All over Europe, we have seen an increasing interest in comparisons and statistical hierarchical rankings in the interplay between international large-scale assessments (ILSA), educational policymaking and society, what we here refer to as a comparativistic turn in an educational agora. Thus, what wecall a comparativistic turn implies a context where comparisons are used in competitions and hierarchizations. The notion of agora is borrowed from Nowotny et al (2003) who used it as a space, a market place for the contextualization of production and ‘trading’ of knowledge, in interactions between science and society. Along these lines, an educational agora refers here to a conglomerate of interacting actors, positions, strategies, resources and arguments etc. for the production of knowledge about education in an international, comparative perspective. In short, the educational agora is a space for the production and trading of educational knowledge in a context of ILSA/science and society/educational policy making.

 As pointed out by many researchers, ILSA has directed a widespread attention towards ranking and the making of hierarchies, and has become a vital performative component in educational governing and design in many national contexts (Steiner Khamsi 2021). However, most likely such outcomes of ILSA are to a large extent context-dependent and appears in different ways in different national contexts (Berliner 2018). Thus, we here specifically analyze the Swedish welfare state education as a case of the comparativistic turn in an international, comparative perspective. Our analysis concerns the pre-conditions for interactions between ILSA and educational policymaking, how these appear and are acting in a specific type of welfare state regime as a kind of reformism (Rip 2002). By using retrodiction we will identify epistemic attitudes (von Wright 1983) as sources of knowledge claims and make visible national and globalizing conditions and tendencies that have triggered a comparativistic turn. We start with the present and go back to the late 1950s and the creation of ILSAs.

 The purpose of the paper is to explain the making of a comparativistic turn in Swedish welfare state education. Through retrodictive analyses we trace ‘logics of events’ (von Wright 1983) in the education agora. We ask:

• What made a comparativistic turn possible?
• Which actors – national and international – were acting and interacting in the educational agora?
• Which arguments were put forwards and which expertise mattered in making a comparativistic turn necessary?

Inspired by the work of DeLanda (2006) we analyze the educational agora as an assemblage consisting of different interacting heterogenous components but are acting as an irreducible whole (Deleuze and Guattari, (2004/1987), evolving over time. We are not doing a systems analysis (such as Luhmann 1995) per see, but will use assemblage theory as an analytical tool that helps us to identify systemic relations and complexities, and context-sensitive features (c.f. Guy 2019). Such relations between the components of an assemblage are not stable but can be relocated or substituted within an assemblage. Components keep their individual independence and are also part of other external assemblages, meaning relations of exteriority (in contrast with relations of interiority in which components have no independent existence outside the relations they are a part of). Nevertheless, they are material and produce historically significant interacting components as an assemblage.

The analyzed material consists of range of empirical sources: - Bibliometric analyses - Document analyses - Interviews with top-policy makers - Mass-media reporting (mainly from 2006) - Public opinion analyses (Gallup surveys) We have payed attention to problematizations, decisions and milestones, related to education qualities and crises, and international comparisons in education. Following DeLanda (2006), and as mentioned above, we analyze positions and activities in the educational agora as an assemblage and through its components. A point of departure for this are two axes that hang together: a) territorialization/de-territorializing: we are here focusing on how the interacting components are each other contexts in an assemblage and how they thereby are making each other in processes of emerging homogeneity of an assemblage, to keep things in place, in short, are bound together. This is because of an assumption that an assemblage gets its powers of working as a whole when dealing with educational matters in ILSA/educational policymaking but gets its strength from how the (independent) components interacts with their environments. b) coding/de-coding: we are here focusing on the material and expressive feature of the components (communicative means). As the components are each other’s contexts in an assemblage and are thereby making each other in an emerging homogeneity to keep things in place, we are interested in their codes, i.e. how the components speak to each other, the legitimizing expressive and performative features of an assemblage, through which it emerges. In addition, we also use the distinction between assemblages as virtual and actual – to deal with meaning of events and distinguish potential plans from what actually happens. To sum up, to answer our questions we have analyzed how elements came to be drawn together (assembled) in a certain period, and get their legitimacy (coding) and strength (territorialization) (c.f. Basevic 2019).

We have analyzed four central components in the educational agora as an assemblage: ILSA (a research component), a policymaking component, a mass-media component and an education component. - The coding of the research component (ILSA) is provision of new knowledge, or no new knowledge, emerging in the agora, in relation to what is previously known and communicated in the agora and how this knowledge is received and coded by other components. - The coding of the policy-making component is funding – no funding (of research), thus determining a space of action for the research component. However, the policymaking component also uses the research component for legitimation of policy. In that sense the research also determines the space of action for policy, meaning a politization of research and delegitimating of policy. - The coding of the mass-media component is newsworthiness – or not. Here mediatization processes (Hepp et al., 2015) in which not the message itself, but communications and it is implication in an interplay between media, research, policy and education, and including the public opinion, are at the center. - The coding of the education component is competent – or not, as a producer and a receiver of ILSA-results and education regimes. The comparativistic turn was made possible by the interaction of these components, which in turn was depending of a changing regime in the Swedish welfare state and its governance in the early 1990s. The paper discusses how ILSA appears as something new in an educational agora in the end of the 1950s, a science that spoke to the society, and how education problems and the solutions were identified in tandem processes between research/ILSA and society/educational policymaking, and eventually contribute to a comparativistic turn, when society speaks back to science, implying a scientification of education and educational knowledge.

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