across Europe impacted on policy convergence? This book takes as its starting point the curious fact that autonomous regional policymaking may be parallel to regional governments pursuing policy similarity. The author proposes that these observations are paradoxical only if sector-specific policy norms are disregarded and when autonomy is considered as the exclusive goal of regional governments. Focusing on common yet under-studied regional situations where a sense of cultural or historical distinctiveness is not readily apparent, if at all, the book argues that in policy sectors where norms of territorial equality have long been dominant, regional governments endorse them as a way to secure or expand their policy capacity when the central state or other policy entrepreneurs challenge it. This results in converging policies. A textured comparative account of educational policymaking in German Länder and French conseils régionaux overthree decades forms the backbone of this analysis of policymaking in ordinary regions.

© The Author(s) 2020

C. DupuyConverging Regional Education Policy in France and GermanyComparative Territorial Politicshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-40834-3_1

Begin Abstract

1. Regional Policymaking and Policy Divergence

Claire Dupuy¹

(1)

Institut de sciences politiques Louvain-Europe - ISPOLE, University of Louvain, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium

Claire Dupuy

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

In recent years regions have been at the forefront of media attention in many Western European countries. Would Scots vote “yes” on the question asked in the referendum on Scotland’s independence introduced by the majority government of the Scottish National Party¹? Would Madrid’s government allow a referendum on the independence of Catalonia that the government of the autonomous community led by the pro-autonomy Convergence and Union (CiU) party sought to organize in 2014 and 2017 and would it accept its result? How would the boundaries of French regions be redrawn and how many regions would exist in France after the Notre law, which aimed to adapt the country’s territorial organization²? Considering the extent of the regionalization of political power across Europe, the media’s coverage of regions is unsurprising. Instead, one might wonder why they do not make the headlines more often. Regional authority has grown in most European countries since 1950, and more strongly since the 1980s (Hooghe et al., 2016). In both federal and historically centralized countries, regional governments have to varying degrees seen an increase in their formal powers with regard to policymaking, taxation, legislation and the coproduction of national policies. Paradoxically, however, regional phenomena are still poorly understood because there has been a tendency only to study their most visible part. What has received the most attention is the regionalist movements and parties, and those regions characterized by a strong regional identity, which have often developed over a long period. While Scotland, Catalonia, Flanders, and Brittany get most of the attention, the regionalization of political power also concerns other regions of Europe. These include Spanish communities that are not historical nations, Wallonia and the Brussels region, as well as most French regions and the German Länder. Public policies are pursued, regional assemblies are elected, and regional governments govern in these regions. Public opinion very broadly supports expanding the power of regional governments, as is the case in regions with strong identities (Dupuy & Van Ingelgom, 2019; Henderson, Jeffery, & Wincott, 2014). Some European party systems have been regionalizing (Detterbeck & Hepburn, 2010; Hough & Jeffery, 2006; Swenden & Maddens, 2009). Furthermore, in some cases, interest groups are reorganizing at the regional level (Keating, 2013; Keating & Wilson, 2014). In short, regionalization extends far beyond the boundaries that are often attributed to it. This book contributes to the study of regionalization by focusing on policymaking in specific regions both with and without a strong regional identity. More importantly, it will analyse how regionalization effects policy divergence.

Territorial inequalities are one of the common areas of political and media discourse most frequently associated with the regionalization of political power. They have been at the heart of collective mobilizations around territorial reforms of Western European states. Since the 1980s, in France, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Belgium, political actors and entrepreneurs have opposed transfers of responsibilities to regions by fear of soaring territorial inequalities. In general, European citizens’ concern for territorial equality and its preservation through public policies remains very high to this day (Henderson et al., 2014). Territorial inequalities have therefore been, and continue to be, a significant political issue. However, this is not the angle from which this book addresses the issue, despite its normative importance.³ In the analysis of territorial restructuring in Western Europe (Ansell & Di Palma, 2004), of which the regionalization of political power is one dimension, (Keating, 2013) with the resurgence of cities (Le Galès, 2003) and European integration (Bartolini, 2005), the analysis of policy divergence across regional territories is critical. Indeed, regionalization processes have brought about meaningful policy variation at the regional level, and sometimes strengthened already existing variation (e.g., Jeffery & Pamphilis, 2016; Jeffery, Pamphilis, Rowe, & Turner, 2016). It is from this perspective that the book proceeds. The construction and perpetuation of European nation-states in the second half of the twentieth century were accompanied by the development of institutional arrangements aiming to promote territorial integration in the form of redistributive mechanisms among regional territories. Yet the latter were partially redefined beginning of the 1980s, primarily because regional governments acquired formal powers regarding policymaking, and in particular, in the social and economic realms. Furthermore, national spatial planning policies underwent a significant change in the 1980s. Spatial Keynesianism was sidelined in favour of post-Keynesian territorial policies (Brenner, 2004). Policies introduced in the 1960s aimed to integrate the weakest regions into the national economies through support for industrial development, public and private job creation and public investment. They were gradually changed, and territorial development policies encouraging the valorization of the competitive advantages of regional territories were introduced. Finally, in the 1980s, welfare States started to reform, impacting the terms of social solidarity among social groups as well as among territories (Ferrera, 2005). Indeed, social policies had contributed to redistribution among subnational territories (Davezies, 2008; Manow, 2005) and, thereby, to the integration of national minorities in multinational States such as the United Kingdom and Spain (Béland & Lecours, 2008). Partial changes in social protection systems were thereby conducive to the reemergence of nationalist movements in certain European countries in the form of welfare state nationalism (McEwen, 2006). As a result, this territorial reconfiguration of Western European States raises the question of how public policies address policy divergence across regional territories (Loughlin, 2013). In order to address this question, this book focuses on studying the effects of regional government policies on policy divergence.

1 Two Questions

Identifying and explaining the impacts that regional governments have on policy divergence calls for a focus on regional policymaking itself—here in the case of education. On the empirical level, the book adopts a policy-based definition of divergence (convergence) and considers that it is defined by increasing (decreasing) differences across regional territories in the policy instruments and outcomes (see sigma convergence, Holzinger & Knill, 2005). Accordingly, two questions structure the research presented in this book.

The first question is: what is regional governments’ capacity for autonomous policymaking? The book aims to study how formal institutions constrain regional policymaking, especially the formal allocation of policymaking, normative and taxation powers, as well as how actors use institutions as resources or, to the contrary, circumvent them. Indeed, institutional strength partly depends on the mobilization of actors (Pierson, 1994; see also Watts, 2013). A common narrative about regions resulting from decentralization processes undertaken by centralized States emphasizes the weakness of the formal powers granted to them and the State, and the tax and normative constraints placed on their capacity to develop their own distinct policymaking (Loughlin, 2007; Loughlin, Hendricks, & Lidström, 2010). A comparison of the range of these regions’ respective powers with those of federal States is often used to support the idea that regional governments in former centralized States have limited room for autonomous policymaking. Meanwhile, the literature on federal States frequently emphasizes the analysis of formal institutions and institutional arrangements that shape relations between the regions and the federal government, as well as horizontal coordination. The characteristics of the upper house, veto points, fiscal capacity and the exclusive and shared powers of both levels of government are duly analysed (e.g., Scharpf et al., 1976; Swenden, 2004; Tsebelis, 2002; Watts, 1996), along with modes of horizontal policy coordination (Bolleyer & Börzel, 2010).

This book considers that formal institutions do not always shed light on how regional and national policymaking processes unfold (Wälti, 2013; Watts, 2013). On the contrary, several strands of research stress that the sometimes unexpected effects of formal institutions depend on how actors use them (or not). These analyses include seminal studies of French centralization from the field of the sociology of organizations. Despite the territorial uniformity goals of policymaking and the existence of a strictly hierarchical and descending administrative chain, they argue, Jacobinism was tamed (Duran & Thoenig, 1996; Grémion, 1978). Arrangements and negotiations between the State’s local elite and dignitaries were at the heart of the actual modus operandi of national policies’ implementation before decentralization, far from what formal institutions stipulated (Mény & Wright, 1985). From another theoretical perspective, recent advances in historical neo-institutionalism emphasize that institutions can gradually change as actors mobilize and the context changes, and that an ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Front Matter
• 1. Regional Policymaking and Policy Divergence
• 2. The State, an Absent Guardian of Territorial Equality
• 3. The Politicization of Regional Educational Policies
• 4. Cultivating Similarity in Regional Policies
• 5. Being Competitive in Interregional Comparisons
• 6. Regional Policymaking and Policy Convergence
• Back Matter