Programmatic Groups in State Education Policy

In policy process research, the emerging perspective of the Programmatic Action Framework (PAF) puts forward as an additional possible explanation for policy change the existence of programmatic (social) groups and connected policy programs (Hornung and Bandelow 2018). Programmatic groups strive to gain increasing their authority and resources, which includes advances in their own careers, and use the policy program to achieve this goal (Genieys and Hassenteufel 2015). The policy program, in turn, presents the binding element group’s cooperation While evidence suggests that these programmatic groups influence policy-making on the federal, central state level, there exists so far no research on the existence of programmatic groups on subnational levels, such as the state-level in Germany. This paper aims at filling this research gap by analyzing policy-making on the state level. As education policy is the only policy area in which the German states (Länder) hold competencies (Zapp and Powell 2016), it is this area in which the importance of programmatic groups is most likely as it provides the greatest possibilities in shaping policy-making. Taking the example of Lower Saxony, this paper poses the question whether programmatic groups exist also on a state level and if yes, which groups and programs in the field education policy have shaped policy-making in the last decade. Empirical basis are hearing protocols of the Culture Committee, which are analyzed with the Discourse Network Analyzer (DNA) developed by Philip Leifeld (2018). This proposal is dedicated to the section S06 and the panel „Emerging perspective on policy change“, but also fits to other panels. References Genieys, William, and Patrick Hassenteufel. 2015. "The Shaping of New State Elites: Healthcare Policymaking in France Since 1981." Comparative Politics 47 (3):280-295. Hornung, Johanna, and Nils C. Bandelow. 2018. "The Programmatic Elite in German Health Policy: Collective Action and Sectoral History." Public Policy and Administration. doi: 10.1177/0952076718798887. Leifeld, Philipp. 2018. "Discourse Network Analysis: Policy Debates as Dynamic Networks." In The Oxford Handbook of Political Networks, edited by Jennifer N. Victor, Alexander H. Montgomery and Mark Lubell. New York: Oxford University Press. Zapp, Mike, and Justin J. W. Powell. 2016. "How to Construct an Organizational Field: Empirical Educational Research in Germany, 1995–2015." European Educational Research Journal 15 (5):537-557. doi: 10.1177/1474904116641422.