The Future Sustainability of Education for All as a Global

Regime of Governance Professor Leon TiklyUniversity of Bristol

Global Governance

Global governance in this understanding is a capacious concept, encompassing a plethora of public and private authorities affecting transnational processes, from the promulgation of private regulations and standards, transnational networks and civil society organizations, transnational policy planning forums, and international law, through to international ‘regimes’ and the high tables of the United Nations organs (Stephen, 2015: 915).

Needs to be understood in relation to a conception of World order…….

World order

• Global governance understood in terms of a dominant ‘hegemonic bloc’ that represents a contradictory fusion of the politics of dominant states, i.e. the US and its allies and the interests of dominant factions of capital including transnational corporations and finance capital

• It is a ‘liberal’ world order in the sense that it fosters a market-led view of human development. In these analyses, the spread of neo-liberal orthodoxy instantiated in the so-called ‘Washington consensus’ can be seen to reflect these dominant interests through the influence of Western powers and of representatives of global capital on the Boards of the major global financial institutions.

• Global governance is also contested ‘from within’ by actors who share alternative views of the goals of human development including organisations and networks that comprise global civil society.

• Global Western hegemony is, however, also increasingly challenged by the emergence of new ‘rising powers’ including the so-called BRICS economies. The interests of these powers are realised on the one hand through negotiating international rules and terms to make them more compatible with their own more state-led development paths and through developing their own bilateral relationships with other low income and emerging economies to secure trade and access to natural resources.

Power in international relations

• compulsory power comprises the relations of interaction that allow one actor to have direct control over another. • institutional power is where states design international institutions in

ways that work to their long-term advantage and to the disadvantage of others. • structural power concerns the constitution of social capacities and

interests of actors in direct relation to one another, e.g. class, gender, ‘race’, ethnicity.• productive power is the socially diffused production of subjectivity in

systems of meaning and signification including the way that ‘development’ itself is defined and understood.

Regime theory

Regimes are commonly defined as ‘sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations’

EFA

FTI/ GPE

MDGs/ SDGs

Human rights

WTOAid effectiveness

Education as a regime complex

DAC/ OECD

The issue area of education

Analysis of issues and tensions: Principles• ‘Principles’ are factors which guide the purpose of action of governments and institutions. • Productive power is focused on two major discourses linked to overlapping epistemic

communities • Human capital• Human rights

• Interplay gives rise to tensions over• Narrow versus more expansionist view of basic education• Access versus quality• Reductionist versus expansionist view of quality• Narrow versus expanded view of rights• States versus markets

• Both HCT and HR are primarily Western discourses

Analysis of issues and tensions: Norms• ‘Norms’ determine what general behaviour is legitimate in pursuing a

particular regime’s goals. • Draws attention to disparities in structural, institutional and compulsory power• Issues involving time bound targets

• Inability of governments to meet targets• Difficulties of holding countries to account• Time bound targets only apply to recipients• Tensions between targets and national development priorities

• Tensions with aid effectiveness• Difficulties in measuring ‘results’ in education• Threats to harmonisation posed by BRICS

Analysis of issues and tensions: Rules• ‘rules’ are closely related to norms and particularise the actual rights

and obligations of governments and institutions in a regime. • Draws attention to disparities in compulsory and productive power• Difficulties in ensuring donors meet allocation targets• Tensions in producing credible education sector plans

Analysis of issues and tensions: Decision-making• ‘Decision-making procedures’ refer to the mechanisms within and

between governments and institutions through which decisions are made.• Draws attention to disparities in institutional and structural power in

how EFA has been shaped and evolved• In-fighting between multilateral organisations• Dominance of multilaterals over global civil society• Tensions relating to private interests• Dominance of Northern over Southern interests

The future sustainability of EFA as a global regime of educational governance• Has proved remarkably resilient but will it be able to continue to

absorb tensions?• At what point will the principles and norms governing the regime

change if at all?• Will EFA continue to play an important legitimately role in relation to

dominant global interests?• Will the locus of power within the education regime complex

increasingly shift to GPE?• To what extent is EFA linked to the fate of China and of BRICS as a

potential alternative hegemon to the US and its allies?