OECD, Transnational Power Elites and The Making of a European Field of Education

In recent decades, education policies experienced a process of transnational convergence towards evidence-based education’ (EBE). This project resorts to the theory of transnational fields, which is emerging in post-Bourdieusian sociology, to explain under what conditions EBE could become a worldwide recognized best practice. The theory of social fields was originally developed to study nationally embedded fields, i.e., constellations of actors whose resources and strategies are rooted within territorially limited polities. Drawing on recent advances in Bourdieusian field theory towards theoretical conceptualization and empirical analysis of transnational settings (e.g. Schmidt-Wellenburg 2017a, b; Schmidt-Wellenburg & Bernhard 2020; Mudge and Vauchez 2012), we argue that the Europeanization of education policy-making in general and the proliferation of EBE more in particular, are fostered by the emergence of a European field of education. This transnational social field consists of a distinctive configuration of (transnational) cultural frames, symbolic elites and social networks. We present some empirical findings attained from our empirical network analysis of key events, at which the official representatives of the EU and EU member states were gathered to discuss the rationality of EBE. Focusing on the reciprocal relationship between the degree of centrality in transnational social networks and accumulation of symbolic capital, we will show a close correlation between the allocation of symbolic power within in the European field of education and possession of so-called “brokering positions” within a wider transnational expert network dominated by the OECD.