Recent scholarly work on higher education institutions (HEIs) within an EU context has focused on how universities and their core activities have been affected by EU education policy. The organisation of HEIs in order to shape European decision-making on higher education, mainly through their presence in Brussels, has received much less attention.…

Christie Kaaland shares the journey of Washington state's school library legislative advocacy that has led to passage of eight legislative bills. The article stresses the importance of having a full legislative advocacy team including a lobbyist, knowledgeable practitioner advocates, and external champions.

Social media has become a core feature in policy development and enactment. This article extends current features of digital policy sociology to include the entanglement of education policy development processes with new media, paying particular attention to how two conservative think tanks in Australia have strategically used social media in…

This volume provides an overview of the state of the art of research on the politics of higher education policy in Canada, the US, and Western Europe. Each thematic chapter combines an extensive literature review with original empirical work that further advances our understanding of policymaking dynamics in higher education. The book covers five…

As the privatisation of the public sector has grown rapidly in Sweden in the last decade, private companies have become an imperative part of education. Private companies sell and deliver consultancy, hardware, software, services, etc. to schools and municipalities. This study examines a growing rate of activities from companies and businesses…

Advocacy organizations work in partnership with students, scholars, institutions, organizers, and policymakers to help advance racial justice in higher education. They amplify student activism through strategies such as coalition building, lobbying, and research. We provide recommendations for institutional leaders to work with advocacy…

While public colleges and universities have a long history of engaging in the political process, relatively little is known about their activities. This study attempts to examine, both theoretically and empirically, the relationship between state economic, demographic, political, and policy contexts and state public higher education interest group…

Lobbyists attempt to influence legislation on behalf of their clients. While there is no shortage of research on lobbying and interest groups in political science, few education researchers have examined how lobbyists represent clients in the higher education sector. Using both quantitative and qualitative methods, this dissertation examines the…

As literacy leaders, we know that printed words carry great meaning and power. Today, there is a widespread belief that advocacy over government concerns or policies can be adequately achieved using social media. While a well-timed and phrased social media post can supplement advocacy efforts, advocacy must be driven by deeds even more than words.…

Congressional lobbying by education-related interest groups is an understudied subject in education research. This brief uses congressional lobbying expenditure data from 1998 to 2017 to examine trends in lobbying behavior by labor unions; K-12 education providers; and public, private nonprofit, and for-profit higher education institutions.…

On a warm December evening in Anaheim, California, in 2015, an out-of-town lawyer stood for public comment at a local school-board meeting and urged members to deny a proposed charter school. Magnolia Public Schools, which operates 10 charters in California, was hoping to open a new science academy. The attorney, John Martin of Amsterdam &…

The author became involved with the Washington State Association of School Psychologists' (WSASP) legislative advocacy work in 2013. At the time, WSASP was not actively engaged in legislative advocacy work, and was the smallest of many clients of a lobbyist paid to represent their interests. In that year, the Washington State Legislature proposed…

This article foregrounds the value of using "critical policy historiography" as an analytical/methodological tool in undertaking policy formulation research, highlighting the importance of taking a long-term historical perspective. Using school-funding policies in South Africa as a case study, it argues that while there was wide…

The proliferation of political nonprofit organizations since the Citizens United decision has undoubtedly reshaped American politics. These interest groups have spent hundreds of millions of dollars in recent state and federal elections. Yet, little is known about how these organizations influence higher education politics and the extent to which…

Several university alliances have been established in Europe in an attempt to influence the development of policies in research and education. As such, these alliances can be seen as being new players in the increasingly complex multi-actor, multi-level governance in this policy domain. The paper compares two key university alliances in Europe; in…