Political reforms to implement a fully inclusive education system can be seen as "conflict-ridden reform programs" (Rürup, 2011, n.d.). For a successful reform of systems it seems indispensable to involve all involved and affected actors in the reform process and to win them over for common goals and the way to reach them. All too often, this proves to be overly complex, as the reform process towards a fully inclusive education system involves multiple levels of education systems and their administration, institutions and individual actors as well as groups of actors (Powell & Merz-Atalik 2019). Top-down concepts of governance tend to be unsuccessful, as multiple mechanisms of institutional reproduction are found nationally and internationally (Blanck, Edelstein & Powell, 2013) or rather forms of "re-contextualization" of traditional routines, legitimations and actor constellations (Hudelmaier-Mätzke & Merz-Atalik, 2016) take hold in the reform process. "Inclusive developments must always be shaped from within existing structures and systems" (ibid., p. 128). This is the greatest challenge for the governance of educational systems. Historically grown self-evident facts have to be questioned in reform processes and, as it were, traditional logics of action (therefore accessible in routines) have to be reflected against the background of new contextual factors, verified or falsified with regard to the new requirements (on all levels of the multi-level system). It is widely documented that the importance of collaboration and "Collective Thought" (Persson, 2012, 1212) is critical to successful development processes - not only in the education system. "Inclusive education requires reform that speaks to the architecture and grammar of schooling, not just to the inhabitants" (Allan & Slee, 2008, 99). A project at the end of 2018, studying the differences in governance between Germany and Italy to survey the governance structures tended to connect relevant key actors and levels involved in the reform process on all levels of the system. Policy, school-administration, regional responsibilities and experts from schools itself. The findings will be presented. Some European countries show a stringent steering logic and policy for the development of an inclusive education system, others remain in segregating path dependencies and the global specifications only lead to non-inclusive recontextualizations. This will be shown by findings from different governance levels and strategies in a country comparison (Italy, Germany, Sweden, Finland, etc.).

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