42 7

GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION: DEMONSTRATING A

COMMON WORLD EDUCATIONAL CULTURE OR LOCATING A
GLOBALLY STRUCTURED EDUCATIONAL AGENDA!
Roger Dale
School of Education
University of Auckland

INTRODUCTION
There has been considerable speculation andprophecy, doubt and fear, relief and
celebration at the prospect of globalization and its consequences among students
of the whole range of social institutions over the past few years, and education has
not been immune. The status of globalization in these debates is frequently
characterized either as an answer to all sorts of questions thrown up by the manifest
changes experienced in contemporary Western societies, or as an inevitable end-
point, target, or telos. Many of these debates, however, have been somewhat
confused and poorly informed. Globalization is variously taken as representing an
ineluctable progress toward cultural homogeneity, as a set of forces that are making
nation-states obsolete and that may result in something like a world polity, and as
reflecting the irresistible growth of information technology. Rather less common
than these indiscriminate applications of the term, or its promiscuous use as a label
for all sorts of phenomena, have been attempts to come to terms theoretically with
the nature and effects of the changing composition and consequences of suprana-
tional forces, which are not assumed a priori either to replace the state, to make the
world more homogeneous, or to be driven by blind technological forces.
Recognizing how globalization might affect national education policies and
practices involves three things: appreciating and specifying the nature and force of
the extranational effect; specifying what it is that may be affected, in this case
education, and what forms those changes may take; and how that effect occurs,
whether directly, in traceable ways indirectly, or consequentially on other changes
it may bring about within or on the education sector.
In this essay I will attempt to sketch the outlines of such a theory by contrasting
two approaches to the issue of the relation between globalization and education that
do contain all three elements. However, while these metatheoretical understandings
are necessary for an effective theory of globalization, they do not inevitably point in
the same explanatory directions. In fact, as will become clear, the two approaches
have somewhat different purposes and differ considerably on each of the key
dimensions of the relation between globalization and education.
THECWEC APPROACH
The first approach I will discuss is a very well-established theory of the effect of
globalization on education. It has been developed over a number of years by John

EDUCATIONAL THEORY / Fall 2000 / Volume 50 / Number 4

0 2000 Board of Trustees / University of Illinois
428 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 50 I NUMBER
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Meyer and colleagues and students at Stanford University. I shall refer to this
approach as the fffCommonWorld Educational Culture (henceforth CWEC) ap-
proach. Very simply, the proponents of this view argue that the development of
national educational systems and curricular categories is to be explained by univer-
sal models of education, state, and society, rather than by distinctive national
factors. The other approach, which I am attempting to develop, will be summarized
as the Globally Structured Agenda for Education (GSAE).It draws on recent work in
international political economy that sees the changing nature of the world capitalist
economy as the driving force of globalization and seeks to establish its effects on
educational systems, even as they are also locally mediated.2 The comparison may
most usefully start with the title of the essay. The purpose of the CWEC approach
is to demonstrate the existence andinfluence of these worldmodels; in this approach
education, in that it provides evidence for the hypothesized world culture, is a
resource, not a topic. By contrast, for the GSAE approach, education is a topic. Its
purpose is to provide answers to questions about what goes on in the area and the
activities known as education and it regards explaining how the agenda that
frames those questions is formed as central to answering them. The labels given to
the two approaches are themselves, of course, deliberately contrasted. Both World
and Global imply an extranational focus. The main relevant difference between
them is that the former connotes an international society or polity made up of
individual autonomous nation-states; the assumption is essentially one of an
international community. As its leading exponents have recently put it, If We see the
nation-state that organizes education as embedded in a world society - in other
words, a nation-state s y ~ t e m . Global,
~ by contrast, implies social and economic
forces operating supranationally and transnationally, rather than internationally, to
elude, break down, or override national boundaries, while reconstructing the rela-
tions between nations. Structured Agenda is contrasted with Culture; the latter
implies a shared, and equally available, set of resources at a high level of generality,
the former, a systematic set of unavoidable issues for nation-states that is framed by
their relation to globalization. And, as I shall elaborate below, though the term is
common, education is conceived of quite differently in the two approaches.

1. This essay is one of a set of three in which I am attempting to develop various aspects of this approach.
See Roger Dale, Specifying Global Effects on National Policy: A Focus on the Mechanisms, fournal of
Education Policy 14, no. 1 (1999):1-14 and Roger Dale, Globalization: A New World for Coinparativc
Education! in Discourse and Comparative Education, ed. Juergen Schriewer (Bern: Peter Lang, 1999),87-
109.
2. See for instance, Robert W. Cox, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1996);Bjom Hettne, ed., International Political Economy: Understanding Global Disorder [London:Zed
Press, 1995);and James Mittelman, ed., Globalization: Critical Reflections (Boulder:Lynn Reincr, 1996).
3. John W. Meyer and Francisco 0.Ramirez, The World Institutionalization of Education, in Schriewer,
Discourse and Comparative Education, 111-32.

ROGER DALE is Professor in the School of Education at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. In
addition to globalization, his scholarly interests include political sociology of education, education policy,
and governance and pedagogy.
DALE. Globalization and Education 429

A COMMON CULTURE
EDUCATIONAL
WORLD
CWEC is an appropriate title for this body of work, since that is what in essence
it claims to have demonstrated. The work has been developed over more than twenty
years through a wide range of publications by a group of scholars who may be referred
to as world institutionalists, since their work develops on a world scale some
central tenets of what has become known as sociological instit~tionalism.~ The
central argument of the world institutionalists is that the institutions of the nation-
state, indeed the state itself, are to be regarded as essentially shapedat a supranational
level by a dominant world (or Western) ideology, rather than as autonomous and
unique national creations. Here, states have their activity and their policies shaped
by universal norms and culture. The values of this universal culture are those of
Western modernity; they center on progress and justice and are associated with the
construction of the ideas of the state and the inlvidual.
The central thrust of this important, audacious, and ambitious thesis is socio-
logical rather than educational, though students of education cannot help benefiting
from what is an impressively coherent and consistent approach to macro-level
explanation. It has seen little fundamental change over that p e r i ~ d . ~
The theory is dense and complex and it is difficult to do full justice to it here.
Perhaps the best place to begin is with a general statement that demonstrates its
scope and ambition and also indicates the place of education within it:
Theinstitutions constructing, andgivingmeaning to, modern social entities and thcirrationalized
action have a much wider and more universal character than any particular setting they
constitute ...in two closelyrclated senses. First, these institutions embody universalized claims
linked to rules of nature and moral pui-pose. Economic, educational or poiitical action is
legitimated in terms of quite general claims about progress, justice and the natural order ....The
dfferences that do arise within local settings are limited and remain within the context of the
broader cultural frame....Second, specific institutional claims and definitions tend in practice to
be very similar almost everywhere. Differences across particular settings result from the
organization of that setting around varying emphases or interpretations of more general
institutional rules ...One must see these institutions in all of the diversity not only as built up
out of human experience in particular local settings, but as devolving from a dominant
universalistic historicnl culture....The formal structures of society, ranging from the definition
and properties of the individual to the form and content of such organizations as schools, firms,
social movements, and states, arise from or are adjusted to fit very general rules that often have
worldwide meaning and power.6
Institutions may be seen as cultural accounts under whose authority action
occurs and social units claim their ~ t a n d m g . The
~ content of those accounts draws
4. See, for instance Walter W. Powell and Paul DiMaggio, eds., The Newlnstitutionalism in Organization
Theory (Chicago:University of Chicago Press, 1991)andPeter A. Hall andR0semaryC.R. Taylor, Political
Science and the Three New Institutionalisrns, Political Studies 44, no. 4, 936-57.
5. However, it is possible to discern some potential shifts in a recent major statement of the approach. John
W. Meyer, John Boli, George M. Thomas, and Francisco 0.Ramirez, World Society and the Nation-State,
American ,Iournal uf Sociology 103, no. 1 (1997): 144-81.
6 . John W. Meyer, John Roli, and Gcorgc M. Thomas, Ontology and Rationalization in the Western
Cultural Account, in Institutional Structure: Constituting State, Society and the Individual, ed. George
M. Thomas, John W. Meyer, Francisco 0.Ramirez, and John Boli (NewburyPark, Calif.: Sage, 1987],27,29.
This is the lead chapter in the theoretically most significant collection of work on the world institutionalist
approach.
7. Ibid., 29.
430 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 1 VOLUME
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on the general features of the Western cultural account that emphasize rationality,
progress, individualism, and justice. Meyer, John Boli, and George Thomas focus on
four consequences of this cultural account:
First, rationalization.. .leads to the formation of an extraordinary array of legitimated actors
reified as purposive and rational - individuals, associations, classes, organizations, ethnic
groups, nation-states. Second, collective actors command greater legitimacy and authority if
they are founded on a theory of individual membership and activity, such as the nation-state or
the rationalized firm. Third, organizational entities that are tied into the theories of justice and
progress gain special standing above all others- the individual and thenation-state are the most
real of all ...with the balance between the two varying from one society to another ....Fourth,
because they derive from universalistic cultural ideology, dominant cultural forms, including
the structure and boundaries of collective action, are relatively standardized across societies.
There is only a loose relationship between organizational forms and practical needs and goals
operating in local situations. In this sense, Western organizational structures are to be seen as
ritual enactments of broad-based cultural prescriptions rather than the rational responses to
concrete problems!
More specifically, Francisco Ramirez and Marc Ventresca argue that
mass schooling.. ..developed and spread as an increasingly familiar set of general ideological and
organizational arrangements. Over historical time and through diverse processes, features of
modern schooling coalesced into one normative institutional model [that] was increasingly
linked to the ascendant nation-state [which was] itself fostered by a world political culture
emerging from the conflicting dynamics of the world capitalist economy ....Mass schooling
becomes the central set of activities through which the reciprocal links between individuals and
nation-states are f ~ r g e d . ~
Though the theory on whch the CWEC rests has been tested across a number
of social fields, education is central to it because it represents the confluence of the
two central bases of the world culture: "the state as the primary locus of social
organization and vehicle of social development [and]the individual as the basic unit
of social action, the ultimate source of value, and the locus of social meaning."1 The
world institutionalists' major demonstration of their theory is to be found in the
massive and rapid spread of national educational systems and in the unexpected
global isomorphism of curricular categories across the world; this isomorphism
occurs irrespective of national economic, political and cultural differences."
The argument may be summarized as follows. The rapid spread of national
educational systems and the striking but surprisingdegreeof curricular homogeneity
that we observe across the societies of the world, irrespective of their location, level
of development, or religious and other traditions, cannot be explained by the

8. Ibid., 32.
9. Francisco 0.Ramirez and Marc J. Ventresca, "Building the Institution of Mass Schooling; Isomorphism
in the Modern World," in The Political Construction of Educational Expansion: The State, School
Expansion and Economic Change, ed. Bruce Fuller and Richard Rubinson (New York: Praeger, 1992),47-
59.
10. Francisco 0.Rarmrez and John Boli, "Global Patterns of Educational Institutionalization," in Thomas
et al., Institutional Structure, 154.
11. The most accessible and relevant accounts of this work i n education are the collections, The Political
Construction of Educational Expansion, where the main focus is explaining the spread of education
systems; and School Knowledge for the Masses: World Models and Curricular Categories in the Twentieth
Century, ed. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens, and Aaron Benavot (London: Falmer, 19923, whose focus
is the unexpected homogeneity of curricular categories across the world and from which I shall draw most
of my examples since it represents the strongest statement of the CWEC case.
DALE Globalization and Education 43 1

functional, national-cultural, or rational-instrumental theories that have dominated

the study of educational systems or the curriculum hitherto. They derive first of all
from the very model of modern stateness that has spread especially rapidly since
1945. As Suk-YingWongputs it,
With the breakdown of the old colonial empires and the subsequent extension of the nation-state
system, a new concrpt of the construction of society as based on a rational model that
emphasized economic, political, and cultural individualism arose. As these states seek internal
and external recognition for themselves as proper nation-states, they tend to sample from, and
then incorporate, prevailing conventions in the world order. *
Education is central to this modernizing mission, and the structure of school
curricula is closely linked to the rise of standardized models of society and to the
increasing dominance of standardized models of education as one component of
these general model^,"'^ while the school curriculum is a ritual enactment of
worldwide educational norms and conventions rather than instrumental choice of
individual societies to meet various local requirements. The definition of legitimate
knowledge to be taught in schools, and the selection and hierarchical organization
of such bodies of knowledge, are thus by and large externally prescribed. At the
core of the prescription lies rational discourse on how the socialization of children
in various subject areas is linked to the self-realization of the individual and,
ultimately, to the construction of an ideal society. This discourse is highly standard-
ized and universalistic in chara~ter.~
The pattern of argument employed is quite distinctive and consistent across
many of the publications produced by those associated with this approach. Essen-
tially, it proceeds by a process of e1iminati0n.l~Having established empirically that
there exists a far higher level of isomorphism or similarity of curricular categories
than might have been expected across the educational systems of nation-states at
very different levels of development and with quite different educational tradtions,
scholars briefly review other approaches that see curricula as nationally patterned
collections of socially approved knowledge that, if compared cross-nationally,
should show considerable diversity.l6
Thus, typically, functionalist arguments that see education responding to
specific (and different) national needs of industrialization or urbanization, and
consequently as differingby level of development, are exposed as deficient, because

12. Wong, Sulr-Ying,The Evolution and Organization of the Social Science Curriculum, in Meyer et al.,
School Knowledge for the Masses, 126.
3 . Aaron Benavot, Yun-Kyung Cha, David H. Knmens, John W. Meyer, and Wong Suk-Ying, Knowledge
for the Masses: World Models and National Curricula, 1920-86, in Meyer et al., School Knowledge for the
Masses, 41.
14. Yun-Kyung Cha, The Origins and Expansion of Primary School Curricula:1800-1920, in Meyer et al.,
School Knowledge for the Masses, 65.
15. A similar point is made in Richard Rubinson and Irene Browne, Education and the Economy, in
Handbook of Economic Sociology, ed. Neil 1. Smelser and Richard Swedborg (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1994).I am, of course, conscious that I am employing a somewhat similar strategy in this
essay.
16. Benavot et al, Knowledge for the Masses, 41.
432 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 1 VOLUME
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the evidence suggests that there is a far greater degree of similarity between the
curricula of all countries than they could possibly account for. Similarly, the
response of the proponents of CWEC to historicist accounts of curriculum
development that are based on detailed case s t u l e s of individual nation states and
claim national uniqueness for the curriculum, based on unique national histories
and traditions, is broadly to see them as useful and important but as missing the main
point, which is the standardization of curricular categories across the world. In
particular, such case studies can neither inlvidually nor collectively explain the
consistency of the categories on which all the national systems they consider
However, it is also important to note that the proponents of the CWEC thesis do
not see any necessary inconsistency between their approach and the more nationally
centered approaches, with the latter focusing on particular issues of detailed
curriculum content, and the former on the rise of very general subject categories and
on explaining their location in official policy.1BThis is important because it seems
to set clear limits to the claims of the CWEC advocates. However, while they
frequently emphasize that their focus is on curricular categories, nothing more, it
has to be said that sometimes the presentation of their case seems to go beyond this.
There sometimes appears to be an implicit assumption that the dual focus of mass
schooling and curriculum categories constitutes a comprehensive account of educa-
tion. For instance, in one of the strongest expressions of the CWEC argument it is
stated that
A[n]approach rooted in the institutional and world polity perspectives suggests that educational
structures and curricular content are institutionalized at the world level. According to this
perspective, mass education and mass school curricula are closely linked to emergent models of
society and education which have become relatively standardized around the world. These
standardized models or ideologies create homogenizing cultural effects that undermine the
impact of national and local factors in determining the composition of the curriculum. This view
implies that national differences in curricular priorities - for example, the priority given to
mathematics and science - will be relatively small and will decline over time.19
A third alternative explanation of the isomorphism of curricular categories
involves claims to a scientific basis for the curriculum. In the Introduction to School
Knowledge #or the Masses, for example, Meyer states that
the scientific researchers who study [the relation between curriculum and national goals]have
no real systematic knowledge showing, for example, that instruction in mathematics and
science facilitates economic growth, that instruction in social studies facilitates political
integration, or that any particular instructional content actually facilitates the legitimacy of and
domination by an economic or political elite. ..[Thus]in modem practice, the scientific theory
enters into social &course - and even social research - as a normative matter rather than a
technical one. Forms are created.. .because they conform to the values definedin the theory more
than because of any evidence of their actual effects.O
One major consequence of this is that:

17. Ibid., 44.

18. Ibid., 45.
19. See also David Kamens, John W. Meyer, and Aaron Benavot, Worldwide Patterns in Academic
Secondary Education Curricula, Comparative Education Review 40, no. 2 (1996):116-38.
20. John W. Meyer, Introduction, in Meyer et al., School Knowledge for the Masses, 8, 21.
n A 1F Globalization and Education 433

the disputes that sweep across the field of curriculum inquiry are all built round a strikingly
sharedvision-a zone of consensualsilence ....The conflicts are about whether we actually have
a good society, whether education actually works efficiently and justly, and whether it actually
works to promote the social justice and effectiveness required ....[Thus] in the absence of
knowledge about the social impact of curricular variations, and in the presence of a worldwide
commitment to the general model of education as a vehicle i n the pursuit of progress, strong
pressures for at least superficial standardization are produced.21

Furthermore, as Meyer and Kamens put it, Education is of great value, but there is
no technically known way to do it best -the situation is ideal for the operation of
processes of fashion, of imitation, and thus of diffusion.22
The theorys claims about the nature of education as a general good are
succinctly set out by Meyer and Kamens: mass education, throughout the modern
period, has not only been highly valued, but has been seen as a scientific or
rationalized method to produce social improvement.23This idea has been elabo-
rated very usefully in a powerful statement of the institutionalist approach of
Richard Rubinson and Irene Browne, who indicate how education as an institution
shapes and assumes particular behaviors and thereby creates modem citizens:
Mass schooling is the key symbolic form of membership in the modem polity. Education is the
organizational mechanism that constructs individuals as citizens (the theory of schooling as
an organization of socialization] and determines their legitimate place in the social structure (the
theory of schooling as an organization of stratification]. Institutional theory emphasizes that
the actual practices within schooling are not what produce the outcomes of socialization and
stratification; rather, schools are ritual organizations that createa taken-for-grantedset of beliefs
in the power of education. Schools may not be effective organizations of socialization, hut
education itself constitutes a theory of socialization that explains that schooling transforms
individuals into modem citizens and productive workers. Schools may not be effective
organizations for altering the effects of class background, but education itself constitutes a
theory of allocation that explains that schoolingproduccs a meritocratic stratification structure.
Consequently, education is a major institution because it legitimates both the political and
economic structures, not by transforming individuals through socialization or allocation, but
through institutionally defining the products of schooling as competent citizens who have
earned their position in the stratification system.24
The CWEC approach, then, constitutes a strong and coherent theory of the relation
between globalization and education. It specifies the nature of the supranational
force, points to its educational outcomes, and identifies the link between them.
RESERVATIONS CWEC
ABOUT
Before comparing it with the GSAE approach, I should draw attention to some
of the reservations the CWECsproponents themselves acknowledge or imply. There
are three such reservations that it seems important to acknowledge. The first, which
is perhaps more of a caveat than a reservation, is quite clear. It is the fact that, as the
authors state in the preface to School Knowledge for the Masses,

21. Ibid., 9.
22. JohnW. Meyer and David H. Kamens, Conclusion: Accounting for a World Curriculum, in Meyer et
al., School Knowledge for the Masses, 171.
23. Ibid.
24. Rubinson and Browne, Education and the Economy, 592.
434 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 / VOLUME
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Our data are perforce limited or superficial. We know whether agiven countryspolicies include
a given curricular category or not, and how much emphasis is given on this category. We do not
know what the category means in the country (for example, the syllabus, the materials, the
instruction plan, or the test), we do not know how or whether the category is actually
implemented in the schools, and we do not know if the category has different meaning or
implementation for children of differing class, ethnicity or gender?
This reservation is reinforced and extended at several points in the groups work.
The second limitation to the case advanced lies in the lack of specificity of the
language in which it is often couched. This occurs in three areas in particular. One
is the very wide range of terms used to describe the object of the study; at various
points reference is made to world level norms, conventions, customs, stan-
dards, each of which carries different connotations.2hItmay be that, given the scope
of the argument, all these things are to be implied by the range of terms used. This
would certainly be consistent with Meyer, Boli, and Thomass use of six different
terms for world polity; they acknowledge that For some purposes it might be
useful to distinguish more technically among these appellations, f27 and it is at least
arguable that such distinctions would be very useful in this case, in order to give
greater precision to the nature of the claims being advanced.
Much the same might be suggested in respect to the second area of imprecision,
which relates to the nature of the consequences brought about by the CWEC and the
process by which they are brought about. The former is variously described as
homology, isomorphism, convergence, standardization, homogeneity, and com-
monality, while the latter extends from reflection of world level norms to their
imposition. Again, these all mean something different, and again, many of the
lfferences appear to be consequential for the argument.
The third area of ambiguity concerns the scope and consequences of the CWEC.
It is not clear, for instance, whether what is converging or becoming homologous is
a process, or an outcome, or both. Examples of the strong claims made for the CWEC
are that /,a new culture or set of cultural categories is being promulgated by mass
educational institutions,; that an approach rooted in the institutional and world
polity perspectives suggests that educational structures and curricular content are
institutionalized at the world level; and that states are enactors of cultural
accounts. Against this should be set arguments that national variations remain
strong, that world culture is far from homogeneous, and that incorporation of the
model may be entirely at a ritual

25. Meyer et al., School Knowledge for the Masses, xi-xii. Although, as has been noted above, there is also
a tendency to stray beyond this self-imposed restriction.
26. We might also note that each of them individually carries different meanings. Takc standards, for
example. Within a few pages of School Knowledge for the Masses we have references to world standards,
apparently implying a measure of quality; to the correct educational standard, apparently implying a
criterion of achievement; and to dominant standards of educational propriety, apparently implying some
kind of norm.
27. Meyer et al., Ontology and Rationalization, 34
28. See Meyer and Kamens, Conclusion, 168;David H. Kamens, Variant Forms: Cases of Countries with
Distinct Curricula, in Meyer et al., School Knowledge for the Masses, 82 and Cha, Origins and Expansion,
65.
DALE Globalization and Education 435

Finally, we should note that the empirical case for a CWEC is much stronger on
breadth than on depth. As Meyer, Kamens, and Benavot put it, Our data are perforce
limited or superficial...but [theydo]permit an assessment of the range and spread of
general curricular topics across countries over long periods of time.29For the
purposes of this essay their claim is accepted as adequate and only the briefest
account of the methodology will be provided. The empirical case is based on an
extensive database that is to a considerable extent made up of official national
curriculum statements sampled across time and countries. This was used to
construct the indicators of curriculum organization, the date of emergence and rate
of spread of subjects, and the amount of time devoted to each subject. The data were
collected from national and international historical published sources, replies to a
questionnaire sent out by theInternationa1 Bureau of Education to all member states
of UNESCO in 1984, and from the teams own survey of national ministries of
education carried out in 1985.A second topic of critique is the nature of the dataused.
This is important not so much in itself but in the nature of the claims that are based
on it. The use of questionnaire returns, material from national ministries (that
presumably it would be impossible to check or validate independently, as has been
implied by reviewers with regional expertise who claim to have found numerous
errors in the data),and data from a variety of more or less incommensurable sources
can only support limited arguments.3O Nevertheless, this is not a fatal shortcoming
and this database may be taken as adequate for the purposes for which it has been
used.
A COMPARISON
OF CWEC AND GSAE

Having set out a brief account of the CWEC approach to the relation between
globalization and education, I now wish to contrast it with the GSAE approach. The
approaches do have a number of fundamental similarities, but the differencesin their
assumptions and arguments are of greater significance.The two approaches share the
emphasis on the importance of supranational forces, the possibility that policy goals
as well as policy processes can be affected by external influences on national
education policies, an emphasis on the capacitating rather than impact nature
of the effect of supranational forces on national educational systems (somethingthat
distinguishes them both from human capital approaches],and the recognition that
national interpretative frames are supranationally as well as nationally shaped.31
There are major differences, however, in each of the fundamental aspects of the
argument: the nature of globalization, the understanding of education, and its
relation to globalization.

29. John W. Meyer, David H. Kamens, and Aaron Benavot, AuthorsPreface, in Meyer et al., School
Knowledge for the Musses, xi-xii; bracketed phrases added.
30. See for example, Stefan Hopman, Review of School Knowledge for the Masses, Journal of Curriculum
Studies 25, no. 5 (1992):475-82.
31. See Paul Streeten, Human Development: The Debate about the Index, International Social Science
fournal47, no. 1 (1995):25-37.
436 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 / VOLUME50 / NUMBER
4

THE NATURE OF GLOBALIZATTON

While both approaches recognize that their conceptualizations of the global level
and its effects on education are not mutually exclusive -it is not a question of all
economics or all politics -the most fundamental difference between them lies in
the understanding of the nature of the supranational level. For CWEC, the world
polity is a reflection of the Western cultural account, based around a particular set
of values that penetrate every region of modern life. For GSAE, globalization is a set
of political-economic arrangements for the organization of the global economy,
driven by the need to maintain the capitalist system rather than by any set of values.
Adherence to its principles is brought about by political economic leverage and
perception of self-interest.
While the proponents of the CWEC view of globalization refer to the presence of
a supranational set of ideas, norms, and values that inform -even script -national
responses to a range of issues, in the GSAE approach, globalization is seen as being
constructed through three related sets of activities: economic, political, and cul-
These may be characterized as hyper-liberalism, governance without govern-
ment, and commodification and consumerism, respectively. Globalization is seen as
a complex and often contradictory process, that is centered around three major
regionalgroupings of states: Europe, America, and Asia. The quotation marks
imply that these regions are social, especially political-economic, constructions
rather than geographically inclusive. They have different levels of interaction and
integration and may to some extent be seen as competitor^.^^ However, the regional
groupings share a concern with controlling and agreeing on the rules of the game.
They compete fiercely to advance the set of global agreements most favorable to
them, but recognize that they are all ultimately dependent on the existence of a world
that is safe for the pursuit of profit for all rather than a world that is safe for the pursuit
of their own profit at the expense of others.
This form and extent of globalization is distinct from any that has gone before;
it makes it possible, for the first time, to speak of a global economy that includes all
nations of the This has resulted from the formal collapse of the only

32. See Cox, Approaches and Dale, Globalization.

33. See Roger Dale and Susan Robertson, Resisting the Nation, Reshaping the State, in Education Policy
in New Zealand, ed. Mark Olssen and Kay Morris Matthews (Palmerston North Dunmore, 19971,209-27;
Joseph Grieco, Sources of Variation in Regional Institutionalization in Western Europe, East Asia, and the
Americas, in The PoliticalEconomy of Regionalism, ed. Edward 0. Mansfield and Helen V. Milner (New
York:ColumbiaUniversity Press, 19971,167-87;Mittelman, Globalization; Hettne InternationaIIoliti~a~
Economy; and Peter Katzenstein, Regionalism in Comparative Perspective, Cooperation and Conflict
31, no. 2 (19961: 123-59.In the case of the EuropeanUnion thisinvolves theregional body takingprecedence
over national bodies on a number of key issues that were traditionally the exclusive preserve of the
sovereign nation-state; moreover, it carries out these state-like functions without taking on a state-like
form. In both these ways, it seriously threatens the basis of the world polity argument. This is an extremely
important issue, but it will not be pursued further here because the focus of the paper is the effects on
education and not a general critique of the world polity approach.
34. Again, for the sake of this essay it is not necessary to go through the arguments about globalization in
depth. There is in any case a burgeoning secondary literature that is providing increasingly sophisticated
summaries of the arguments. However, the argument that what we are witnessing is an epochal shift and
not merely an incremental development, is central to the GSAE approach.
DALE Globalization and Education 437

alternative to capitalism and the accelerating thrust toward the commodification of

everything, which accompanies it. A second key factor is that it is the system that
has triumphed rather than a [new)hegemonic nation. As a result of the growth of
Trans-national Corporations [TNCs)and of technical changes in the speed of transfer
of finance, for instance, the global economy escapes the ability of even the most
powerful nation to control it (though that does not mean of course, that the United
States is not still the most important player in the world economy, even though it
may not necessarily or always be the most successful economy; globalization is a
political-economic phenomenon, not purely an economic one). This has also led to
the creation of new forms of supranational governance that carry unprecedented
influence. Again, though, it must be emphasized that these changes result from
changing conditions in the pursuit of profit, which remains the motor of the whole
system.
A further major lfference lies in the nature of the "core problems" that global
forces place on the agenda of the nation-state. For CWEC these are very neatly
summed up by Meyer: the set of rules based on modern culture "stresses, centrally,
the primacy and legitimacy of nation-states as organizational forms, and the
obligations of these organizations to pursue modern 'progress' rationally on behalf of
theirpop~lations."~~This model contains both the goals for states and the legitimate
means of attaining them. For GSAE, those core problems frame the agenda of the
state, and all its component parts, including education, in capitalist society.36These
problems include supporting the regime of accumulation, ensuring a context that
does not inhibit its continuing expansion, and providmg a basis of legitimation for
the system as a whole; these three problems cannot all be solved together. Rather the
solutions to them tend to be contradictory and these contradictions are what provide
the dynamic of educational systems. In the era of globalization, these become
problems to be addressed at a global as well as a national level, with the means of
addressing them at the one level having clear, direct, and possibly contradictory
implications for the ways they are addressed at the other level. Both the forms and
the relative priorities of the core problems will also change. There are also differences
in the status of the core problems for the two approaches.For GSAE the core problems
change, in form and in priority, and it is a matter of states adjusting to those changes.
For CWEC the core problems appear not to change, and it is a matter of states
recognizing them more clearly and ensuring their legitimacy through the ways that
they approach them.
A very useful comparison of the two approaches in this area can be found in the
work of Martha Finnemore, who may he seen as a friendly critic of the theory
underlying the CWEC approach.37Finnemore shares the fundamentals of the ap-

35. Ibid., 1 I 7
36. This argument is fully elaboratedin Roger Dale, The State and Education Policy(Mi1tonKeynes: Open
University Press, 1989).
37. See Martha Finnemore's Excellent critical appraisal of the "world institutionalists" in, Martha
Finnemore, ''Norms, Cultures, and World Politics: Insights from Sociology's Institutionalism," Interna-
tional Organization 47, no. 4 (1996):565-97 and Martha Finnemore, National Interests in International
Society (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 19961.
438 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 / VOLUME
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proach in that she sees the system driven by values as well as material pressures and
takes global culture as a resource on which states draw rather than as a structure that
shapes their responses and selection of resources. However, she does go beyond the
CWEC approach in a number of ways that take her in the direction of a GSAE
approach and this enables the differencesbetween the two approaches to be indicated
more precisely. She advances the notion of the anatomy of international society
shaped around three fundamental normative elements: bureaucracies, markets,
and human e q ~ a l i t y . She
~ ~recognizes that these elements are intrinsically contra-
dictory and argues that nonnative contestation is in large part what politics is all
What is crucial to the differencebetween the two positions is that while for
Finnemore, as well as the world institutionalists, the causal force of change is in the
inter-subjective, in powerful shared ideas and beliefs about the world, rather than in
material conditions alone, the GSAE approach sees capitalism as the causal force,
driven by the search for profit.4oIt is here, too, in the changing nature of the pursuit
of profit that GSAE seeks the motor of change in the supranational level. There is no
equivalent explanation in the CWEC approach. Its proponents offer no effective
explanation of why ideas change in the way they do, or why those changes seem not
to have obstructed the development of capitalism on a global scale. On the other
hand, the GSAE approach does not claim that change is driven by material factors
alone. It can accept that ideas and beliefs change because capitalism is able to prosper
under many different normative culturesi it does so under many different forms of
state and government, many different religious regimes, many different family
forms.
CONCEFITONS OF EDUCATION

The second area of comparison of the two approaches lies in their notably
different conceptions of education. Both approaches reject the possibility of explain-
ing education from within itself. However, the reasons for this, and the status of
conceptions of education in the two approaches, are quite dfferent.The main reason
for this difference is the purpose of the respective projects: as was noted earlier, in
CWEC education is a resource and in GSAE it is a topic. For the former it is the fact
of curricular isomorphism that is central, not its content; for the latter, the point is
to explain and understand the consequences for education of globalization. Thus, the
GSAE conception of education centers on three crucial sets of questions: Who gets
taught what, how, by whom, and under what conditions and circumstances? How,
by whom, and with what relations to other sectors and through what structures,
institutions, and processes are these things defined, governed, organized, and
managed?and, To what ends and in whose interests do these structures and processes
occur, and what are their social and individual consequences?

38. Finnemore, National Interests, 131.

39. Ibid., 135.
40. Ibid.. 20.
DALE Globalization and Education 439

These questions, the answers to which are expected to vary across educational
systems, focus on the principles and processes of the distribution of formal educa-
tion, on the definition, formulation, transmission, and evaluation of school knowl-
edge, and on how these things are interrelated. They direct us to discover how those
processes are funded, provided, and regulated, and how such forms of governance
relate to broader conceptions of governance within a society. We are required to ask
how these structures and processes, which we typically shorthand as educational
systems, affect the life chances of individuals and groups and the overall mutual
relations of educational systems to the wider social collectivities and institutions of
which they are part.
The scope of education in the CWEC is narrower. First, there is a tendency to
reduce educational systems to their mandate, what it is considered desirable for them
to achieve. This ignores both the capacity of the system, that is, the feasibility of
carrying out that mandate, and its governance, how it is coordinated to achieve the
desired and feasible ends.41The importance of taking all three of these key compo-
nents of educational systems into account in examining any one of them is evident
if we consider the strengths and weaknesses of the CWEC focus on issues of mandate.
It does enable us to understand better who gets taught and what is taught; it does not,
though, enable us to understandbetter who gets taught what.To understand that we
need to consider issues of capacity and governance as well as those of mandate. It is
also worth noting here the absence of any attempt to draw the relation of education
to another persistent characteristic of Western modernity, namely, systematic social
inequality at both global and national levels. Even more narrowly conceived at the
classroom level, education includes more than curricular categories. This is fully
acknowledgedin the CWEC work, at least to the extent of recognizing that there will
be significant gaps between what the curriculum categories imply and what is
taught, though its implications appear not to be fully recognized.
However, while the proponents of the CWEC approach fully acknowledge the
gap in their understanding of the implementation of curricular categories, there is
nothing within the approach that would enable them to fill that gap or to map its
contours. Their cognitive focus and their theory of agency (both of which are
discussed below) essentially preclude them from reflecting either on politics of
education or educational The approach assumes the former -as part of the
states mandate - and largely ignores the latter since it matters less how subjects
appear on the curriculum than that they do appear. These elements become clear in
the issue of state-prescribed national curricula. Typically, these assume all the
curricular categories that the CWEC studies have highlighted; however, not only are
these categories endowed with different meanings and arranged in different sets of
combinations for Qfferent combinations of students, but in the cases to which the

41. The concepts of mandate, capacity, and governance are spelled out in Dale, Globalization.
42. This dstinction is elaborated in Roger Dale, Applied Education Policy or Political Sociology of
Education? Contrasting Approaches in the Recent Study of Education Policy, in Researching Education
Policy: Ethical and Methodological Issues, ed. David Halpin and Barry Troyna (London:Falmer, 1994J,31-
41.
440 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y FALL2000 / VOLUME
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idea of a national curriculum is novel, they are likely to be attended by arguments

over whether this is appropriate business for the state.
The overall point here is an important one; it is that in CWEC all the most
significant and interesting distinctions and discussions lie within its boundaries, so
broad are they. Underlying the claims of CWEC is a very broad conception of world
culture that covers all modern institutions; it is difficult to see what features of
contemporary life might escape its compass. The breadth of the concept, which
includes withm it all the most compelling and contested issues in the curriculum
and in education more widely, such as those between equality and freedom, or
individual and national benefits, means that all those debates are subsumed within
the culture rather than standing as an alternative to i ~ ~ ~ Tcould
h i s leave us asking
whether a concept that can apparently explain everything can explain anything. And
this means in turn that the only explanation the approach is able to offer from a world
level of what might be more or less likely to be taught at a national level is that it will
be unlikely to include very much that falls outside the extremely broad boundaries
of the CWEC. In fact, this criticism seems to have been taken up by Meyer, Boli,
Thomas, and Ramirez when they acknowledge, in an essay that sometimes reads like
a response to Finnemores critique, that
Decoupling [the distinction between formal commitment and actual policies and practices] is
endemic because nation-states are modeled on an external culture that cannot simply be
imported wholesale as a fully functioning system. World culture contains a good many variants
of the dominant models, which leads to the eclectic adoption of conflicting principles.. .world
cultural models are highly idealized and internally i n c ~ n s i s t e n t . ~ ~
Finally, it is a central part of my argument about the relation of globalization and
education that while matters such as the place and value of a national curriculum
have traditionally been largely determined at a national level, responses to them are
becoming increasingly framed by agendas set by the global political economy rather
than locally perceived problems; both the nature of the core problems and the means
of addressing them are significantly altered by the changing nature of state-suprana-
tional relations.45
It is t h s issue that 1 consider next. I will divide this into the nature of the global
level, conceptions of the state, and conceptions of agency and mechanisms. As will
become clear, these points of comparison are closely linked.
THERELATION
OF GLOBALIZATION
TO EDUCATION

THEGLOBAL LEVEL. In a sense, the claims of the two approaches are quite
dissimilar and do not overlap very much, but we might briefly summarize the
differences between them as follows. C m C s claims are fundamentally about the
existence and nature of a universal set of norms, ideas, and values that inform and

43. A similar point is made by Finnemore, Norms, Culture and MforId Politics
44. Meyer et al, World Society and the Naiion-State, 154.
45. This argument is more fullyelaboratedin SusanRobertsonand RogerDale, Competitive Contractualism:
A New Social Settlement in New Zealand Education, in Education in Times of Transition: World
Yearbook of Education 2000, ed. David Coulby, Robert Cowen, and Crispin Jones (London: Kogan Page,
2000), 116-31.
DALE Globalization and Education 441

shape the very nature of states as well as their policies. Its proponents are less
concerned with establishing the precise effects of that set of norms, ideas, and values
in any particular case. This is evident in the language employed; it is sufficient for
the wider claim, but not for the more direct one.
The GSAE approach, by contrast, is based on a perceived paradigm shift, a new
and qualitatively unprecedented level of globalization that has changed the role of
the state both nationally and internationally. Tlus shift has directly, but more
important, indirectly, through the impact of globalization on the state, affected
national educational systems and policies through mechanisms that can be specified
and This has changed both the nature of the problems confronting nation-
states and the nature of their capacity to respond to them. A crucial feature of these
changes is ceding some of inlvidual states powers to supranational bodies, which
consequently become major actors in the determination of their educational agen-
das.
Another part of states responses to changing global economic and political
pressures has been to reform themselves in various ways.47In particular, education
has been seen as the key factor in honing states competitive edge with respect to each
other, since in the new global economy human resources are much less footloose
than other kinds of r e ~ o u r c e sMany
. ~ ~ states, especially those in Anglophone coun-
tries, have become smaller but stronger, and have reshaped themselves as competi-
tive and contractual states, with a restricted range of core activities and a range of
arrangements set in place for the coordination of non-core activities. This has a
number of consequences for education. One part of this restructuring involves a new
set of relations within nation-states; there is a clearer and more significant distinc-
tion, for instance, between regime, sectoral (includingeducation),and organizational
levels.49A significant consequence of these changes is that not only are states
interpretational frameworks affected by the process of globalization, but that not
all globally initiated effects will be mediated through the state.
Finally, the research strategies of the two approaches also differ. The major
energy behind the GSAE approach is directed toward establishing more clearly the
links between changes in the global economy and changes in educational policy and
p r a c t i ~ e . ~ ~CWEC
F o r that energy appears to be orientedin two directions. One is the
continuing critique of traditional models through demonstrating their inability to
account for changes at a national level by means of national-level explanations. The
other is the project of the extensive instantiation of the central theoretical structure
in an increasingly divergent set of instances.

46. Sce Dale, Specifying Global Effects.

47. See Dale and Robertson, Resisting the Nation
48. See, for example, Robert Reich, The Work of Nations (London: Simon and Schuster, 1991).
49. See Governing Capitalist Economies, ed. J. Rogers Hollingsworth, Philippe C. Schmitter, and Wolfgang
Strecck (Ncw York: Oxford University Prcss, 1994).
50. For a more extensive account of a rescarch strategy informed by the GSAE approach, see Roger Dale and
Susan Robertson, A Critical Policy Methodology for Education (Sydney:Allen and Unwin, forthcoming).
442 EDUCATIONAL THEORY FALL2000 1 VOLUME
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4

While the arguments for CWEC may have some plausibility in respect of what
they tell us about the nature and scope of a world polity based on the Western cultural
account, their contribution to specifying the effects on educational policy and
practice of the universal culture they identify is limited to two, rather general
offerings.On the one hand, as I pointed out above, the approach does have something
to say about who and what gets taught and about how it is defined. The argument for
CWEC from which practically all nation-states draw their curricular categories is
based on the empirical work done by the world institutionalists. On the other hand,
there is some recognition both that national educational systems differ systemati-
cally and on the basis of national trahtions, and that to a considerable degree nation-
states conformity to CWEC is symbolic. However, while these may not be crucial
issues if the focus is on the nature and development of the world system, they are if
we want to know more about whether and how that world system affects national
educational policies and practices.
AGENCY/MECHANISMS. A major problem with the CWEC approach is its theory of
agency. This results in part from the correlational strategy of explanation employed.
The issue of how the hypothesized homogenization took place is not directly
addressed; as Benavot et al. put it, We have no information on the processes by
which this categorical standardization is a~hieved.~ Explanations of the data on the
growth of educational systems and on the spread of curricular categories based on
economic or functional factors at a national level are explicitly ruled out. CWEC is
therefore inferred, on which it is hypothesized the vast majority of nation-states
draws. But this does not explain why nation-states behave in this way. There is no
suggestion, for instance, that there is anything in the content of CWEC that would
bring about worldwide adherence to its precepts.
The explanations put forward focus largely on legitimation. In some accounts,
the legitimation of CWEC can seem to be almost self-generating. States have
educational systems and curricular categories because other states have them; as Boli
puts it, schooling happened in Sweden because it happened in Western civilization.
The same can be said of any other Euro-American country in this period: schooling
happened there because it happened e l s e ~ h e r e . This
~ ~ very weak theory of agency
suggests that schooling spreads almost by osmosis, or at least through a spontaneity
that it seems does not require explanation. The theory is elaborated in most accounts
by an emphasis on the process and content of legitimation. CWEC legitimates
statehood of those who adopt policies that acknowledge the curricular categories it
spawns. In turn it is argued that it draws its own legitimation from the authority of
the scientists and experts who embody and carry the ideology and values of
Western modernity, on which it is based. It is these two features, the authority of
science as the basis of its legitimation and the international organizations that act
as the mechanisms for its dissemination, that form the basis of the theory of how and

51. Benavot ct al., Knowledge for the Masses, 59.

52. JohnBoli, Identity, State, andSchooling, inFuller andRubinson, ThePoliticaZ Construction of School
Expansion.
DALE Globalization and Education 443

why nation-states embrace the world culture-derived curricular categories. Further,

it often seems that scientific experts are not merely central carriers of world culture
but that they provide the dynamic for change in it. As Meyer et al. put it, Scientists
and professionals carry ultimate, rational, unified, universal truth, by and large
shunning the image of self-interested power brokers. Science as authority is much
more influential than scientists as a group.53
This is implied in the stress on the importance and centrality of scientific and
expert legitimation of CWEC, but that it is intrinsic to the whole approach has
become clearer in recent articles. Boli and Thomas, for instance, argue that
When we speak of culture as global, we mean that definitions, principles, and purposes are
cognitively constructed in similar ways throughout the world ....the core of world culture [is a
large number of International Non-Governmental Organizations that] concentrate on economic
or technical rationalization. It is.. .technical, functional, highly differentiated and peculiarly
invisible.. .and set(s)standards, discuss(es)problems, disseminate(s)information, argue(s)points
of law, and write(s]codes of
For Meyer et al.,
The models of national development or human rights carried by international associations have
their roots in scientific and legal knowledge, such as theories and measures of national economic
development or of individual social and cconomic equality. Similarly, diffusion among nation-
states is heavily mediated by scientists and professionals who define virtuous instances,
formulatc models, and actively support their adoption.55
It is, then, in the work of International Governmental Organizations (IGOs)and
International Non-Governmental Organizations (INGOs)that we come nearest to
locating a theory of agency; organizations such as UNESCO, OECD, the WorldBank,
and many others, particularly those with potentially universal membership, are
seen to play a crucial role as carriers of the CWEC.56For McNeely and Cha,
The principles, norms, rules, and procedures of the wider system are enshrined i n these
organizations, and they have become carriers of the culture of the world polity.. ..they reflect the
more binding and universal influence of the global system and operate in a variety of ways to
effect the institutionalization of world ideologies, structures and practices at the nation-state
level and they attribute a certain amount of causal efficacy to international organizations in
bringing about the convergence of national education practices?
The effective content of the message carried by international organizations is
based on models, categories, and scripts through which the world is universalized
and, at one level, unified (evenif that unity forms the basis of further conflict).Thus,
even symbolic conformity assumes and reinforces the strength of the models and
categories.

53. Meyer et al., World Society and the Nation-State, 166.

54. John Boli and George M. Thomas, World Culture in a World Polity: A Century of International Non-
Governmental Organization, American Sociological Review 62 (1997):173, 182-83.
55. Ibid.
56. Connie McNeely, Prescribing National Education Policies: The Role of International Organizations,
Comparative Education Review 39, no. 4 [ 1995):484; Connie McNeely, Constructing the Nation-State:
International Organizations and Prescriptive Action (Westport: Greenwood, 1995);and Connie McNeely
and Yur-Kyung Cha, Worldwide Educational Convergence through International Organizations: Avenues
for Research, Education Policy Analysis Archives 2, no. 14 (1994).
57. McNeely and Cha, Worldwide Educational Convergence, 2-3
444 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 50 1 NUMBER
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This is the role above all of science, especially as harnessed and channeled
through international organizations. What this misses is the fact that many interna-
tional organizations, and certainly the most prominent and effective of them, are
themselves the direct creation of states. They did not emerge from the world
polity; rather the world polity, of which they are taken as the key components, was
constructed by states. Moreover, it was largely constructed by states in order to
address problems that affected them all, but which they could not solve individually.
The United Nations itself, and the spate of allied organizations it gave rise to, was
a conscious construction of states (thosewho had won World War 11)acting in the
collective interest of the most powerful of them (which may well have not been in
the interest of them all).It then became the basis for the attribution of statehood as
a means of ensuring the perpetuation of that collective interest in a volatile world.
We see something similar happening now, as states voluntarily cede significant
aspects of their individual sovereignty to international organizations in the face
especially of economic problems that they did not individually create and to which
they cannot individually respond. This move, which is usefully captured by James
Rosenaus term, governance without government, represents a qualitative shift in
the nature of the relation between states and supranational forces, that is quite
different from the CWEC conception of world polity based on International Non-
Governmental Organizations (INGOS).~~ The latter are seen as driven by an autono-
mous, self-propelling technical rationality, the former by powerful states interests
in retaining their dominance when it is threatened by forces they cannot control. It
is important, too, not to overlook the fact that while they may not be the direct
creation of states, INGOs necessarily rely on states tacit or overt approval of their
activities. More than this, Boli and Thomas estimate that nearly 60% of INGOs
concentrate on economic or technical rationalization. It could hardly be against the
interests of the most powerful states, who define those standards, to have them
promoted on a world level. Indeed, it might be argued that their promulgation
through the auspices of INGOs might be all the more useful to them, since it conceals
their origins and the interests carried by them. This is already evident through the
activities of TNCs (whosepart in the creation of global technical standards is entirely
neglected by Boli and Thomas), for instance through the installation of particular
production techniques at the organizational level, w h l e some sectors of national
activity are much more vulnerable to supranational forces than others. Some sectors
become highly globalized, as a direct result of worldwide integration by TNCs, much
more than as a result of state-mediated INGO initiatives.
One significant feature of these arguments is the close similarity of the language
used about both the IGOs that McNeely refers to and the INGOs that are central to
Boli and Thomass work. That similarity discloses a great deal about what is central
and what is peripheral to the CWEC approach. If wider political issues were central,
it would be inappropriate not to distinguish between two sets of institutions that are
quite different from each other in ways that are significant for their performance as

58. James N. Kosenau and Emst-Otto Cziempel, eds., Governance without Government: Order and
Change in World Politics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).
DALE Globalization and Education 445

carriers of CWEC. The problem with this work is that it takes international
Organizations of both types quite unproblematically; they are treated alustorically
and implicitly regarded as homogeneous and related to world values and the world
polity in the same way. Their different modes of operation, different structural
relations to nation-states and their educational systems, and different fundamental
purposes, to say nothing of the changes in these, are all ignored in this work. The
different mechanisms through which they seek to affect national educational
systems are left unexplored, so that they appear as passive carriers rather than active
interpreters of, or contributors to, CWEC.59
The emphasis is solely on their technical rationality (and the INGOs are treated
no more problematically than the IGOs).That seems an especially difficult position
to hold in the area of models or even measures of national economic development.
It is quite clear that there are different and competing (and equally technically
rational) models of economic development, that the adoption of one over another is
based on political rather than, or certainly as well as, technical grounds, and that the
choice (or imposition) of any particular model has major consequences for national
populations.60Andwe should expect to find that the same applies right across the
spectrum of matters pertaining to individual and human rights.
It is also necessary to raise some questions about the authority of science, on
which much of the CWEC case rests. The kind of universal authority attributed to
science is claimed by many more groups than can substantiate their claim.61It is
interesting, for instance, that Meyer et al.s very strong statement about the
authority of science comes in the paragraph immediately following the one contain-
ing the point about the scientific authority of economic models.6zMoreover, as the
example of economic models illustrates, where scientific claims are not only
difficult to substantiate but compete with each other, the choice between them is at
least as likely to be made on political rather than technical grounds, however well-
concealed that may be. To take the argument further, while experts and profession-
als claims are always based on scientific authority, the success or failure of those
claims rests not only on the strength of their scientific authority but of the set of
political con&tions under which they are put forward.63
Thus, science does not flourish - or fail to flourish - on the basis of its
cognitive claims alone. It depends, too, on the social conditions that form the context
of its operation. International organizations do not confine their interventions to the
area of policy mandates alone; they also, and increasingly, address issues of both

59. See Dale, Specifying Global Effects.

60. See Streeten, Human Development and Donald McGranahan, Measures of Development: Research
at the UnitedNations Research Institute for Social Development, International Social Science lournal 47,
no. 1 (1995):39-59.
61. And this is to say nothing of the declining authority of science, consequent on the consequences of its
perceived mistakes (Chemobyl) and hubris (MadCow Disease and Genetic Engineering).
62. See footnote 53.
63. See, for instance Peter Hall, ed., The Political Power ofEconomicIdeas (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1993).
446 E D U C A T I O N A L T H E O R Y 50 1 NUMBER
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capacity and governance. Governance has become the key target of organizations
like the OECD and the World Bank in recent years. What this has meant at national
levels is a comparative rise in the influence of those regulating state activities and
a compensating decline in the influence of those whose work is associated with
developing the mandate - namely, the scientists and professionals. T h s not only
seriously undermines the "cognitive" argument for the spread of CWEC, but it
further demonstrates the importance of local political-economic conditions in not
merely filtering or interpreting the messages of CWEC, but in admitting them at all,
at least in so far as they depend on "science" to carry them forward. In this
connection, it may not be accidental that the CWEC theory was developed as the
Cold War/Keynesian era began to come to a close, for that was indeed a golden age
for science to flourish on the basis of massive government funding. It was not the
cleverness or persuasiveness of the scientists and experts that made them such key
figures in the development of CWEC, but the circumstances of the time, such as
massive government funding of science for military purposes. In the educational
field, the key features of the welfare state of the period were that there was no strong
mandate for education, which was subject to exclusively state-centered governance;
state control of education was achieved through manipulation of its capacity.'j4These
circumstances were absolutely ripe for the "professional capture" of educationi and
once again, it was these conditions rather than any enhanced cognitive persuasive-
ness that enabled the professionals to take on a leading role in the development of
educational systems.
The most extreme statement of the "cognitively-driven, politically neutral"
version of the activities of international organizations comes from the 1997 essay by
Meyer et al. They argue that
If a specific nation-state is unable to put proper policies in place ...world-society structures will
provide help. This process operates more through authoritative external support for the
legitimate purposes of states than through authoritarian imposition by dominant powers or
interests ... .Nation-state "choices" are less likely to conflict with world-cultural prescriptions
than realist or microphenemenological theories anticipate because both nation-state choices
and world pressures derive from the same overarching institutions.""
The first half of this quotation seems to fly in the face of considerable evidence and
to be little more than wishful thinking. The second part demonstrates again the
problems associated with such a broad and elastic definition of "world culture."
Against this, there are some references in the CWEC literature that acknowledge
that hegemonic powers may have had an inordinate influence on the content of the
curricular categories or that newer states' educational systems may be shaped by
some degree by colonialism. This is because nation-states' legitimacy as "proper"
states comes from conformity to the norm, and the norm in this case is dominant
countries' educational systems. Adopting these systems and the associated curricu-
lum categories is a sign of a nation-state's claim to be a "proper" country. This
reflects the essentially cognitive basis to their claims about the nature of the CWEC,
64. See Roger Dale, "New Directions for Education Policy: Neo-Keynesian, Neo-liberal, and Neo-
Schumpeterian Approaches." Keynote address to New Zcaland Association for Research in Education
(NZARE)Conference on Education Policy, Auckland, 1995.
65. Meyer et al, World Society and the Nation-State, 159-60.
DALE Globalization and Education 447

which is seen as being spread by learning from and emulating such carriers of the
CWEC as international organizations and their legitimated experts. However,
Meyer and Kamens, in their conclusion to School Knowledge for the Masses, do
acknowledge that It is not simply a matter of the worldwide evolution of the natural
principles of the modem nation-state, but that idiosyncratic features of the
metropolitan powers (and in particular the United States, since World War II) and
their professional theorists play a considerable role in the evolution of the world
curriculum.
Yet even here there is little recognition of the spread of schooling or of curricular
categories being driven by political-economic factors, or for their reception being
involuntary or imposed. Yet, if we consider even briefly some well-known strategies
and practices of powerful states and of international organizations it becomes clear
that adherence can be brought about through pressure or compulsion. At one level
that pressure might be quite mild and indirect, as in the case of the UNESCO-
sponsored spread of national science policies, where the benefit of the apparently
symbolic conformity was to be treated like real states, and thus potential
beneficiaries of other more directly relevant and practical forms of international aid
that depended on such status.67More directly, in the case of curricular categories, the
World Bank has been much more than a passive carrier of CWEC and has frequently
made educational funding contingent on the adoption of particular emphases and
approaches.68Even more overtly affecting education, the structural adjustment
programs imposed by the World Bank and the IMF frequently require countries to
alter the emphasis they put on education and especially on how it is funded (which,
of course, has huge consequences for who gets to learn anything).h9What we see here
is a shift from voluntary emulation, or policy learning, to coerced adjustment
as the mechanism through which CWEC is spread.
What these examples point to is that the spread of CWEC is politically rather
than cognitively propelled. This seriously threatens its most basic arguments, for if
the world model has a driver, whether that driver be one or more states (as is again
acknowledged in the references to the influence of hegemonic powers),or particular
sets of interest, then the hypotheses about the independence and priority of the
Western cultural account -that that account shapes nations and capitalism, rather
than vice versa - are put under severe pressure.
CONCLUSION
As I suggestedin the Introduction, despite their apparent similarities, the CWEC
and GSAE are two quite different projects. The former essentially seeks to demon-
strate the existence and significance of a hypothesized world culture and the latter
to show how a new form of supranational force affects national educational systems.
66. Meyer and Kamens, Conclusion, 175.
67. See Martha Finnemore, International Organizations as Teachers of Norms: UNESCO and Science
Policy, International Organization 47, no. 4 (1996):565-97.
68. See Philip W. Jones, World Hank Financing of Education: Lending, Learning, and Development
(London: Routledge, 1992).
69. See especially R.S. Pannu, Neo-liberal Project of Globalization: Prospects for Democratization of
Education, Albertcl ]ournal of Educational Research 42, nu. 2 (1996):87-101.
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50 / NUMBER
4

This does not mean that the two approaches have nothing to offer eachother. The
CWEC has demonstrated the existence of a level of shared cultural resources on
which most educational systems have drawn that it would profit the GSAE approach
to take into account in determining how states interpret and respond to the common
agenda that is being imposed on state educational systems. However, such a
recognition would have to take into account that universal cultural values and
scripts are not immune to the forces of economic, political, and cultural globalization
and that the form, substance, and status of the scripts have altered qualitatively.
They are, for instance, narrower in scope, much more explicit, and often subject to
imposition rather than voluntary adoption. This is crucial to understanding the
differences between the approaches. The GSAE introduces new conceptions of the
nature of global forces and how they operate and it attributes these to the changed
nature of supranational forces.
In the end, the GSAE can explain and take into account the CWEC approach.
This is because it adopts the position that capitalism is extremely flexible in terms
of the institutional arrangements through which it can operate, and because there is
a clear affinity between capitalism and the characteristic features of the hypoth-
esized world culture. The same is not true in the other direction, however.
Perhaps the most apt way to end this piece is to consider how the GSAE approach
would interpret Meyers argument that the changes that have taken place in the
world curriculum have had their sources in the dominant metropolitan centers
whose idiosyncratic features play a considerable role in the evolution of the world
curriculum. The key terms are world curriculum, dominant metropolitan cen-
ters, and idiosyncratic features. For the GSAE, the existence of a world curricu-
lum has to be demonstrated rather than assumed. The empirical case put forward in
support of the CWEC argument is adequate to demonstrate that some aspects of
educational systems draw on common scripts. This does not justify claims to a
world curriculum, if by that we mean that the content of the educational programs
of all nation-states is the same. That would entail not merely further empirical
investigation, but the development of a theory of how (through what institutions),
and with what effects, that curriculum was devised, diffused, and implemented.
Dominant metropolitan centers is a somewhat neutral, even anodyne, way of
acknowledging differences in power across the global system. How and why, and
with what consequences, are these centers dominant? The phrasing directs away
from such issues; once again, the matter appears to be unproblematic. Finally,
idiosyncratic features also quite depoliticizes the issue. It might as well be
referring to irrational whims as to what is actually the case, policies as means by
which states attempt to defend and extend their interests.
The consequences of these differences in the two accounts for an understanding
of how globalization affects education are, I trust, by now quite clear.

I A M GREATLY INDEBTED TO Susan Robertson for the many enlightening suggestions she made that
have so much clarified and sharpened the argument of these papers. I am also most grateful to Francisco
Ramirez for his constructive response to an earlier version of this essay.