Today, policy statements all over the world emphasise the 'knowledge society' as a background of their education policy reforms. In the same time, education scientist realise an increasing non-national influence in education politics. Policy instruments are 'borrowed', policy 'learning' takes place, and policies are 'transferred' or 'diffused'. My paper is concerned with bringing these developments together. My hypothesis is that the 'knowledge society' is an enabler for national policy reforms as well as a major source for the observable global dynamics in education politics. In a first step, the concept of the 'knowledge society' will be introduced and analysed. An obvious feature of the 'knowledge society' is the essential role of knowledge. It is assumed to be important for participation in the economy, in politics or other societal contexts, be it in Europe, Asia or in the South of Africa. This denotes the second feature of the 'knowledge society': It is by principal not restricted to particular countries but might encompass the whole world. Although a specific knowledge might be more applicable in one environment than in the other, e.g. agricultural knowledge is less important in industrialised societies than in non-industrialised, knowledge per se is important everywhere. Empirically, we can see that the new role of knowledge is used in education policy arguments throughout the world, in the US as well as in Malaysia, in European as well as in Developing Countries. Thus, I argue, the 'knowledge society' might form a sort of a global 'imagined community' today. In a second step, this globality is related to the concept of an organisational field, as used in the sociology of organisations and in political science: Organisations in an organisational field tend to become more similar, since they orient themselves on each other and establish common organisational forms. They show 'isomorphism', the tendency to become alike. I argue that isomorphism is strongly related to the diffusion of education policy goals and measures today. I illustrate this argument by using educational goals and reforms in the context of lifelong learning. My main thesis here is that the idea of a 'knowledge society' was a main constituent of such an organisational field, in which nation states and international organisations now develop education policies - here lifelong learning - that spread widely. Isomorphism between nation states has a long tradition but today we can observe an intensification of education policy transfer, policy adoptions and a strong orientation towards truly global goals. To put it simply: Globalisation effects arise. A third step is concerned with mechanisms through which these effects occur: International organisations are crucial when it comes to policy diffusion. Thus, I illustrate the relation of the 'knowledge economy' and 'globalisation effects' by describing instruments of international organisations, using examples of the EU, UNESCO, OECD and the World Bank. These organisations, although they focus on different countries and aims, can make use of the peer group pressure that arises between the states. I will present their different instruments by which they install reference to the 'knowledge society' and stimulate education reforms. The inquiry builds upon theoretical approaches of sociology and political science. Its empirical base is the UNESCO World Data on Education and education policy documents of international organisations.
