A Loud, but Noisy Signal: The Role of Public Opinion in Education Policy Making
Date: Thursday, April 12
Starts: 4:00 pm
Location: Pardee School of Global Studies, 121 Bay State Road (1st floor)
URL: /european/files/2018/02/Marius.pdf
This talk presents research findings from the project “Investing in Education in Europe.” In this project, we collected original data from a survey of public opinion on education policy in eight Western European countries. In the second phase of the project, we conducted a series of case studies to study the influence of public opinion on actual decision-making processes in the field of education policy in these countries. The core claim of the project, which will be published in a book, is that public opinion is a loud, but noisy signal. Policy-makers to a large extent respond to public demands, but these responses are often biased as policy-makers interpret and try to shape public opinion and make use of it in public debates about policy reform. Thus, the project studies the interaction between the forces of public opinion, party and interest group politics.
Marius Busemeyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Konstanz. He studied political science, economics and public law at the University of Heidelberg, where he received his PhD in 2006. He served as a researcher at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, between 2006 and 2010. His research focuses on comparative political economy, welfare states, public spending, social democratic parties and theories of institutional change. He is the recipient of the 2015 Stein Rokkan Prize for Comparative Social Science Research for his book Skills and Inequality: Partisan Politics and the Political Economy of Education Reforms in Western Welfare States (2014, Cambridge University Press).