Transparency and Openness: A Reform or Education Policy?

In: Scandinavian political studies, Band 30, Heft 1, S. 38-60

Abstract

Current policies are developed through complex and dynamic historical processes and conflicts originating in these processes. In 2002 a new Act on Transparency and Openness in education was put into effect in Denmark. The Act is a formalised system of performance measurement, and introduced a new feature to the governing of the Danish education system. All educational institutions are obliged to publish on the Internet average grades of final examinations. The historical institutional concept of path dependency shows how the outline of the Act is made at an earlier stage. The Act is layered as a new institutional arrangement on top of pre‐existing institutions. By focusing on how institutional and political processes interact and are combined, new contributions to historical institutionalism are further developed without considering institutional reproduction and innovation as opposites. It is elaborated how the Act, with respect to certain dimensions, respectively reproduces, breaks with and combines two formerly outlaid paths of education policy and reform policy.