Education in Political Science: Discovering a Neglected Field

Compared to environmental, social, or foreign policy, education policy has been generally neglected by the field of political science, according to Jakobi (U. of Bremen, Germany), Martens (U. of Bremen), and Wolf (Darmstadt U. of Technology, Germany), who present 14 papers demonstrating the application of analytical perspectives and methodological tools from all of the major sub-disciplines of political science--comparative politics, public policy and administrations, international relations, and political theory--to the study of education. Topics include veto-points and the politics of introducing school vouchers in the US and Sweden, comparative higher education policies in Central and Eastern Europe, transformation of the educative state in the Nordic countries, modes of governance in German curricular reform, entrepreneurship and networks implementation of decentralizing education policy in Italy, bounded rationality in Finnish education policy-making, evidence from Argentina and Chile concerning the role of ideas in General Agreement on Trade and Services education negotiations, multilateral surveillance in education by the European Union Open Method of Cooperation, international networks in education politics, normative dimensions of reforms in higher education, education policy and the harmonization of political science as a discipline, and directions of political science research into education. Annotation c2009 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Anja P. Jakobi is a Senior Researcher at the University of Bremen, Germany.

Kerstin Martens is an Assistant Professor of International Relations at the University of Bremen, Germany.

Klaus Dieter Wolf is a Professor of Political Science, Darmstadt University of Technology, Germany.