The paper addresses the restructuring of the governance of adult education in a specific region of South Italy (Campania). This restructuring (or attempted reform) follows lifelong learning discourse which is a recurrent mantra in most European policies, and a key topic in the rhetoric of globalization of education (Edwards, 1997; Derouet, 2000; Lawn and Lindgard, 2002; Ball, 2005). Lifelong learning discourse, however, seems to be compatible with different models of governance (quasi-market, social partnership, state) and principles of regulations (Green, 2000). This leaves open a set of questions: (a) What kind of model (or circuit) of governance will emerge in an educational field of practice (in our case, adult education)? (b) Will the emergent model of governance substitute for the previous circuits and principles of regulation? (c) Will we register dynamics of compatibility or of hybridization among different models of governance? The paper intends to furnish some empirical answers to these questions through the presentation of research findings on the modes of governance of adult education in the South of Italy (Campania). The paper draws on a theoretical approach that tries to reconsider (and possibly enrich) some concepts of neo-institutionalism (Powell and Di Maggio, 1991; Czarniawska and Sevon, 1996, 2005; Meyer and Rowan, 2006) with the lens of practice-based studies of knowledge and learning in organizations (Gherardi, Nicolini, and Yanow, 2003). In particular, the research documents the emergence and the stabilization of circuits of governance through the description of:(a) the partisan arena, i.e. the dynamics of negotiation among the politicians, in order to grasp the sensibility of the policy agenda; (b) the regulation arena, i.e. the action-nets of those affecting policymaking through rules, funding and human resources, and the coordinating mechanisms, and (c) the organizational arena, i.e. the providers of adult education.

The inquiry has taken the form of a policy analysis (Meny and Thoening, 1991) and followed an earlier analysis on the organizational dynamics of adult education providers (USR Campania, CNR-IRPPS 2007). It consisted of: (a) gathering statistical data about socio-economic formations of the region under scrutiny; (b) the accomplishment of qualitative interviews with the key institutional and organizational actors as well as the most relevant stakeholders (about 50 interviewees chosen with reference to their responsibilities for policy implementation, and on the basis of ‘rolling interviews’); (c) the writing of reports for each sub-region to produce a disaggregate understanding of the organizational field; and (d) finally, a conclusive analysis aimed at the classification of the typology of the strategies and circuits of regulations comparing the emerging results with the relevant literature on governance of lifelong learning and globalization in education.

The research reveals the presence of parallel circuits of governance and a resulting lock-in (impasse). The (re)production of two parallel and partly independent circuits of governance is an emerging effect of the closure of the adult education policy, and of the difficulties of (re)opening the dominant institutional logics. The way out of this lock-in seems to imply alignment with the wide perspective of institutional restructuring as well as a different approach and logic in terms of an implementation policy which tries to connect those parallel circuits and the unfolding of a different circuit of governance. The paper intends to discuss from a comparative perspective and with reference to other similar cases the development of trajectories of conflict or hybridization of circuits of governance.