ABSTRACT
The concluding chapter draws together our research’s main findings and reflects on their theoretical significance. It concludes that the politics of quality in Brazil, China, and Russia can be described with the help of three dynamics. Self-reinforcing and shared goal-setting reflects how QAE rather than quality has become the goal of education. Authorising but diverted governance describes how QAE enables a parallel trend of authorising more governance methods but at the same time creates increasingly complex systems. Destabilising and reorganising role-setting indicates how the mechanisms of QAE create new actors for the field, which at the same time bring instability to the political system because of the QAE data’s capacity to provoke change. The chapter concludes that ideas of the state’s diminishing role in the face of globalisation and theories about the directive nature of governance at a distance are not fully supported by a study of practice in Brazil, China, and Russia.
