European Governance in Adult Education: On the comparative advantage of joining working groups and networks

Abstract

This article examines the working of complex intergovernmental policies that have brought about new opportunities and structures in European adult education since the 2008 global financial crisis. Drawing on political sociology, it restricts attention on the Renewed European Agenda for Adult Learning (2011), to examine its historical development, and how it bundles together various governance mechanisms, policy instruments, and social actors to govern the adult education policy domain through policy coordination. This points at regulatory politics as a distinctive quality of European governance in adult education. Then, through Social Network Analysis, it explores in depth one of its policy instrument (i.e., coordinated working groups/networks) and the form of network governance it creates. This analysis pinpoints at the comparative advantage of some organizations (i.e., the ministries of Latvia, Finland and Belgium), which partake in this form of network governance. This produces unpredictable contingency in EU policy coordination.