Previous papers in this issue of "JCS" have presented case studies of the state-based curriculum commissions that developed the "Illinois Learning Standards" of 1997 and Norway's "Laereplanverket 1997" ("L97") (1997). The studies were developed using as a framework a body of German research that sees state-based curriculum-making as a tool for managing the interface between school systems and states' publics and politics. The principal question for this cross-case analysis is the portability of the German framework to the "ILS" and "L97" cases. There many features of the two cases that do mirror the characteristics of Germany's state-based curriculum-making, which leaves the questions "How, when and why was this transnational model of state-based curriculum-making invented?"