The Diffusion of Educational Ideas among International Organizations: An Event History Analysis of Lifelong Learning, 1990–2013

This article investigates the precipitants of the diffusion of lifelong learning among 88 governmental and nongovernmental international organizations from 1990 to 2013 within an event history framework. Research on the diffusion of educational ideas among and within international organizations usually uses small-n approaches. This work looks at the large-scale interorganizational diffusion of lifelong learning, an important concept that has until now only been analyzed at the national level where worldwide adoption has occurred around the millennium. This study identifies astonishingly rapid and wide contagious diffusion of lifelong learning originating in core large, global, and Northern organizations with a long history before spreading to smaller, regional, more peripheral and younger ones. Recently, established organizations enter a world rife with legitimized educational models ready to be adopted. This article argues that the massive interest in lifelong learning needs to be explained by the highly institutionalized character of education and the hierarchical organization of the field around core and peripheral knowledge producers.