ABSTRACT
The world society perspective imagines nation-states and their educational projects as highly embedded in the wider world. Worldwide changes lead to changes in the nation-state and in national educational policies and structures. National developments are not solely driven by properties of the nation-state. Other theories in the social sciences also start with the premise of highly embedded actors. The dependencia school (Frank 1979) and later the world-systems perspective (Wallerstein 1973) stressed the extent to which national structures and policies were dependent on the wider world. As regards education in particular, the work of Roger Dale (2000) and his colleagues clearly illustrates the embedded actors’ premise. There are, of course, differences across these perspectives but they are aligned insofar as they see nationstates or organisations therein as an open system. All these perspectives focus on external influences (either as opportunities or constraints) on nation-states and on national educational developments. The perspectives differ as regards the nature of the environment that impinges on nation-states. The next section focuses on the nature of the environment that world society scholars emphasise.
