Abstract
Abstract
This chapter explores how international organizations can exert influence when lacking material carrots or sticks. Investigating Norway’s response to the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) ranking, the chapter argues that international rankings operate as “status Esperanto” that allow “foreign” theories of status to bypass the obstacles that usually hinder international agreement about the rules of international status competitions. However, tracing 19 years of the education policy highlights a more critical “reactivity,” hitherto overlooked by prior research. The process of competing in the PISA rankings led several domestic groups to question the rules of the game and develop rival theories of educational status that spread to mainstream politics. This emergent resistance to the competition has undermined the potential for PISA to legitimate future policy reforms and highlights the importance of treating status competition as a discursively mediated process that is always susceptible to contestation from below.
Publisher
Oxford University PressNew York, NY
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