Despite the Odds: The Contentious Politics of Education Reform

by Merilee Serrill Grindle

Despite the Odds poses an important How can we account for successful policy reform initiatives when the political cards are stacked against change? Theories of politics usually predict that reform initiatives will be unsuccessful when powerful groups are opposed to change and institutions are biased against it. This book, however, shows how the strategic choices of reform proponents alter the destinies of policy reforms by reshaping power equations and undermining institutional biases that impede change.


In many countries, the political path to reform can be daunting. Antireform interests are powerful and support for change is, at best, lukewarm. Centrally important institutions strongly defend the policy status quo. Despite these political odds, reformers have seized the initiative in promoting reform, weakening and marginalizing opposition groups, and marshaling political patrons and networks to advance their initiatives.



Despite the Odds opens the "black box" of decision making in five initiatives designed to enhance the quality of education services in Latin America. The book addresses the strategies used by reformers to manage the political process of change and those adopted by opposition groups and institutions resisting their efforts. Individual chapters consider how leaders set national policy agendas for education, how policy design teams created the content of reform initiatives, how they dealt with the messy and public confrontations that greeted reform proposals when they were announced, and the carryover of political conflict when they were implemented.

Genres: Education

288 pages, Paperback

First published July 6, 2004

Reviews

[Charlie]

This book is about the experience of Latin American countries in education reform of the 1990s. Economic reforms of the 1980s had contributed to declining quality, and though some countries could point to positive markers of educational achievement (i.e. improved literacy rates, high enrollment, etc.), in all countries it was felt that quality in the form of student learning outcomes was low. Grindle is interested in describing the process of policy change in a context in which reformers faced significant challenges in carrying through with their proposals. According to her, formal models that emphasize institutional constraints and challenges in mobilizing potential winners (i.e. interests and institutions) aren't able to fully account for the process of policy change that took place. Figure 1.1 presents a nice summary of the policy process, from reform agenda setting to design, adoption, implementation and sustainability. She illustrates how interests and institutions interact in constraining or facilitating reform proponents during each of these phases, through case studies of 5 specific education reforms in Latin America during the 1990s. Grindle highlights the importance of teachers unions, bureaucrats, parents, international institutions, and most especially, executive branches of governments in designing and initiating reforms, while the former (unions) are given special weight in implementing and sustaining reforms. Descriptive accounts of the events involved in reform timelines can account for particular changes where cross-country statistical analyses that account for common factors associated with reform movements -- political dynamics, economic changes, etc. -- fail.