Although the “best practices” approach in education policy planning has become increasingly popular worldwide, previous research has questioned the smooth transition of empirical evidence across countries and continents. Earlier research implies that neighboring countries may be receptive to same policy solutions. However, there is no consensus about the role regional contexts play for transnational policy transfer and shape the receptiveness of evidence across countries. This paper contributes to the discussion on the role of regional context in transferring and translating transnational policy knowledge within policymaking processes. By examining the latest curriculum reforms in three Nordic Countries, Finland, Iceland and Norway, we set to discover what was the actual role and influence of the Nordic knowledge and co-operation in these reforms. How did policy makers and experts locate themselves in a larger political reference space when they collected ideas and evidence to justify school reforms in their countries? We employed two methods to answer these questions; bibliometric network analysis in all five Nordic countries, and expert interviews in Finland, Iceland and Norway. Our starting point was the definition of evidence by Paul Cairney (2016) being “an argument backed by information.” Our theoretical framework drew in particular on Massey ́s (2005) idea of space as a product of interrelations, constituted through interactions and her (1994) definition of spatial as the social stretched out. The bibliometric analysis revealed the absence of Nordic references in the actual policy documents, implying that publications from other Nordic countries were not considered relevant in terms of “authorized evidence” (mentioned explicitly in white and green papers). Nevertheless, our interview data shows that Nordic co-operation in the field of education policy is vivid. In this paper, we offer four explanatory narratives for the absence of Nordic references in the key policy documents. We also introduce the notion of the “Nordic Other” as various mindsets that experts construct in different settings of cooperation, some taking place in the regional and others in the international domain. In the international settings, consensus making is of core importance between Nordic representatives, but in the regional space, shared knowledge is utilized to explore national solutions to common problems. There are several forms of Nordic cooperation in terms of evidence-based policymaking, the function depending on the context.

Cairney, P. (2016). The politics of evidence-based policymaking. Palgrave Macmillan Massey, D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Polity Press. Massey. D. (2005). For space. SAGE Publications.