The Politics of Comprehensive School Reforms

Why are school systems structured differently across countries? The Politics of Comprehensive School Reform examines this question through an in-depth analysis of school politics in Germany and Norway during the post-war period of educational expansion. Using a Rokkanian theoretical framework the book argues that school politics can only be understood in light of the cleavages or political divides that shape actors'' interests ideologies and inclinations for who they want to cooperate with or not. The book analyzes cross-cutting cleavages connected to religion geography language anticommunism and gender and demonstrates how Norwegian social democrats and German Christian democrats built successful coalitions by mobilizing support from different social groups. Extensively researched and expansively applicable this book contributes to the interdisciplinary literature on the politics of education and to the field of comparative welfare and education regime research. This book is also available Open Access on Cambridge Core.