The State of Education
From Yes, Prime Minister (BBC)
Categories:
Run time: 3:03
Clip Description: A discussion of education policy in which the political difficulty of reform, rather than the merits of any particular reform, drives the conversation.
Comparative Politics Concepts Discussed/Connected To: Why policies with broad expert agreement stall anyway; concentrated costs and diffuse benefits; organized interests inside a parliamentary system; the difference between a technical obstacle and a political one.
Possible Uses in Classroom: Good in a policy unit at the point where students have proposed a reform and cannot understand why it has not already happened. It gives them the vocabulary — organized losers, unorganized winners — for the answer.
Discussion Questions
- The obstacle in the scene is political rather than technical. Name who would lose from the reform under discussion and say how organized they are.
- Concentrated costs and diffuse benefits is the standard explanation for stalled reform. Does it fit here, and what would the distribution have to look like for the reform to pass?
- Would this conversation go differently in a system with separated powers? Say which stage of the process changes and which does not.
Assignment
Pick one education reform attempted in the last twenty years in a parliamentary democracy and trace what happened to it. Two pages: the proposal, the organized opposition, and the outcome. Close by naming the single point at which the reform could most plausibly have been saved, and what saving it would have cost the government.
Clip hosted on YouTube, posted by BBC Studios.
For AP Students
AP Comparative Government and Politics
Unit 5: Political and Economic Changes and Development
Topics: 5.5 Political and Economic Changes; public policy, reform, and the role of organized interests
A clear case of the policy-making chain inside a parliamentary system. Weaker than the other Yes, Prime Minister clips on institutional mechanics, so use it for the interest-group material rather than the executive material.
Discussion questions
- Distinguish a pluralist interest group system from a corporatist one. Which would make the reform in this scene easier to pass, and why?
- Name two policy areas where the losers from reform are concentrated and organized, and one where they are diffuse. What predicts which pattern a policy area falls into?
- Explain how a government with a secure parliamentary majority can still fail to pass a reform it wants. Name two mechanisms that have nothing to do with the opposition party.
Short activity
Map the losers (15 minutes). Put one real proposed reform on the board and have the room list every group that loses something by it, then mark each as organized or unorganized. Count the two columns. The exercise takes ten minutes and explains more stalled legislation than any other single thing in the unit.