Governing Adult Education Policy Development in Europe: A Critical Appraisal of the Renewed Agenda for Adult Learning

Based on a claim that adult education policy developments in Europe are more strongly entangled with European rather than global governance in this policy domain, this chapter presents a critical appraisal of the Renewed European Agenda on Adult Learning (REAAL). This analysis draws on a heuristic model that concentrates attention on the strength of governance mechanisms and policy instruments as key units of analysis to examine governance in public policy domains such as education, building primarily on the work of Del Rio and Howlett (2013) on complex policy mixes, and that of Lascoumes and Le Galès (2007) on policy instrumentation. By featuring REAAL’s main characteristics, and in light of its historical stages of development, this chapter elucidates how, as a policy mix, REAAL performs three substantive authoritative functions (i.e., legal, epistemic and procedural), which ease European governance in the adult education policy domain. Moreover, through a closer examination of REAAL’s mode of working, this chapter identifies the governance mechanisms (i.e. standard-setting, capacity-building, and financial redistribution) and policy instruments (i.e. coordinated working groups/networks, mutual- and peer-learning arrangements, data generation, benchmarks and funding schemes) that concur to its enactment. In doing so, it highlights two distinctive qualities that differentiate European from global governance in the adult education domain: its regulatory politics and its wealth redistributive capacity. Finally, the chapter points at some of the implications for the adult education and training sector, and its market segments.