From International Ideas to Domestic Policies: Educational Multiculturalism in England and France

• DOI: 10.2307/422107
• Publication Date: 2006-04-26T08:08:01Z
• Authors: Erik Bleich
• Keywords: 4. Education; 05 social sciences; 16. Peace & justice; 10. No inequality; 0506 political science

Political scientists are increasingly interested in the interaction between ideas and policies. Some research has used ideas as independent variables to demonstrate how a change in ideas has determined a policy outcome.1 Other studies have looked at how different national institutions funnel, shape, and adopt similar international ideas.2 This study follows in the second tradition by focusing on the application of the idea of multiculturalism to education policy in England and France. Multiculturalism first appeared on the education policy agenda in the 1960s, and it remains a hotly debated and much discussed topic today.3 Whereas multiculturalism blossomed in the ethnically diverse United States, it was often contested and fell on sometimes fertile, sometimes rocky soil in the more historically homogeneous western European nations. England and France reacted to multiculturalism in particularly different manners. English education policy took on board many of the common changes advocated by supporters of multiculturalism, and multiculturalism is now generally accepted in many English educational institutions. In contrast, France has only grudgingly accepted very small pieces of the multicultural agenda, preferring to maintain education as a sphere for assimilating immigrants. This divergence is curious given the similarities of the two countries. Each experienced relatively large-scale ethnic minority immigration in the decades following World War II, and policymakers in each country were exposed to educational multiculturalism through participation in international educational networks. Why have England and France responded so differently to the idea of multicultural education? The key to this puzzle lies in the interaction between two variables: the different structure of gatekeepers controlling the access of ideas into the policy process and the different priors of gatekeepers in each country. Institutionally, England has a much more decentralized educational system than does France. Decentralization increases the number of decision-making gatekeepers who control the access of new ideas into the policy system. Counterintuitively, a greater number of gatekeepers may lead to an increased likelihood of policy change. Yet the number of gatekeepers alone does not explain the divergence between England and France. Policy gatekeepers must also have the inclination to adopt new ideas. Policymakers are not blank slates on which actors try to write new ideas into