This theoretical chapter introduces in greater detail the conceptual framework of the book. In the first part of this chapter, we revisit and review existing scholarship on public attitudes and preferences. The second half focuses on how public preferences are transferred into policy-making. We argue that the influence of public opinion on policy-making is strongest in the world of “loud politics,” when the salience of an issue is high and attitudes are coherent. In contrast, interest groups have a strong influence on policy-making in the realm of “quiet politics,” when salience is low. Third, when salience is high, but popular attitudes are conflicting, the dynamics of policy-making are likely to follow a pattern of partisan politics (“loud but noisy politics”). We posit that education is a particularly well-suited policy area to demonstrate the usefulness of our framework as salience and coherence of attitudes vary across different educational sectors and policy issues. However, the framework is also applicable to other policy areas.

This chapter analyzes the role of public opinion in the politics of education reform in Germany. Being a federalist country, policy-making happens both at the federal level and the subnational (Land) level. We focus on Baden-Wurttemberg in the south and North Rhine-Westphalia in the west of Germany. We identify salient issues with coherent popular attitudes (such as the reform of upper secondary academic education), where we find a strong influence of public opinion on policy-making (“loud politics”). In the case of vocational education and training, in contrast, interest groups and “quiet politics” rule. Lastly, the domain of school reform politics, in particular the institutional setup of the secondary school system, is an area of “loud but noisy politics” with a high degree of partisan contestation. Thus, the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2 is broadly confirmed.

Many reforms of education governance throughout the postwar decades have been heavily contested politically. Since around the 1980s, governments in several advanced Western countries have reformed their education systems by increasing private provision, school choice, decentralization, and competition; by lowering or increasing the number of educational tracks available in secondary education; and by reorienting the role of vocational education and training in the education system. Yet, to date we possess insufficient knowledge of the extent to which such reforms are actually in line with individual preferences. This chapter studies individual preferences toward education governance for four educational sectors (early childhood education and care, schools, vocational education and training, and higher education) along three dimensions of education governance. On average, our findings reveal a strong support of public opinion for a publicly dominated, comprehensive model of education provision, coupled with a high degree of choice for students and parents. Yet, for most issues, preferences toward education governance are highly contested between individuals of different ideological orientations and partisan constituencies. Conflicting preferences at the individual level reflect the oftentimes high degree of partisan conflict on many reform issues in the governance of education.

The introductory chapter provides a short overview of the main arguments of the book. In particular, we define the salience of an issue and the coherence of popular attitudes on that issue as conditioning factors that influence the role of public opinion in the politics of education reform. The introduction clarifies how our argument connects to the literature in comparative public policy work on education as well as scholarship on the influence of public opinion on policy-making. It closes with a short overview of the various chapters.

This chapter analyzes attitudes and preferences toward education spending. Relying on representative survey data for eight European countries, it (1) studies what citizens want when it comes to education spending and (2) explores explanations for these preferences, i.e. the main latent political cleavages over education reform. The first part of the chapter sheds theoretical and empirical light on the question how salient is education expenditure compared to other (social) policy areas. Moreover, it explores how attitudes toward education spending relate to attitudes toward means to finance this spending (via taxation, debt, or retrenchment in other areas). The second part of the chapter studies preferences toward the distribution of spending on different sectors of the education system. The results show, among other things, that compared to other issues education is highly salient, particularly schools and vocational education and training. While public support drops considerably once increases in expenditure come at a price, there is an astonishingly high support for education-related taxes. The chapter reports evidence for several potential cleavages over education spending (e.g. along respondents’ income and educational backgrounds), the most consistent one being a partisan divide.

This chapter studies the role of public opinion in the politics of education reforms in Spain between 2011 and early 2018. The influence of public opinion in education reforms varied, depending on how salient and coherent public opinion was. Public opinion sent a loud and clear signal in opposition to the government´s cuts in public education spending. Although heavily constrained by the major financial and economic crisis, the government corrected some of its budget cuts in the run-up to the 2015 elections and especially once it had lost its parliamentary majority in the same elections. On aspects related to the structure and governance of the education system, salience was high, but public opinion was much more divided (loud but noisy politics). In this case, the conservative government was clearly appealing to its core constituencies and relied on its parliamentary majority to enact its major education reform in 2013. In this political environment, the public gave little attention to policy reforms in early childhood education and care and vocational education and training. Quiet politics lent greater influence to the government’s budgetary concerns and to organized interests in the development and implementation of reforms in these sectors.

This chapter studies the role of public opinion in the politics of education reforms in England from 2010 until early 2018. We find the influence of public opinion to vary depending on the salience and coherence of public opinion. When issues were highly salient and public opinion was coherent (loud politics), the government appealed to public opinion. It expanded free access to childcare and partly corrected its original attempts to cut public spending on schools and increase tuition fees for higher education. With high salience on the issue but conflicting preferences across partisan constituencies (loud but noisy politics), the government pushed through its reform agenda, which targeted the preferences of its core constituencies. It was able to continue to do this provided it possessed sufficient strength in parliament (in the case of its attempt to expand selective grammar schools) and as long as public opinion remained sufficiently split between supporters and opponents of the government (in the case of tuition fees). When salience was low, quiet politics predominated. Several reform issues related to the governance of the education system failed to capture much public attention, which gave interest groups an opportunity to insert their preferences into the decision-making process.

The concluding chapter summarizes the main findings from the case studies and the preceding quantitative analysis. Broadly speaking, we find strong support for the theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2. We also identify some patterns, i.e. school politics usually follow the logic of “loud but noisy politics.” In the other educational sectors (early childhood education and vocational education and higher education), it depends much more on the particular issue and country context whether an issue falls into the domains of quiet, loud, or loud but noisy politics. We also discuss several implications of our findings. For instance, we find that by and large, middle-class parents have a strong influence on the politics of education reform. Furthermore, even if they desire to influence public opinion in their preferred ways, political parties and interest groups have little success in actually achieving this. We close by inviting scholars to further explore the usability of our framework for other policy areas besides education.

This chapter studies the role of public opinion in the politics of education reforms in Sweden during 2006–2018. The chapter uses process tracing (based on primary and secondary sources as well as sixteen interviews with important stakeholders in the education system) to analyze what role public opinion has played in education reforms, from early childhood education to higher education. We find that the influence of public opinion varied depending on the salience and coherence of public opinion on the respective issues. The theoretical framework developed in Chapter 2, therefore, is confirmed. When issues were salient and the general public’s opinion coherent, public opinion had an important impact on policy-makers (e.g. in the cases of the 90-day youth employment guarantee or when raising teachers’ salaries). When issues were salient but attitudes conflicting (as in the cases of the prominent GY2011 school governance reform or in the “profits through the welfare state” debate), public opinion was important to bring the topic on the agenda, but the policy output depended solely on the respective parties in office. Finally, when salience was low, public opinion was negligible and interest groups dominated. The Swedish case study therefore offers detailed qualitative evidence for our theoretical model.