Description: Public education is critically important to the human capital, social well-being, and economic prosperity of nations. It is also an intensely political realm of public policy that is heavily shaped by power and special interests. Yet political scientists rarely study education, and education researchers rarely study politics. This volume attempts to change that by promoting the development of a coherent, thriving field on the comparative politics of education. As an opening wedge, the authors carry out an 11-nation comparative study of the political role of teachers unions, showing that as education systems everywhere became institutionalized, teachers unions pursued their interests by becoming well-organized, politically active, highly influential - and during the modern era, the main opponents of neoliberal reform. Across diverse nations, the commonalities are striking. The challenge going forward is to expand on this study's scope, theory, and evidence to bring education into the heart of comparative politics.
Brief description: Terry M. Moe is the William Bennett Munro Professor of Political Science at Stanford University, California and a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He has written extensively on the presidency, public bureaucracy, and the American political system, as well as the theory of political institutions more generally. He has also written extensively on the politics of education and the role of power and special interests in shaping education systems. His books include Relic (2016, with William Howell), Special Interest: Teachers Unions and America's Public Schools (2011), and Politics, Markets, and America's Schools (1990, with John Chubb).
Review Quotes: 'This edited volume is a truly exceptional piece of scholarship, bringing together leading scholars in the comparative study of education. The individual chapters provide an in-depth analytical perspective on education reforms in different countries both in the [Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development] and beyond. Terry M. Moe and Susanne Wiborg have masterfully managed to integrate the individual chapters into an overarching theoretical framework. In doing so, their contribution will have a lasting and significant impact on the agenda of the growing research field of the comparative study of the politics of education.' Marius R. Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, Germany