Increasing school autonomy in Western Europe: a comparative analysis of its causes and forms

Abstract:

This article comparatively explores the driving forces behind and variations in the trend toward increasing school autonomy in England, Germany, Italy and Sweden. In a first step, we focus on the impact of processes of internationalization and the spread of post-materialist values. We hypothesize, on the one hand, that school autonomy may be a direct result of international policy promotion by transnational organizations and, on the other hand, that post-materialist values may lead to either an increase or decrease of school autonomy, depending on the specific form of school governance. In a second step, we examine the impact of partisan factors and explore the hypothesis that center-right and center-left parties pursue different objectives when introducing school autonomy policies. We assume that conservative parties will grant more extensive decision-making autonomy to schools in order to promote competition, accountability and efficiency, while leftist governments will use increased school autonomy as means of promoting political participation and democracy. In the empirical case studies we thus examine whether the partisan orientation of governing coalitions has brought about different school autonomy models in the four countries.