The aim of this research project is to conduct a comparative-historical analysis of educational politics in Norway and the German federal state North Rhine-Westphalia during the reform period of the 1960s and 1970s, with a focus on comprehensive school reforms, which were attempted or achieved during this period. Today, Norway and Germany represent maximally different cases regarding the comprehensiveness of their school structure. In Germany, children are divided up onto different secondary school types at age 10-11. The comprehensive primary school lasts four years. In Norway, reforms led to a 10-year comprehensive school for all pupils.

The overarching research question of this study is why the abolition of school tiers and tracking and the connected reforms of curricula were effectively carried through in Norway, while comparable reforms in North Rhine-Westphalia ended up being rather limited in scope. This question is approached by an analysis of the debates and power struggles around the reforms, focusing on collective actors such as political parties and unions, their resources, ideology and activities. This shall lead to an understanding of the different outcomes of the political processes, and shed light on the different power structures in those two countries.

In this paper, the aim is to conduct a first analysis of the empirical material, and in particular to examine how and to what degree different political cleavages, such as the capital-labor cleavage, but also the rural-urban cleavage, religious cleavages, or the gender cleavage, came to expression in the political struggles over comprehensive schooling. The concept of political cleavages is based on Rokkan (2000). It has been employed in welfare state analysis, for example by Manow and van Kersbergen (2007) and Iversen and Soskice (2006). A central point is that, in countries with majoritarian electoral systems, two-party structures tend to be based on the economic capital-labor cleavage, while other cleavages tend not to become equally politicized. In countries with proportional representation, however, the party structure might also reflect other cleavages. In the Scandinavian countries, this applies especially to the rural-urban cleavage and the development of agrarian parties, which became the main coalition partners of social democracy. The religious cleavage was not equally relevant because of the high religious homogeneity of the population and the existence of Lutheran state-churches, which did not feel as threatened by state expansion as did the Catholic Church. In the continental states, on the other hand, massive state-church conflicts about education and poor relief took place during the late 19^th and early 20^th century, laying the ground for Catholic and Christian democratic parties. In other words, here the religious cleavage became the second major cleavage expressed in politics, while the rural-urban cleavage remained latent (Manow/van Kersbergen, 2007, p. 22). How these different party structures have reflected on comprehensive school reforms has not been analyzed in great detail so far (see however Wiborg, 2009, 2010).

The paper also builds to a certain extent on conflict theory. It is assumed that powerful groups can influence the structure and functioning of institutions such as schools in their own interest (cf. Archer, 2013). However, it tries to avoid what Sakslind (2002) terms the “reproduction perspective”: In this perspective the education system is viewed as mainly reproducing external social structures. Due to this assumption, the political and social processes and conflicts which ‘translate’ power structures in society into school structures and curricula are not studied enough (cf. Sakslind 2002: 128). This study therefore relies most on those social power theories, which emphasize the interplay of different social forces and their constant struggle. In this sense, it is inspired by the Gramscian concept of hegemony (cf. Green, 2013).

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