It has often been argued that modernization of societies has reduced the role of values and ideologies, leading to more or less de-politicized, ‘technical’ forms of decision-making and policy. Some research in education policy has seemed to confirm this (see for instance Jacobi, 2011). Other researchers have argued that this ‘technical’ turn in fact reflects the increasing dominance of neo-liberal values and the new public management approach to policy (Ball, 2008). In recent years, however, the challenges from economic crisis and immigration, at least in the European theatre, seem once again to have increased the importance of political ideology (Heywood, 2012), although in partly new forms, because populism has become an important element, especially (but not only) in right-wing parties (Norris & Ingelhart, 2019; Rydgren, 2017). After decades where right-wing politics seem to have been strongly influenced by the ideas of neo-liberalism, emphasizing free competition and globalization in the economy and limitation of state intervention in civil society, right-wing politic are now increasingly characterized by nationalist conservatism and populism (Müller, 2016). Connections are also developing between political parties and radical nationalist groups (Giudici, 2020).

In spite of changes in recent decades, Denmark remains a welfare state in the universalist tradition (Esping-Andersen, 1990) and a relatively homogeneous society (Kaspersen, 2013). Denmark has been a sovereign state for many centuries, but as a small open economy and a member of the European Union, it has much interaction with the surrounding world. The Nordic welfare state is a special environment for right-wing policy; like most right-wing ideology, (and in contrast to neo-liberalism) it implies a strong state, but not with the main task of protecting private property.

In a parliamentary democracy, general elections is an important event where parties profile their political platforms, including both the more general ideological basis and the specific ideas and demands for policy. In such party manifestos there are hierarchies between different policy fields, where for instance employment, health and security are often among the most important fields. Education tends to have a middle position in such hierarchies. I use party manifestos as the main source in this paper, but supplement it with other sources such as more recent education policy proposals and documents from right-wing interest groups.

The aim of this paper is to present and discuss the ideologies of education and policy proposals of right-wing political parties in Denmark. I focus especially on three parties, the Danish People’s Party, New Right party and the Conservative party. The Danish People’s Party and the New Right party clearly represent current right-wing positions; both are strongly opposed to immigration, but otherwise they have different profiles. The Danish People’s Party has had much voter support during the last decade, where it has supported a governing liberal-conservative coalition; but recently it has lost much of its voter support. The New Right gained seats in parliament in the 2019 election, and their position in voter polls has increased strongly. The Conservatives is a traditional right-wing party with a long history. I document and try to conceptualize the educational ideologies and policy suggestions of these parties, and compare them with other characteristic parties on the left and in the middle of Danish politics (especially the Liberals and the Social Democrats).

To give a wider perspective, I try to locate the educational ideologies of the right-wing parties in the European context (Wodak et al, 2013). For this, I draw especially on research into right-wing education policy in countries such as Germany (Hafeneger et al, 2020) and Austria (Rothmüller & Schnell, 2019).  

The paper will be based mainly on analysis of education policy documents. One set of data is the policy manifestos published by the Danish political parties in preparation for the general election held in the summer of 2019 (Rasmussen, 2019). This was the first time the New Right party ran for parliament and won places. The parties published the policies on their home pages, mostly as relatively brief thematic texts for each policy field. The text material for the analysis was downloaded during the last two weeks before the election. It covers the 10 parties that came to be represented in the ‘Folketing’ (the Danish parliament) after the election. In order to ease the comparison across parties, the most characteristic sections for each party were excerpted as basis for the analysis. In analysis, value statements in the texts were coded in order to uncover the patterns of values. This allows comparison of value patterns across the political spectrum, and the educational ideology of the three right-wing parties will be compared with other parties, especially the Liberals and the Social Democrats. The value analysis draws on a detailed taxonomy developed by Jacobsen (2015) for investigating Danish party manifestos, inspired by the value theory of Schwartz (Schwartz et al, 2010). For the three right-wing parties, the 2019 party manifestos will be supplemented by more recent statements and documents on education policy, as well as with material from right-wing interest groups present in the same networks. Research on voter attitudes and preferences will also be included. I will draw on results from the 2019 national election study (Stubager, Hansen & Jensen, 2020), which are being published very soon and include a thematic analysis of populism among Danish voters.

The study is ongoing. Some preliminary conclusions can be outlined from the study of 2019 party manifestos (Rasmussen, 2019), but they will be supplemented and possibly corrected later. All in all, he distribution of political values found in the parties' educational policy texts tend to follow a traditional right-left scale. However, the picture includes a broad support for welfare society values, which has characterized Danish politics for a long time, a commitment to economic sustainability and national competitiveness as basis for the welfare society, and a nationalism that can be seen as a reaction to open borders and refugee flows. The nationalism is strongest among the right-wing parties, especially the Danish People’s Party and the New right, but also present in the Social Democratic party. While almost all parties share a desire for a well-functioning public school system, the New Right party does not, because wants a radical privatization of primary and secondary education. The Conservative party, on the other hand, supports the public school system and links it with the desire for a rich and diverse cultural life as well as with democracy. All three right-wing parties argue for a ‘weak state’, but so do some parties in the center and on the left. This value is understood by all as a matter of limiting state bureaucracy. A frequently mentioned example is limiting state control of the primary and lower secondary school, for example by making participation in the national tests voluntary. The two largest parties, Liberals and the Social Democrats, both of which have led governments recently, do not share this value. While the three right-wing parties share some key values and demands, there are also differences in their educational ideologies, and there are affinities to parties in the center and even on the left.

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