The moral economy of diversity of educational options in four European “choice” countries

Abstract

Abstract This chapter concentrates on public preferences over the diversification of education and asks what explains these preferences. Our main variable of interest is the belief in meritocracy as the primary explanatory cause behind public preferences, as we assume it to capture fairness reasoning behind educational diversification. Public preference for educational diversification is operationalized as a composite index comprising individuals’ attitudes toward parental choice, the role and funding of private schools, comprehensive education, and tracking. We rely on survey data from four small European countries with relatively similar educational outcomes indicated by pro-choice policies and low between-school variance: Denmark, Estonia, Ireland, and Sweden. We show that belief in meritocracy explains preferences over educational diversification; however, some country heterogeneity remains—Sweden differs from the rest. Case descriptions on how policy makes politics—and in so doing legitimizes or de-legitimizes it—give insight into this heterogeneity.