Are interest groups effective public action influencers in the field of education? Case studies of two school reforms in Switzerland

Abstract

This article interrogates the legitimacy and influence of interest groups in the elaboration of two school reforms of the last stage of compulsory schooling in two Swiss cantons: Geneva and Vaud. Based on the principle of participatory democracy, the Swiss political system raises questions about the specificities of interest groups’ influence on educational policies. What role is given to them by the political institutions? Conversely, what role do they grant themselves in school reform processes? This article is based on a sociology of public action and aims to determine whether interest groups influence educational policies. We investigated these actors’ involvement in the development of the reforms through a thematic content analysis of four corpora of texts for each canton. Our analysis of the data indicates that the influence of interest groups operates on two fronts: agenda setting and implementation of reforms. In contrast, interest groups are little considered during the process of drawing up bills in Parliament.

Introduction

This article is based on a sociology of public action and aims to highlight how the strategic capacities and resources of professional, trade union and employer associations influence educational policies. In European countries, the mobilisation strategies and influence of interest groups on education policies vary greatly. For example, the school context in France is characterised by a claim-based logic on the part of associations; their protest actions often lead to previously formulated reforms being progressively adjusted (Geay, 2005; Seguy, 2014). In Spain, on the other hand, teachers’ unions have little influence on the political agenda and decisions, but the autonomy of schools allows professionals to shape educational policies at the local level (Bonal, 2004; Dobbins and Christ, 2019). The Swiss political system raises questions about the specificities of interest groups’ influence on education policies (Revaz, 2020) as it is based on the principles of federalism – power is divided between the Confederation (the national level), the 26 cantons and the communes ¹ – and participatory democracy, thereby institutionalising the participation of the population in political life. Although research into the influence of interest groups on public policy has developed since the 1950s and 1960s mostly in the United States (Dahl, 1961), it still occupies a minor place in the sociology of public action. Moreover, there is very little work on the field of education. This is even less the case when it comes to analysing the place of interest groups in contexts in which their place is institutionally recognised, that is, in federal or quasi-federal systems, or in which decision-making takes place in different places and at different scales. In those contexts, their role in public action is, in theory, assured, but it remains little questioned by the literature. Do they shape policy-making process and policy decision-making process? Answering these questions is the ambition of this article, which aims to enrich, with the help of an empirical investigation, the literature on the actors of educational public action and the ways in which their relationships are made effective.

The Swiss political system is defined as ‘power of the people, for the people and by the people’. Often associated with the idea of neutrality and an image of a country where conflicts are rare, this system is based on the participation of the people in political decisions and aims to prevent the abuse of power by certain individuals and institutions (Bevort, 2011; Kriesi, 2005; Vatter, 2008). As the supreme political authority, the people have various instruments and rights to guide public action in all sectors of society. In addition to lobbying the public authorities (Mach, 2015), citizens can use democratic tools: the initiative ² and the referendum, ³ which allow them to propose to Parliament the revision of a law or a draft law, or to challenge a law that Parliament has adopted (initiatives and referendums are subject to a vote of the people). In this context, citizens who mobilise collectively in interest groups can have a substantial impact on public action (Eichenberger et al., 2016; Kriesi, 1993). We refer here to Saurugger’s (2019) definition of interest groups: ‘a constituted organization that seeks to influence political powers in a direction favorable to its interest’ (p. 305). To complete this definition with elements linked to the Swiss context, we can add that interest groups include employers’ associations, trade unions, professional associations, public interest groups (open to all and defending an ideal goal) as well as organisations that defend the interests of a particular category of the population (Mach, 2015). As their relationship with the authorities is institutionalised, interest groups are an integral part of what can be called the ‘circle of partners in public action’ (Michel, 2010). An understanding of their role in the Swiss policy-making process is therefore essential to explain the forms this process takes and the trajectories (Ball, 1993) it follows. By policy-making process, we mean here the stages preceding the implementation of a reform: agenda-setting, policy formulation, public policy decision-making (Howlett and Ramesh, 2003).

The recent reforms that have transformed the Swiss educational landscape over the last 10 years show that categorical associations (i.e. grouping individuals of different status fighting for the same cause), trade union, professional and employer associations can strongly influence the way educational policies are developed and implemented (Revaz, 2020; Winz, 2022). This article aims to question this observation and to shed light, in a more targeted way, on the legitimacy and influence of interest groups in the elaboration of school reforms. Are they effective public action influencers? This research question leads to others: what role is given to them by the political and administrative institutions? Conversely, what role do they grant themselves in educational policy-making processes? What strategies do they use to become involved in these processes and what strategies do political and administrative actors use face to them? Finally, what influence do they have on the development of reforms? In line with work that seeks to renew interest in the influence of interest groups on public action (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007; Grossman and Saurugger, 2012; Hall and Deardorff, 2006; Henning, 2004), we consider their influence as their capacity to influence political outcomes in such a way that they align with their interests: ‘actors [are] powerful if they manage to influence outcomes in a way that brings them closer to their ideal points’ (Dür and De Bièvre, 2007: 3).

To answer these questions, two empirical cases of school reforms are analysed and put into perspective. These are reforms of lower secondary education, the last stage of compulsory schooling, in two French-speaking cantons: Geneva and Vaud. In both cases, interest groups were significantly involved, though in different ways, in the debates on tracking to reform the pupil distribution model. In the next section, the scientific literature on the place of trade union, categorical, professional and employers’ associations in educational public action will be introduced as well as the relevance of the sociology of public action to analyze it. We then present the context of the research by developing the way in which lower secondary education constitutes an object of democratic demands in Switzerland. Furthermore, the methodological approach is explained followed by the results of our analyses which illustrate the place of expertise in the elaboration of reforms, the strategies of interest groups and their influence on educational policies. By way of conclusion, we offer a final reflection on the analysis and question the participatory nature of Swiss democracy.

Interest groups in educational public action

The theoretical anchoring of this article is primarily at the intersection of political science and sociology, in a sociology of public action that places particular emphasis on the factors and actors of public policy change (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012). As developed by mainly French-speaking authors (Hassenteufel, 2014; Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012; Muller and Surel, 1998) following Anglo-Saxon work on policy making (Ball, 1997; Jones, 1970; Sabatier, 1999) and governance studies (Altrichter, 2010; Altrichter et al., 2007), the sociology of public action makes it possible to take into account all the actions undertaken by a plurality of actors – whether public authorities (government members, elected parliamentarians) or not – that aim to regulate collective activities; in other words, that aim to transform the functioning of the social and political order. Although public policies are decided by a public authority, they are above all the result of the involvement of various actors, including interest groups (Courty, 2006; Dür and De Bièvre, 2007; Grossman and Saurugger, 2012; Moe, 1980). Thanks to their knowledge of the sector in which they are involved and their experience on the ground, interest groups ‘would provide a more pragmatic and insightful vision of “problems”’ (Michel, 2010: 204) than public authority actors. That is what research shows about educational policies (Datnow and Castellano, 2000; Demailly et al., 2019; Revaz, 2020; Rowan and Miller, 2007).

Analysing educational policy-making processes through the prism of interest groups thus makes it possible to identify configurations of public action by going beyond, as Michel (2010) does, the distinction between a ‘conventional’ and an ‘unconventional’ form of political participation. The question of legitimacy is central here. Those who are called political actors ‘naturally’ enjoy legitimacy because of their membership in political-administrative institutions, whereas those who act outside these institutions, are associated with democratic legitimacy due to their role as mediators between the people and the public authorities (Lacroix, 1984; Schmitter, 1983). Where the socialisation of political power is concerned, legitimacy means a recognised right to speak and act in the name of principles and values; it ‘appears to correspond politically to the feelings, mores, behaviours and ideas that are generally widespread in a community’ (Boulad-Ayoub, 2003: 78). In other words, and as Weber (1971) already showed, the legitimacy of power refers to its conformity to certain recognised and accepted social norms, to the fact that it is recognised and accepted as a given. As a result, democratic legitimacy has come to play an indispensable role in the development of public policies because it involves seeking the support of the people, and participation has gradually become an instrument of public action (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2004), profoundly transforming policy making.

The association of interested actors in the elaboration of the decision is justified by the need to obtain both a ‘better decision’ and ‘better projects’, and makes it possible to increase the acceptability, and therefore the effectiveness, of public action, by ensuring that implementation is facilitated by the adherence of actors to a decision that they have helped to formulate (Blatrix, 2010: 216). ⁴

Participation thus contributes to the legitimacy of an idea or a project: public policies are legitimate when, in their regulatory function, they respond to the common good and collective interests (Lacasse and Thoenig, 1997). Taking our cue from Michel (2010), we wish to interrogate the legitimacy of ‘those who [. . .] produce actions and the actions they produce’ (p. 193).

By focusing on interest groups, we wish to go beyond the identification of ‘decision-makers’ and focus on making explicit the processes by which public action is constructed.

Secondly, the article is rooted in the discipline of sociology of education; it draws on the growing body of work that examines issues of schooling from a political perspective. Such work is relatively recent (Buisson-Fenet and van Zanten, 2014; Walford, 2003) and the insights it brings most often concerns the way in which educational policies are translated into practice. However, it seems to us that if we want to understand the trajectories of education system reforms and the effects they produce, we cannot avoid interrogating the processes at the heart of their development. Thus, although the interactions between the political, professional and trade union spheres are most salient at the time of policy implementation – when teachers, headmasters and other staff change their practices – they cannot be fully understood without an analysis of the actors’ involvement in the policy development. A review of the genesis of the two policies therefore seems indispensable.

There are a number of reasons to become involved in education policy, not least of which is the educational precepts that a given policy brings to the debate. The way in which pupils are distributed is the subject of constant controversy because it raises the question of how to manage existing inequalities (Gamoran and Mare, 1989). The draft laws drawn up in the context of the Geneva and Vaud reforms are entirely relevant here as they question the way in which pupils are distributed and whether or not their starting level is taken into account in this distribution. There is therefore a wide variety of such distribution models. Over the last several decades, the scientific literature has shown that the way schools are structured has an effect on student learning and educational inequalities (Coleman et al., 1966; Dupriez and Maroy, 2003; Gamoran et al., 1995; Monseur and Crahay, 2008). The distribution of pupils therefore raises the issue of educational justice and equity (Friant, 2012): is it fairer to group pupils according to their skills or to educate them using heterogeneous grouping? Generally, the justification for a system that groups pupils according to their academic level is that the teaching is adapted to the abilities of a group. However, it also reflects the idea that all students are unequal and therefore not entitled to the same education or opportunities. Opting for a heterogeneous structure, on the other hand, reflects reasoning based on equity according to which it is fairer to compensate for inequalities between pupils at the outset (Gamoran and Mare, 1989).

Far from being part of a simple ideological divide, the choice between these two options and those that fall between them is also based on practical considerations concerning classroom management (Hallinan, 1994; Mons, 2007). Thus, homogeneous classes are usually valued because they allow for the simultaneous progression of pupils and a generalisation of common objectives; rebalancing is achieved through procedures such as having students repeat a year. Homogeneity prevents teaching from being too demanding for the weakest pupils and too easy for the strongest. Conversely, in models that favour more heterogeneity in the classroom, learning together acquires strong legitimacy because it reduces the gap between pupils and adjustments are achieved through individualised support (Mons, 2007; Oakes, 1986). However, the question of what is fairer is all the more serious as it goes beyond the concern for educational inequalities to raise the issue of social inequalities (Friedkin and Thomas, 1997; Kerckhoff, 1993; Oakes, 1986). We know that certain methods of distributing pupils highlight social segregation practices (Bonal and Bellei, 2018; Welner & Oakes, 1996). This is what is shown by numerous and international studies on tracking school systems: separating pupils according to their academic skills would in fact also mean separating them according to individual characteristics (Charmillot and Felouzis, 2020; Coleman et al., 1966). Many detracking reforms have been attempted internationally since the 1990s.

Assuming that the interest groups involved in the school reforms in the cantons of Geneva and Vaud are composed of individuals concerned – admittedly to varying degrees – with the education system, we can postulate that their expertise, their proximity to the field and their connection to the possible consequences of the reforms lead them to focus the dialogue on issues directly related to the impact of the reforms on teaching and learning. With their knowledge of the field and of the academic, social and economic issues at stake in decisions relating to the structure of education, interest groups would more likely be able to objectify school-related issues. We hypothesise that faced with political actors, the contribution of interest groups can significantly influence the development of reforms. This presupposes a corollary assumption: that they have major legitimacy in public affairs related to schools, a legitimacy granted by their status, since they are the ones who represent the interests of school principals, teaching professionals, pupils and their parents. It is they who contribute to the democratic legitimacy of the reform. Our research aims to test these hypotheses and provide information on the capacities and resources of interest groups to influence educational policy-making.

Lower secondary school targeted by democratic demands

The Swiss education system consists of three levels: primary, secondary (divided into lower secondary and upper secondary school) and tertiary. Compulsory schooling lasts for 11 years and includes primary and secondary school. Considered a key stage in the life of a pupil, lower secondary education marks the end of compulsory schooling and the choice for pupils to undertake vocational or academic training. It is referred to as the ‘orientation cycle’ in several cantons because the curriculum is supposed to help students with their orientation towards the available options. At the heart of the debate on compulsory schooling, the ‘orientation cycle’ is regularly questioned, and it is particularly its structure – the system for allocating pupils – that is the subject of frequent reforms and attempts at reform in the cantons (Felouzis and Charmillot, 2013; Revaz, 2020; Winz, 2022). One of the reasons for the significant controversy surrounding lower secondary education in Switzerland is that the responsibility for education lies with the cantons. As a result of this local responsibility, many models exist and their differences, which are sometimes substantial, encourage comparisons and provoke questions about their quality. Another reason is that the transition to upper secondary education is, as in many countries, a determining factor in educational inequalities, equity and excellence of an education system (Tarabini and Jacovkis, 2021).

There are several reasons for putting the two case studies into perspective. Firstly, it should be noted that the two cantons are adjacent to each other ⁵ and that the development of the reforms (from the emergence of the problem to its entry into force in the law) took place within similar time frames: the processes lasted 6 years, from 2005 to 2011 in Geneva and from 2007 to 2013 in the canton of Vaud. In fact, the exchanges and negotiations between interest groups and public authorities were almost simultaneous in both cantons. Secondly, interest groups occupied a central place in both reforms: associations composed mainly of teachers, headmasters and parents filed popular initiatives ⁶ concerning the structure of lower secondary education (among other things) ⁷ and, in particular, the system of allocation of pupils. Finally, the same question emerged from the dialogue between political actors and interest groups: should pupils be divided into heterogeneous or homogeneous groups? That said – and this makes the comparison all the more relevant – the solutions provided by the two reforms are very different. While the selection of students was reinforced in Geneva through the passage from two homogeneous tracks to three, the opposite was true in the Vaud system, where the reform reduced the tracks from three to two and introduced heterogeneous classes for certain subjects.

The case of Geneva

In Geneva, interest groups played a central role in the development of the reform, and particularly in the definition of the public problem. Through the drafting and submission of two popular initiatives, they initiated the debate on lower secondary education. The first initiative (IN 134), entitled ‘For a cycle that guides’, was submitted in 2005 by a committee of teachers, headmasters and parents belonging to two associations ⁸ : ‘School must be rebuilt’ (ARLE – Association Refaire l’École) and the ‘Network for School and Secularism’ (REEL – Réseau École et Laïcité). Attached to a traditional model of schooling and driven by a mission to influence the public authorities and their management of the Geneva school system, these associations campaigned to change compulsory schooling so that it would correspond better to their ideas, values and representations of education. For lower secondary education, they were in favour of a strict and continuous separation of pupils into tracks with different requirements. The reason for separating students from different school levels is that they have differing levels of ability and, therefore, different career opportunities. In order to represent these ideas, the associations created a model of a lower secondary school with six tracks: science, Latin, modern languages, commercial subjects, technical subjects, and arts and crafts. Corresponding to hierarchical levels of requirements (in this case, in descending order), the first three tracks aimed to direct students towards tertiary studies and the other three towards vocational training. According to the initiators, this structure would allow all students, regardless of their level, to progress at their own pace and to prepare for the professions that are open to them. At the same time, it was presented as a panacea for teachers because it offered optimal working conditions that allowed them to adapt the content and pace of teaching to the level of each class.

Concerned by the ideology behind this initiative, other citizens who were members of two professional and trade union associations – the Federation of teachers in lower secondary education and the Geneva Education Association – filed another initiative (IN 138) a year later, entitled ‘Fighting failure at school and ensuring education for all’. In contrast to the first initiative, this one was based on the idea of an equitable school that particularly supports weak pupils and in which pupils are mixed regardless of their level. Its proposals were diametrically opposed to those of initiative 134, since they rejected the idea of ability grouping and hierarchical tracks, which the associations accused of reinforcing inequalities. The initiative therefore proposed that lower secondary education be composed of heterogeneous classes with level groups for the basic subjects (mathematics and German).

In response to these interest groups and to the propositions they wanted to be put to the vote, Parliament instructed the Ministry responsible for education to submit a ‘counter-project’. ⁹ The latter proposed three tracks ¹⁰ with different requirements. It also introduced two mechanisms to make the tracks less rigidly compartmentalised and the pathways more mobile: using a ‘bridge’, which give pupils the possibility of moving from one track to another during the year, and repeating a year, which they can do in a track with higher requirements.

When one or more popular initiatives are tabled in Parliament, the system of participatory democracy imposes two procedures that were crucial in the Geneva reform. The first is that representatives of associations affected by the reform (but not necessarily involved) ¹¹ must be given the opportunity to defend their point of view and voice their concerns in Parliament. The second is the obligation to submit the bills to the vote of citizens: it is the people who must decide between the popular initiatives and the Ministry’s counter-proposal.

The case of Vaud

While in the canton of Geneva it was the people that made the public authorities react, in the canton of Vaud the actions taken by interest groups and in the authorities were almost simultaneous.

In 2007, the Vaud Pedagogical Association, composed of teaching professionals, put out for consultation among its members various proposals to change the education system: ‘26 measures for a successful school’. It was only a month later that two groups of elected representatives called on Parliament to consider changing the structure of lower secondary education, and particularly the three tracks it housed. ¹² It was the track with the lowest requirements that was most contested: for some it was considered indispensable for weak students, and for others it was considered stigmatising. Parliament was called upon to intervene and instructed the Ministry to draft a bill. This bill was based on reducing the number of tracks (from three to two) and abolishing the one that had a bad reputation. For the two remaining tracks, the idea of the ministerial project was no different from that of the law in force: they had different requirements, and one led to tertiary studies while the other led to professional training.

In order to assess the support of the people for its draft law, the Ministry submitted it to a broad public consultation process using a questionnaire published on the Internet, allowing all citizens of the canton to express their views on the system it proposed. The main aim of the process was to gather the preferences of school partners – teachers, headmasters, inspectors, parents’ associations, school boards, etc. – in order to shape an educational system that would be more responsive to their needs. At the same time, to further ensure that the draft law was well received, the Minister of Education toured the canton’s public primary and secondary schools to discuss professionals’ positions.

The demands for change in lower secondary education did not stop there, since a few months later, three teachers’ and parents’ associations joined forces to submit a popular initiative entitled ‘School 2010: Save the Schools’. All three associations were opposed to the Ministry’s project. Their initiative proposed, among other things, to maintain the current system, that is, to continue to divide pupils into three tracks. By offering the population an alternative to the project proposed by the authorities, the three associations were taking a central role in the development of the reform.

During the political process, the Vaud Pedagogical Association continued its struggle to introduce the changes it deemed necessary in the school system. In fact, the association sent the improved version of its proposals (‘26 measures for a successful school’) to the Ministry with the aim of influencing its bill. Two other associations mobilised their members and other citizens who were sensitive to their values: a teacher’s union and the Association of teachers in Vaud lower secondary education. Both were involved mainly through the meetings they organised, at which their members exchanged their views on the draft laws, developed a common position and defined strategies to be undertaken towards the authorities. The definition of a shared point of view is particularly opportune before the hearings in Parliament, since the associations are called upon to defend their interests. The hearings are crucial because they can influence, to varying degrees, changes in the ministerial bill. They are all the more important as the bill is eventually put to the vote against the popular initiative, like in Geneva.

Once the Ministry’s bill was drafted and with a few months to go before the date of the popular vote, another interest group became involved in the reform process: the Employers’ Association. Serving companies, employers and professional associations, the Employers’ Association represents, advises and offers further training to companies and their managers. Although its activities are spread throughout Switzerland, the Employers’ Association has taken a particular interest in the reform in the Vaud reform. It defended the ‘School 2010’ initiative, which advocated maintaining the three tracks and a strict and hierarchical separation of pupils. The association’s strategy was based on the direct solicitation of business owners, who were invited, by means of a survey, ¹³ to indicate how likely they were to hire young people enrolled in the track with the lowest requirements. The aim was to highlight the fact that the stigmatisation of students enrolled in the lowest track was not due to a reluctance on the part of companies to recruit them, but to a social representation that denigrates professional training and over-values tertiary training. By appealing directly to company bosses, the Employers’ Association was linking the reform of lower secondary education to concerns that go beyond the school sphere and extend to the labour market and the canton’s productivity.

A simple account of the two reforms reveals the crucial role played by interest groups. By mobilising to reform the content of school laws and, in their wake, to rectify the values related to school tracking system, they embodied ‘cause entrepreneurs’ (Lascoumes and Le Galès, 2012) or ‘moral entrepreneurs’ (Becker, 1985; Fouquet-Chauprade et al., 2023). Not only did they ensure the representation and public recognition of education professionals, but above all they conditioned the definition of a public problem – that of the ineffectiveness of the system in lower secondary education – and contributed to its inclusion in the political agenda. In sum, in the context of these two school reforms, interest groups claimed their right to participate in the system of participatory democracy and influenced political processes. The issue now is to determine whether this participation, which is granted to them institutionally, allowed them to influence the outcome of these processes: the laws as such.

Measuring influence empirically: Method, field and tools

The methodology chosen to determine whether interest groups had an influence on the two reforms aims to overcome the recognised difficulties in developing indicators to analyse such a dimension. The ex-post nature of our research makes us aware of the outcome of the political process and allows us to put it into perspective with the available data on interest group involvement.

Thus, the research presented is based on thematic analyses of four corpora of texts for each canton. The first two are the result of an exploratory phase of the survey: they include press articles published in regional and cantonal newspapers ¹⁴ between 2006 and 2015 (Geneva: 129 articles, approximately 450,000 characters; Vaud: 119 articles approximately 450,000 characters) and transcripts of semi-structured interviews conducted in 2017–2018 with political and administrative actors who were involved in the reform processes: one Minister and four deputies for each canton. This preliminary step provides initial indications of the relationship between interest groups and public authorities. The third corpus consists of the publications of the interest groups that were involved (Geneva: 19 publications; Vaud: 14 publications) and the fourth consists of the transcripts of the parliamentary debates on the reforms (Geneva: 62 pages, 40,812 words, 256,284 characters; Vaud: 145 pages, 100,281 words, 629,545 characters). Discourse is a rich indicator for accessing the representations of actors involved in school reforms, the interests that motivate their approaches and strategies, and the relationships they maintain. Thematic content analyses make it possible to identify and categorise the content addressed by the associations and the political and administrative actors because they can be used to transform a corpus made up of a variety of texts into a unique and original analysis of its content around its themes and sub-themes, using a code. By analysing the parliamentary debates and the publications of interest groups, we can identify the positions taken by actors in relation to the bills, and the arguments put forward to justify their choices. Putting them into perspective makes it possible to identify the arguments favoured by both sides to gain weight in the debate, and thus to qualify the registers – or even distinguish between registers of conventional and non-conventional political participation. With this in mind, other official documents are studied in parallel, such as legal texts and the brochures distributed with the voting material, in which the actors address the population.

By looking back at the development of these educational policies and examining the role of interest groups, it is possible to identify their strategic capacities and resources and to determine whether these have influenced the development of the reforms.

Questioning expertise and de-legitimatisation strategies

Given the number of interest groups involved in the processes of constructing the problem of inefficiency in pupils allocation systems and putting it on the political agenda, it would be difficult to deny the collective dimension of the development of the Geneva and Vaud reforms. However, the analysis of the different corpora that have been constituted invites us to question their influence on the trajectory of the reforms insofar as the two case studies highlight strategies used by political actors to relegate interest groups to a secondary role in the political process.

The case of Geneva

In Geneva, the reform was initiated by the submission of the first initiative (IN 134), which contributed greatly to the construction and identification of the problem. It was the associations ARLE and REEL that opened the debate, even though there was no real diagnosis of failure in lower secondary education (Revaz et al., 2021). Although the drafting of a counter-project by the Ministry is an institutionalised procedure that occurs when popular initiatives are submitted, the strategies mobilised by the two parties reflect a mutual animosity that seems to be detrimental to relations between the public authorities and interest groups.

Concerning the two associations behind the first initiative (134), analyses of their publications (press releases and articles in association magazines) and of mentions of them in the press reveal a twofold questioning: that of the Ministry’s legitimacy in matters relating to schools, and that of the draft law it had drawn up. The discourse is therefore not only directed at the draft legislation and the proposals that constitute it, but also at the government members responsible for drafting it. Two elements of the bill are criticised. The first, related to the form, denounces the use of rhetorical formulations aimed at passing off old ways of working as innovative. In their publications, the initiators speak in particular of a ‘political sham’, ‘wordy approximations’ and ‘pretended innovations’. The second element of criticism relates to the content of the project, which is criticised for its penchant for ‘classification by excellence’, which is antagonistic to the values of the two associations and leads, according to them, to the creation of ‘class ghettos’. Strongly opposed to such reasoning, the associations question the legitimacy of parliamentary deputies to develop educational policy and underline the irrelevance of political decisions that are devoid of education-related expertise. By referring to the lack of interest and incompetence of politicians, who are portrayed in the associations’ publications as being ‘unconcerned with pedagogy’, the two associations undermine the legitimacy of the counter-project:

Ministry of the New Public Management, driven above all by the prospect of lowering school costs (‘doing more with less’); the self-interested conformism of all those whose approval of these phenomena has enabled them to satisfy their ambitions; the demagogy of politicians, too inclined to please their electors to contradict family strategies. [. . .] This counter-project, which aims to correct the disaster, gives those who work in the field the impression that it was conceived by people who have never had or who no longer have direct contact with the reality of the classroom [. . .]. (REEL, analysis of the ministerial bill)

They thus highlight the need to vote in favour of a project elaborated by actors close to the school: teachers, headmasters and parents of pupils ‘who have observed the real-life situations in schools’. The strategy of the initiators consists, in short, of discrediting the counter-proposal and questioning the legitimacy of the actors who represent it.

The leaders of the second initiative (138) have less of an opinion on the Ministry’s draft law. Aware of the radical aspect of their proposal to abolish the tracks – the use of which had been institutionalised for several decades – the initiators quickly rally behind the Ministry’s counter-project, whose content is deemed ‘less retrograde’ than that of initiative 134.

On the Ministry’s side, we identify a clear strategy in the press, in parliamentary debates and in the content of interviews, which consists of excluding interest groups from the political process. The approach is to reserve the debate for members of the political-administrative institutions in order to avoid possible ideological quarrels between teachers, whose representations are often perceived as too polarised. The strategy of the political leaders is justified by historical arguments concerning the many past conflicts over the Geneva schools and the numerous reforms and attempts at reform to which the system has been subjected. By keeping interest groups out, the Ministry protects itself against possible protest actions that could provoke a new episode of the ‘school war’ that has become customary in Geneva:

[It is] always the teachers who [move] and finally the balance of power [is] between teachers who are in favour of heterogeneity and those who [are] in favour of ability grouping. [. . .] So the idea was basically that politics should take the initiative again, that parliamentarians should take the initiative again, that we should not simply be the repository for the divisions that exist within the teaching profession. (Extract from an interview with a government official)

The strategy made explicit in this interview 5 years after the entry into force of the new law is clearly identified in the analyses of the press and the parliamentary debates. The legitimacy of school professionals is refuted and their expertise is deliberately ignored under the pretext of preserving school peace and achieving consensus (Fouquet-Chauprade et al., 2023; Revaz, 2020). During the parliamentary sessions organised between May 2006 and June 2008, little room was given to the work of associations and unions. Their proposals, which targeted the problems of everyday school life, such as the impact of the structure of teaching on the failure of pupils and the motivation of pupils and teachers, were absorbed into rhetorical formulas that aimed to reinforce pre-existing arguments, as illustrated by this extract:

Initiative 134 is aimed at all [pupils]. It respects the philosophy of lower secondary education, which is there to orient students. In a society that wants to grant the right to vote at 16 and that considers that one becomes an adult at 16 and that one is capable of making choices that will commit a society to certain actions, it is normal that one can, at 14 or 15, orient oneself. Many young people can already tell you that they are not interested in maths and that they prefer to go into the arts or languages; others, on the contrary, are not at all interested in languages and prefer to go the scientific route. . . (Extract from a speech in Parliament)

Here, the mention of the initiative simply serves to support an opinion in favour of a school in which pupils must be separated because they have neither the same interests nor the same abilities.

The arguments of other interest groups were, moreover, almost non-existent in the exchanges between parliamentarians. Out of a corpus of over 40,000 words, there are only 15 occurrences of teachers union and professional associations. The mentions made of them were not included as part of the debate and they were not considered as partners in the elaboration of the reform.

However, the analyses also show that the exclusion of interest groups from the political process does not protect the parliamentary scene from divisions between supporters of tracking and supporters of heterogeneous classes. This is very clear in the press: the Geneva reform is presented as an object of political opposition between the left-wing, in favour of more heterogeneity, and the right-wing, in favour of more selective schools. In the parliamentary debates, we see that the Ministry’s strategy does not reduce the confrontations, it simply confines them to the political and administrative realms. The ‘political battle’ is indeed one of the main themes of the analyses of the parliamentary debates. The register is highly politicised and the discussion of the two bills often moves away from the educational and pedagogical stakes of the reform to focus instead on political affiliations, alliances and the need for consensus:

We have been saying for two hours that we want a compromise and a consensus . . . Well, if this is really our goal, I salute and thank the authors of initiative 138! By diametrically opposing initiative 134, it will force us to find compromise and consensus. (Extract from a speech in Parliament)

This excerpt highlights the fact that popular initiatives are seen by parliamentarians as a pretext to open the discussion on the distribution system of pupils in lower secondary education, and not as proposals on which to build a new model.

The case of Vaud

In Geneva, the associations and unions were involved in the reform mainly because of their membership in one initiative committee or the other. In the canton of Vaud, the dynamics were different, as the majority of associations were involved simply because they supported one bill or the other, with most being in favour of the Ministry’s bill. Moreover, beyond the fact that the ‘School 2010’ initiative received little support, it was the subject of a discreet, if not non-existent, campaign: the three associations responsible for it did not issue any publications and were absent from the media. It was as if, after having drawn up their bill, they entrusted it to the people, who had the power to decide between their initiative and the Ministry’s counter-project.

In the press, there were only two statements by one of the members of the initiative committee. In the first statement, he presented the main principles behind the initiative: ‘We propose a school centred on knowledge, which would make priority use of “explicit” teaching methods’. In the second, he responded to the criticism of the presence of a religious association in the committee of a school initiative: ‘There is not a single line in the initiative that is influenced by religious elements’. No other strategy to promote their bill was undertaken, nor did the initiators speak out on the Ministry’s bill.

This silence is far from reciprocal. In fact, the ‘School 2010’ initiative is the subject of numerous and often virulent criticisms from the other associations. With the exception of the Employers’ Association, all are against ‘School 2010’. They condemn the content of the initiative, its outdated nature and its disconnection from reality, as well as its leaders, who are described as ignorant of the challenges facing schools. According to their shared view, the initiators ‘project themselves into the future with the glasses of the past’ and propose an ‘iniquitous’ bill, ‘contrary to humanist values and the principle of educatability’, which would result in a ‘school of the past’. Criticism of the content of the initiative is directed at educational aspects, particularly those concerning the learning conditions of pupils and the teaching conditions of teachers. For the Vaud Pedagogical Association, the proposals of the initiative are ‘disastrous’ and would have a ‘damaging’ effect on the work of professionals and the treatment of pupils. They would lead to ‘the demotivation of teachers’, the ‘reinforcement of the labelling effect’ of pupils and ‘a massive increase in failure and repetition of school years’. According to the teachers’ union, the proposals of the ‘School 2010’ project inevitably cultivate the exclusion of a part of the pupils and selection through failure, and ultimately constitute a threat to equal opportunities. In their publications, the associations’ strategy is to centre the debate on questions of equity and segregation, issues on which their readers can easily take a stand.

The strategy adopted by the Employers’ Association is also based on the idea of situating the debate within the relevant field of expertise, the labour market, and of defending the interests of its members: company bosses and potential future employers of students after they leave school. In its ‘Études et enquêtes’ collection, the association devotes an issue (Paschoud, 2010) to defending its position on the Vaud reform. It bases its legitimacy to express itself on its knowledge of the requirements of the labour market and justifies the legitimacy of its proposals by evoking the status of employers, who are primarily concerned with the quality of training of their future employees. In its issue, the Employers’ Association criticises the idea of reducing the number of courses of study, which amounts to ‘refusing to recognise that there are differences between individuals in terms of aptitudes and forms of intelligence’ (Paschoud, 2010: 39). Inequalities at the outset justify inequalities in access, according to the association, which believes that not all pupils have the same abilities and that they cannot, therefore, all aspire to the same future prospects. By bringing the debate back into its own field, the Employers’ Association adopts a discourse that is meant to be pragmatic: the principle of equal opportunities is incompatible with the labour market:

The desire to spare students from having to overcome obstacles and frustrations means that they are precisely not prepared, once out of the school cocoon, to face the difficulties inherent in life, despite the energy that many teachers deploy to adapt theory to everyday realities (Paschoud, 2010: 50).

The Association of teachers in Vaud lower secondary education, which opposed both the popular initiative and the Ministry’s project, advances numerous and detailed arguments. It highlights the lack of expertise of those responsible for the two bills and points out how problematic it would be to support their proposals. If ‘School 2010’ is accused of creating a ‘school of yesteryear’ with elitist functions, the Ministry’s counter-project is guilty of ‘camouflaging’ the preservation of the current system via terminological changes that are ‘insufficient to reduce the selection of pupils’. When it comes to those responsible for the bills, the association believes that the Ministry and the initiative committee both neglect the status of teachers and of the learning conditions of pupils.

An analysis of the publications of the interest groups and the strategies they have used in the context of the reform reveals a sustained involvement and strategies based mainly on delegitimising the authors of the bill they are contesting (Revaz, 2020). In both ‘camps’, recourse to the argument of expertise is central. It is most often used to cast doubt on the associations responsible for the initiative, since the majority of interest groups are opposed to it.

In the canton of Vaud, the political process is presented as a collaborative operation in which associations and unions play an indispensable role. This is also what a member of the government told us in an interview, 4 years after the law came into force:

There had been many debates in the consultation bodies, people who were part of this initiative movement against the school systems recommended in the canton had been largely integrated, and all this had already allowed for a vast debate before the vote itself. So I would say that it’s an interesting democratic example because everyone was able to participate in one way or another. (Extract from an interview with a government member)

An analysis of parliamentary debates, however, qualifies this testimony. In a corpus of more than 100,000 words, there are five occurrences of the teachers union and parents’ association, two occurrences of the Vaud Pedagogical Association and the Association of secondary school teachers and one occurrence of the Employers’ Association. Although the degree of involvement in the reform is not the same for all associations, some of them have provided substantiated proposals. This is notably the case of the Vaud Pedagogical Association with its ‘26 measures for a successful school’, which are mentioned in a hasty manner. Furthermore, the analyses show that Ministry’s officials and members of Parliament involve interest groups more in the implementation of the new law than in its development. The expertise of interest groups is recognised as a central contribution to the translation of the law into regulations, to putting it into practice in the field. This is what one Ministry member said about a proposal for a change in the law (an ‘amendment’) made by a political party concerning class size limits:

The regulation will also be put out to consultation once it has been completed at the draft stage. This will allow all political parties, respectively professional associations and trade unions, to examine these elements in detail. I therefore invite you to reject this amendment, but to keep this idea, if necessary, in order to pay attention to it in the context of the regulation. This is something that should be in the rules and regulations and not in the law. (Extract from a speech by a government official in Parliament)

This is seen as recognition of the expertise of professionals, who are considered to be better placed than politicians to deal with this type of issue. The announcement that associations and trade unions were to be consulted on the drafting of the regulation contrasts with the fact that little account was taken of their proposals in the drafting of the law. This reflects an important distinction between the processes of elaboration and implementation of the reform and, as a corollary, between the different categories of actors involved. The strategy of the Parliament is therefore to restrict the participation of associations and trade unions, which are not taken much into account in the elaboration of the reform and are instead solicited more in its implementation.

In the end, we can see that the question of the organisation of lower secondary education exacerbates the tensions surrounding the school systems in the two cantons; past episodes of the ‘school war’ and the reality of relations within political and educational institutions explain the phenomenon of path dependency (Pierson, 2000) that hinders change.

Conclusions

In order to consider the influence of interest groups on the reforms of lower secondary education, we wanted to reason about the dialogue and relationship between government officials, elected parliamentarians, association activists and ‘ordinary’ citizens who participated in the policy-making process leading to the reforms. The aim here was to determine whether interest groups were effective public action influencers, knowing that their place in political processes is institutionalised. Our questioning aimed to contribute to the literature on public action and the power of the various actors who partake in it, in order to nuance the different modalities in which it is carried out, particularly in federal and quasi-federal participatory systems. Through two case studies, we have shown that the participatory imperative can take different forms and be present to different degrees and at different times in participatory democracies, meaning the extent of influence of certain actors on the political process can vary significantly. Building on existing research on the place and role of interest groups in political processes, our research has shed light on the different types of influence they can exert: influence on the political agenda; influence on the drafting of the law; influence on the implementation of the policy. It also revealed the strategies and discourse registers used by interest groups and members of public authorities to influence the game of politics.

For example, we have seen the power citizens wield in taking public action when they mobilised, as in Geneva, and used the instruments of direct democracy to change a law, having a major influence on the political agenda. Our results have, however, also shown that their influence did not reach the doors of Parliament and Government, since they were excluded from the process to avoid perpetuating cognitive conflicts. The democratic sacrifice seems to have been made to restore stability and governance to Geneva’s schools, since the ‘school war’ had seriously paralysed the management of the education system.

In the canton of Vaud, despite significant dialogue between the authorities and the people, those who participated in the process in an ‘unconventional’ way (Michel, 2010) did not play a central role in the policy-making process and were relegated to the implementation of the law. Yet the literature on the implementation of education policies highlights the frequent gap between what is laid down in law and how it is applied by professionals when the latter are not involved in the development of change (Datnow and Castellano, 2000; Rowan and Miller, 2007). These discrepancies are at the root of the loose coupled nature of education systems (Coburn, 2004; Weick, 1976). In the canton of Vaud, the legitimacy of interest groups, conferred by their expertise, was nevertheless recognised and this recognition made it possible for them to participate in the change and to influence the reform, albeit belatedly.

Ultimately, we have shown that interest groups influence on the educational policy-making process is not guaranteed despite their knowledge and experience on the ground, even if their position is institutionalised in participatory political systems. Our results suggest that this is due to the legitimacy granted to them in Parliament. This result raises a number of questions, given that the parliamentary discourse is often highly politicised and far from the educational issues that the reforms are intended to address. In particular, this raises the issue of citizens’ democratic rights and their access to information; if the discourse and expertise of professionals are ignored, the people may be deprived of part of the debate. We can therefore conclude that while the ‘democratisation of democracy’ relies heavily on interest groups, their participation in the policy-making processes and their place in the ‘circle of policy partners’ can easily be threatened by those associated with ‘decision-makers’, those in ‘conventional’ politics.