Economic Cycles or International Reform Models? Explaining Transformations of the Educational Policy‐making Discourse in Sweden, 1930–2000

The relationship between education and the economy is a basic component of the educational policy‐making discourse. This article analyses the changes that occurred in the construction of this relationship in Sweden from 1930–2000. Based on a large sample of government committee reports, the paper investigates two explanatory hypotheses for the changes in the construction of the relationship between education and the economy: (1) the influence of structural cycles of economic development (as proposed by economic historian Lennart Schön) and (2) the influence of the international educational reform discourse as produced by organisations such as the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD). It is shown that economic cycles may have a certain influence in the beginning of the period studied, although later the empirical results do not fit the hypothesis derived from the cycle model. At the same time, there is a surprisingly strong degree of isomorphism between the Swedish and the international discourse throughout the entire period, although most actors do not realise this, or at least do not make it explicit.