Francine Menashy

An Introduction to Public Private Partnerships and Education Governance

In the field of international development, different decades seem to usher in new champions of change: the developmental state in the 1960s and 1970s; free market forces and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in the 1980s and 1990s. The new millennium has offered up a hybrid variant of public-private partnerships (PPPs)... partnership has become a mobilising term implying all manner of desirable objectives can be achieved. (Utting and Zammit 2006, p. 1)

Understanding the Roles of Non-State Actors in Global Governance: Evidence from the Global Partnership for Education.

Abstract The study detailed in this paper examines the growing role of non-state actors in the transnational policy-making landscape through a case study of the Global Partnership for Education (GPE) – a partnership of donor and developing country governments, multilateral organizations, civil society, private companies and foundations, dedicated to increasing access to quality education worldwide. Conducted through a constructivist lens, this study examines the roles of non-state GPE partners who collaborate as diverse stakeholders within this single policy-making forum. Via a process-tracing analysis, including an examination of GPE meeting documents and interviews with members of the GPE Board of Directors and Secretariat staff, I trace the past and current roles of non-state partners within the GPE – in particular, civil society, private foundations and private companies. I conclude that the GPE has evolved into a forum in which civil society actors have become relatively influential, while private sector foundations and companies have for the most part been disengaged and made only a tangible impact. These findings can be attributed to the differently constructed identities of each group of actors. The study concludes that shared normative beliefs and worldviews, which characterize epistemic communities, may be a key element to cohesion, functioning, and thereby influence.

The Prospects and Challenges of Reforming the World Bank's Approach to Gender and Education: Exploring the Value of the Capability Policy Model in The Gambia

The World Bank is currently the lead education research and lending body operating internationally, including in the area of girls’ education. As such, the World Bank wields considerable power in terms of shaping the policy agendas of borrower nations and for this reason is scrutinized in this paper for its privileging of an economic-instrumentalist normative framework for education policy development within which formal schooling is viewed exclusively as a means for economic growth, rather than as a potential tool for the achievement of social justice. An analysis of World Bank work in The Gambian education sector is used to illustrate the limits of a human capital-driven, economic-instrumentalist approach to education policy, with specific attention paid to gender and education issues and related policy solutions. We ultimately argue the value of the World Bank adopting the human capability policy approach as a means to advance World Bank education sector work.

Interrogating an Omission: The Absence of a Rights-Based Approach to Education in World Bank Policy Discourse.

This study provides a discursive analysis of World Bank policy documents in order to reveal the stark omission of a rights-based approach to education, while highlighting instead the support of an economic-instrumentalist approach. Plausible explanations are provided to shed light on this exclusion, including the feasibility critique of education as a right, and the Banks limited institutional mandate. However, the rationales are presented as unsound and unacceptable justifications for the omission. By drawing on Amartya Sens theoretical work on human rights and development policy frameworks, this study concludes by arguing for the Bank to integrate into their mandate a conception of education as a human right.

The World Bank, the International Finance Corporation, and Private Sector Participation in Basic Education: Examining the Education Sector Strategy 2020

The World Banks new Education Sector Strategy 2020 (2011) points to an important role for private actors in the development of high-quality, high-equity education systems that effectively address poverty alleviation in low and middle-income countries. This chapter asks whether this emphasis on private participation is new, focusing in particular on Bank policies, research, and operations in K-12 education. It also explores some surprising disjunctures between the World Bank Groups official policies promoting privatization and its operational practices. To do so, the chapter draws on a separate research project for which we completed a review of the Banks current portfolio of projects in K-12 education and a series of interviews with World Bank staff. We also look at the expansion of Bank activities beyond its traditional arms – the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and International Development Association (IDA) lending facilities – by including a brief a review of the educational activities of the International Finance Corporation (IFC), which directly supports the private sector in education.

Multi-stakeholder aid to education: power in the context of partnership

ABSTRACT This study examines power asymmetries within the largest multi-stakeholder agency in the education sector: the Global Partnership for Education (GPE). Drawing from data collected through key informant interviews and document analyses, this research asks if the establishment of the GPE has altered power arrangements in educational aid. The study finds that in spite of efforts to create a more equitable environment via the GPE, bilateral donors and the World Bank in particular retain their hierarchical positions through the maintenance of structures that reproduce their dominant status, thereby countering the principles that underpin the GPE’s mandate.

Unequal partners? Networks, centrality, and aid to international education

ABSTRACT Following the 2005 Paris Declaration on Aid Effectiveness, international development policy discourses have focused on partnership as an overarching principle. With a focus on participation and non-hierarchical relationships, new partnerships aim to reconstitute the aid relationship in a way that obviates power inequality and hegemony. However, empirical studies of these partnerships are scarce. This paper uses social network analysis to analyse relationships between organisations involved in prominent partnerships for education in international development. Our analysis of an original dataset demonstrates that bilateral donors, civil society organisations, and international organisations are most likely to occupy central positions in this network, meaning that they enjoy high levels of connectivity to many organisations. Literature on international networks suggests that these organisations would therefore shape the flow of information and ideas between organisations, influence the distribution of resources among members, and determine normative preferences of the partnerships. In contrast, recipient governments, private businesses, and universities occupy peripheral positions. We contextualise these findings with respect to literature on aid in international education and privatisation in the political economy of educational development.

Global Education Inc.: new policy networks and the neo-liberal imaginary/Consuming schools: commercialism and the end of politics/Follow the money: how foundation dollars change public school politics

Private sector participation in education has both changed and intensified in recent years, engendering dramatic shifts in policies and schooling practices. These shifts have garnered the attention...