The European educational policy space has experienced an emerging crisis discourse in the last decade. In this paper, the author examines the constitutive elements of this crisis discourse and the specific conditions it sets up for governing knowledge. The text is structured in two parts. In the first part, a theoretical framework drawing on discursive institutionalism is developed. Policy is discussed as a communicative practice, including elements of coordinative and communicative discourses. A coordinative discourse refers to interactions amongst policy actors, such as government officials and experts, centred on cognitive justification, whereas a communicative discourse refers to their interaction with the general public, which is centred on normative legitimation. The substantive ideas communicated are related to three different policy levels. Philosophical ideas refer to traditions and ideologies; broad concepts shared by many that change very slowly. Programmatic ideas refer to more pragmatic ideas underpinning and upholding human institutions. These ideas are stable, but still change more rapidly than philosophical ideas. Finally, policy ideas refer to single policies or events. These ideas are more context-sensitive and change more rapidly than the others. In the second part, the theoretical framework is applied to the practice of communicative interaction between the EU and Sweden, as expressed in National Reform Programmes and Education and Training Monitor reports 2012–2016. These documents were discussed as communicative practices emerging out of the crisis discourse built around the production and use of comparable data. The analysis shows how the crisis discourse contributes to the merging of transnational and national policy arenas and an increased use of a decontextualized and quick policy language, delegitimizing the role of national politicians in educational policymaking. Devaluating the political language makes insecure politicians turn to transnational actors for guidance. In this respect, the crisis discourse contributes to reconfiguring the practice of educational policymaking in terms of space and speed and in the redistribution of authoritative power from national to transnational arenas. The paper concludes that a European education policy space built around comparable data inevitably becomes a producer of national school crisis, making fear a unifying force in the coordination of policy actions and actors within and between different policy arenas.

References not available