Citizenship Education as Public Policy and Governance: Approaches, Actors and Practices

The paper examines democratic citizenship education as a field of public policy and governance, discussing its conceptual foundations, and empirically focusing on the key actors and practical functioning in the contemporary Estonian context. We conceptualize citizenship education not only as a pedagogical activity but as a core component of democratic infrastructure that supports citizens’ political subjectivity, participation, and democratic resilience. The paper outlines the normative expectations placed on democratic citizens and discusses how these are translated into knowledge, skills, attitudes, and competencies within formal and non-formal education. Empirically, the paper first outlines citizenship education through the lenses of public policy design and implementation, and governance, especially the interaction between school, local government and civil society actors. The study draws on the Democrat+ project, which investigates the governance arrangements, actors, and collaborative practices of citizenship education in Estonia, with fieldwork focused on mapping practices in formal and non-formal education and examining governance arrangements that connect schools, municipalities, and civil society organisations. Through expert interviews, case studies, and site visits in selected local contexts, the project analyses how citizenship education is shaped by institutional structures, school-level actors, municipal governance, and community-based initiatives. By integrating conceptual insights on citizenship education as public policy and governance with empirical investigation of its practical organisation, the paper outlines how democratic citizenship education is framed, enacted, and governed, based on the Estonian example but with a view to provide broader implications. It also identifies mechanisms that support or hinder effective collaboration across governance levels and offers an analytical basis for designing future innovations and policy developments in the field.