ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the political scientists and educational sociologists provide a criss-crossed, critical and reflexive perspective on the forms and contents of European politics, without limiting itself to certain institutional and discursive aspects of policy. It considers politics as the institutionalisation of power relationships based on knowledge frameworks, types of instruments and calculative spaces, but also strategies, interactions and commitments of individual and collective actors stabilising a European order and governing at a distance on behalf of a certain idea of justice and truth. The book demonstrates the actor-network theory is particularly useful in characterising the manner in which different actors seek to deploy techniques to mobilise other actors and to govern at a distance, beyond local spaces, via calculative devices and translation processes. It shows how international surveys reshape the knowledge tradition of comparative education by building indicators for decision-making.
