Shaping institutional change in skill formation: the role of background ideas in growth strategies

Abstract

States are taking on an increasingly prominent role in shaping policy across advanced capitalist democracies. This paper conducts a comparative study of state intervention in skill formation between 2014 and 2022 and explores why state intervention was deployed for opposite goals: it increased deregulation, underlining skill formation's subordinate role in the French educational system while it strengthened collective governance and the social inclusion potential of the German system. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines process tracing and discourse network analysis of public media debates, this study argues that the non-functionalist background ideas of the actors employing skill formation in growth strategies inform this process. In Germany, beliefs about the complementarity between skill formation and economic growth tie coalitions of state actors and employers that promote institutional reproduction of skill formation even by unusual means, such as state intervention. In contrast, in France, where the skill formation system is perceived as a social policy tool, a coalition of business and state actors aims at increasing the economic potential of the system and reforming its governance according to market principles. This paper calls for more attention to the role of the ideas in influencing trajectories of institutional change.