A recent tendency in critical education writing on globalisation in education has been to examine the congruence of educational policies in western societies and the effects of apparently similar global governance of education by powerful transnational institutions such as the OECD and the European Union. The authors tend to identify massive changes in approaches to educational governance, including the establishment of a broadly common policy and management agenda that is characterised by an economic globalisation agenda. The agenda is characterised by 'new managerialism', apparent devolution, rigid accountability structures and entrepreneurialism, which are are often seen as being directly related to the 'hollowing out' of the state, and the emergence of neo-liberalism as the informing ideology of both international capitalism and residual nation-states. With few exceptions, such education writers ascribe to 'strong' globalisation theories (which are used to explain apparent national comonality in policies) and 'strong' discourse theories (which are used to explain features of new managerialsism such as subtle surveillance and self-imposed ideological control). Within this latter form of control, versions of school culture are represented as being especially powerful in broadly securing the consent of education professionals to the wider, globalised educational agenda. Overall, the process is generally said to emphasise the dominance of the global economy over national and international politics. There is a tendency to present globalisation as economic determinism, homogeneous in its effects. The proposed paper argues that such approaches to globalisation tend to be essentialist and reductionist as they imply a totalising structure that imposes its will without much if any consideration of agency, local politics or resistance. As Wilding (1997, p.411) summarises this argument: The term [globalisation] is most commonly used to describe certain trends in economic, political, social and cultural development. The term is also used, however, to explain such trends - they are as they are, the argument runs, because of this force we call globalisation. The essential argument of the paper is that authors who have taken approaches described above (which are to be found in British and Australian journals such as Journal of Education Policy, British Journal of Sociology of Education and Discourse) often display a less than adequate account or concern with the relationships among micro and macro-politics of the educational practices they describe. In terms of education policy and implementation, there is often a sense of linear effects of globalisation and new managerialism on principal and teacher practice and subjectivity. Although the substantive policy concerns considered are quite wide, and include the effects of new public management, the changing nation-state, markets, economic globalisation, government compliance with internationally assertive capital, and regimes of surveillance and their micro-effects, issues of local identity, culture and micro-politics are quite thin. And often, these things are described more or less as if they simply 'are'; as if they are current features of the social and educational landscape that exist and need to be mapped and described rather than to be explained and their meanings analysed in context. In discussing writing on policy-as-discourse, Bacchi (2000, p. 55) argues that: 'policy-as-discourse analysts need to spend more time theorising the "space for challenge". I find an overemphasis on the constraints imposed by discourse/s and a tendency to concentrate on some groups, those described as "having" power, as the makers and users of discourse'. I agree with Bacchi on this point, but would also argue that as well as theorising 'space for challenge', empirical work and explanation is required also of the social action that enables and legitimates discourses, particularly dominant discourses. Moreover, although I agree with Bacchi's conclusion, I would apply it not just to discourse but to a range of cultural concepts that are discussed in the paper. Bacchi, C. (2000) Policy as discourse: what does it mean? Where does it get us? Discourse, 21(1), pp. 45-57.