Rappleye (2012) believes investigating international education policy diffusion is 'one of the most salient themes in contemporary educational research ' (1). This paper critically examines the phenomenon of policy influence in a wealthy Arabian Gulf state, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The paper argues that increasing power, acceptance and adoption of certain global neo liberal discoursal formations and policy priorities helps establish and maintain a particular educational change and reform ideology in the UAE. Despite interpretative reception occuring, this phenomenon is reducing UAE's policymaking autonomy to appropriately account for local 'social facts' (Lootah, 2011: 46). The paper considers what international policy movement is and why policies spread examining the explanatory framework proposed by the Stanford School as well as other more economistic explanations. The influence of Globalization processes is considered focussing on notions derived from Urry's mobilities work to propose international networks, scapes and flows helping form conduits for policy influence to occur and for various policy agents and agencies to interact. The development of the UAE's "modern" education sector is sketched highlighting key trends and developments. Four ways in which policy priorities from elsewhere implicate themselves in the UAE are discussed: through the dominance of hegemonic discourse as evidenced by UAE's own policy documents and rhetoric valourizing the "knowledge economy" and Human Capital purposes for education; the role of high level international educational conferences hosted by the UAE serving as sites for various actors to mingle,"policy talk" and influence; the existence of an "internal reference society" in the shape of the UAE's powerful private education sector; and finally the powerful role of international benchmark testing such as PISA in shaping UAE's national education policies
Andrew O'Sullivan (Sun,) studied this question.