ABSTRACT
Establishment of international institutions has become a central feature of modern international politics (Koremenos et al. 2001). Participation in international organizations, which is itself often used as an indicator of integration into the wider world system, may lead to the active incorporation of nation states with worldwide connotations. There are four principal international organizations, constituting nation state members, which have the capability to influence globalization and regionalism profoundly: the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, and the United Nations (UN). There are a few points to make about these organizations, which are closely identified with the international political economy and with both regionalism and globalization: (1) states themselves are still very much the dominant actors; (2) the impact of international organizations depends very much on how they work with other actors, especially the national governments (Drake 2001)—their effect is determined by how nation states manage their cooperation with international organizations (Stiglitz 2002); (3) the effect of an organization depends on its own management, leadership, and organizational culture; (4) international organizations are not a monolithic bloc-there are differences between governmental and nongovernmental organizations and between those within the UNO and the financial institutions (Stiglitz 2002; Wang an Xie 2004); (5) many international agencies are governed by and for special corporate financial interests-there is an absence of countervailing democratic checks to ensure that these informal and public institutions serve a general interest (Stiglitz 2002). With regard to higher education, nation-centric policies are no longer sufficient and cannot adequately engage with the new global realities of transnational economic, political, and cultural interconnectivities. Educational ideologies and experience now circulate around the world at a rapid rate, resulting in global educational policy networks that are often more influential
than local political actors. Similar pressures, procedures, and organizational patterns increasingly govern educational systems, leading to “universalizing tendencies in educational reform” (Halpin 1994, 204). Consequently, there is a global convergence of educational policy being placed highly on the agendas of national governments and international organizations. While the actual dynamics and pace of change vary across national systems, the direction of change appears to be similar. They seem located within the same neo-liberal imagery (Schugurensky 1999). Why has today’s grand narrative of economic globalization acquired the status of a universalistic logic that supposedly propels and legitimizes such practices of managerialism as downsizing and state deregulations and privatization, as if they were a natural and inevitable response to the steering logic of globalization (Rizvi 2004)? International organizations are part of the answer. They play an increasingly important role in the processes of educational policy formation and evaluation at the national level, involving negotiating consensus and conventions, ensuring coordinated policy action across national systems, as well as supporting international cooperation in education through the development of global indicators and quality. The approaches driven by such organizations indicate a trend toward uniformity, demanding a convergence in thinking and accepting similar diagnoses of problems confronting educational systems with widely differing social, political, and economic traditions. They influence national systems through a number of normative and rule-creating activities (Jacobson 1984). The specific activities that show the relevance of international organizations for worldwide educational policy convergence include the exchange of information, charters and constitutions, standard-setting instruments, and technical and financial resources (McNealy and Cha 1994). With the help of the functioning of international organizations, the neoliberal imagery of globalization has acquired ascendancy in education thinking and become highly normative. It designates certain power relations, practices, and technologies, playing a hegemonic role in organizing and decoding the meaning of the world. Its dominance is secured through a range of political strategies, employed by international organizations and national governments alike. In the context of such multilateralism, developing countries are often coerced to take into account the alleged “imperatives of the global economy.” The restructuring of higher education worldwide informed by neo-liberal market ideologies has transformed the framework of the broader changes in policy and governance, and has had an impact on the manner in which universities are financed and managed (Rizvi 2004). International organizations developed fast in Asia after the Cold War. The Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), for example, was founded in August 1967 with five members. It included Cambodia as its 10th member in 1999. Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) member states increased from 12 in 1989 to 21 in 1997. As Asian indigenous international organizations
are growing rapidly, the presence of many international organizations that were established elsewhere are gaining increasing visibility in Asia as well. Due to the relative underdevelopment of representative politics and the social discourses, the effect of international organizations to promote neo-liberalism is particularly pervasive. Many international organizations have certain education components in their programs. Those without a mandate for education have also become vivid players in the education policy field. International organizations are active in Asia in similar ways, such as agenda setting, innovating, and disseminating fresh ideas through the coordination and distribution of statistics and policy papers developed by highly skilled professionals who are seen as capable to provide objective and effective solutions to national problems (Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Haas 1992; March and Olsen 1998), and creating professional transnational networks in the field of education policy through the organization of conferences. With their growing activity, the way of policy making in most Asian countries has been altered (Leuze et al. 2007). As one of the oldest and most wide-ranging organizations, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has been actively influencing education policy making in Asia. By developing and proposing conventions, resolutions, and recommendations in the field of education (McNeely and Cha 1994), by promoting lifelong learning, and by establishing worldwide applicable quality assurance systems, it shapes policy concepts in its Asian member states. It established the Asian Regional Office for Primary and Compulsory Education, which later became the Asia and Pacific Regional Bureau for Education, to interpret global priorities and goals in a regional context and adapt broad institutional strategies to achieve the regional goals. In a similar vein, the UNESCO Regional Bureau in Bangkok has now become a network of regional centers to promote training of specialists. It has organized a wide range of networking and capacity-building activities for higher and distance education, and made deliberate efforts to promote greater mobility and recognition of higher education qualifications by the universities in Asia and the Pacific region, often in tandem with the South-East Asian Ministers for Education Organization-Regional Institute for Higher Education. Another UNESCO regional inter-country cooperative program, the AsiaPacific Program of Educational Innovation (APEID), aims to strengthen its member states’ capabilities at national and local levels for creation and use of educational innovations in achieving national development goals, including stimulating and facilitating innovative activities for equity and quality in education, assisting member countries in enhancing capabilities of undertaking innovative actions in related program areas, and promoting inter-country technical cooperation and transfer of innovative experiences. Through the Regional Convention on the Recognition of Studies, Diplomas and Degrees in Higher Education in Asia and the Pacific, APEID provides financial and technical
assistance, serves as a secretariat to implement programs, and assists in providing information on higher education and degrees in its member states for the mutual understanding and recognition of qualifications. As the largest financier of international educational development, and most powerful ideologue and regulator in the developing world (Jones 1992), the World Bank has been the most influential in Asia. Through its profile as a worldwide institution of knowledge-promoting projects in education (Robertson 2005), it propagates the specific neo-liberal view of how public education should be organized (Jakobi 2007), with its emphasis on systemwide reforms, quality, efficiency, decentralization, the restructuring of the public service, the introduction of standardized educational testing regimes, the introduction of private service providers, as well as cost recovery measures. Its projects cover a wide range of education issues in many Asian countries. Its activities in Asia also include providing guidelines for the development of cross-border higher education in the region, launching initiatives in quality, quality assurance, and mutual recognition of qualifications, promoting networking of higher education institutions within the region across the board, and establishing virtual universities to offer distance learning programs to students from the Greater Mekong subregion, namely, Cambodia, Lao PDR, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam, and Yunnan province in China. There are a number of other international organizations that are influential in Asia. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), for example, publishes annually Education at a Glance, which covers Asian countries. The publication is often seen as one of the most important sources of educational indicators and is thus highly influential in Asia. The Program for International Student Assessment serves as another example, with more and more Asian countries joining the project. By placing greater emphasis on shared international standards rather than national peculiarities of education systems, the OECD has cleared the way for greater convergence and commitment amongst Asian states to uniform models of best practices. Its rating and ranking activities, which appear to be based on objective criteria, scientifically researched by experts, and presented in an easily accessible manner, puts many Asian states under pressure to import and apply models for education developed in other (usually developed) countries (Martens 2007). Increasing international activities in the arena of education raises the question as to what extent international organizations are complementing or even partly taking over the design and provision of education policies. Using examples from higher education practices from the People’s Republic of China, this chapter examines how international organizations “lend” their ideas for circulation, and how the local and the global play out. It analyzes what circulates internationally as “reforms” and its impact on the actors that move and translate such practices into local contexts, exploring the relation of the global in local situations and the complex impact of policy borrowing.
