The Change of Public Participation in Swiss School Governance: More or Less Democratic Legitimisation?

Public municipal school councils, involving citizens, are the traditional form of public layman participation in Swiss local school governance. They are based on the concept of democracy by the people by having far-reaching competences (e.g., co-governance in the assessment of teachers) and thus enhancing input legitimacy in school governance. Recently, we observe a reduction and professionalization of traditional public school councils and an institutionalization of new participatory councils without co-determination rights involving only parents. My paper addresses the question why some Swiss cantons institutionalized new participatory school councils while others did not and what the rationale was behind this institutionalization. Based on a combination of Schmidt’s discursive Institutionalism and Benz’s governance approach, I define three crucial factors that may explain the adoption of a participatory school council: ideas, strategies and context. In order to address the research questions I draw on a comparative case study design using the method of process tracing in two cantons with newly institutionalized school councils and two with traditional councils. The analysis shows that councilors promote the implementation of new participatory councils to enhance school quality, i.e. output legitimacy in schools based on normative-economic ideas related to the concept of New Public Management. By contrast, the education administration promotes the implementation because of strategic ideas aiming at controlling participation in school governance. Participatory school council is here defined as a steering instrument rather than an innovation to enhance the input or output legitimacy in school governance. The top-down institutionalization of participatory councils is more likely if leaders see the inclusion of stakeholders as a way to enhance the acceptance of school reform projects. The implementation of parent councils and the reduction of public school councils thus indicate a change from public participation to stakeholder participation in Swiss school governance.