The paper explores how IOs contributed to the current global politics of education. It first explores how the universe of IOs active in education has developed since WWII. From a perspective of sociological institutionalism (DiMaggio and Powell 1983; Meyer et al. 1997), I argue that IOs contribute to the global diffusion and transfer of policy ideas. In previous work, my team and I identified and explored a set of 30 IOs that are actors in education policy (Niemann et al. e2023; Niemann and Martens 2021). Our analyses show that while education has always been a relevant topic for some IOs due to their mandate, many others have adopted the topic over the course of their existence only, and for varying reasons (Martens et al. 2024). Using approaches of IO institutional design from International Relations (Debre and Dijlkstra 2021; Hooghe et al 2019) in a second step, common characteristics and comparative analyses with other fields are applied to these 30 IOs reaching from the global to the regional, from cultural to economic aspects. Perhaps the most surprising empirics are that two-thirds of all IOs active in education are regional IOs with a membership bound to states geographically based in only one area of the world.

Third, I examine the mechanisms by which these IOs contribute to the global education script(s) and how they distribute their data, beliefs, and recommendations. Drawing on categorizations of Nagel et al. (2010), Martens and Jakobi (2010), and Armingeon (2021), I outline the diverse channels IOs may have to influence policy processes and then assess to what extent the sample of 30 IOs practically applies them. I show how mechanisms of influence vary across IOs with a global and regional focus, as well as between economically-oriented and humanistic IOs. Unsurprisingly, while (almost) all IOs seek to influence national policies by producing and distributing norms and stand­ards through policy briefs and documents, few have “hard” mechanisms of funding and conventions at their disposal.

Established datasets of IOs are taken into account in order to identify the ones which deal with education. Based on the Yearbook of International Organizations (YIO) as well as the Correlates of War (COW) data set, all active IOs in 2020 were reviewed as to whether they refer to education as a field of activity. We considered all formal levels of the education sector, and did not differentiate between IOs active on K12 level (primary and secondary level) and/or the tertiary education level (higher education and vocational training) (Martens et al. 2024). IO counts as an “education IO” if it maintains three complementary features, namely: (1) Education is mentioned in the IO’s programmatic mission statement as a designated task of the IO, such as the IO’s preamble or its (amended) treaties, as well as its current web pres¬ence, emphasizing this issue; (2) If it has its own permanent organizational sub-department, unit, or otherwise named structural component which specifically deals with issues of education or training. Thus, it is insufficient to have only one person dealing with education and to delegate education examination to sublets. (3) If the IO addresses education policy issues. In a second step, I typologize and differentiate IO mechanisms for studying the set of 30 IOs in education policy. My focus hereby lies on the characteristics of these mech¬anisms in order to evaluate which of them are regularly employed by IOs active in education policy. I distinguish between coercive mechanisms (such as conventions and financial means), standards setting mechanisms (such as policy recommendations and idea production), and coordinative activities (such as evaluations and consulting purposes). These types allow for distinguishing the ways in which IOs operate on the international level; at the same time, it allows to apply a workable categorization on IO mechanisms. A central difference to domestic contexts is that any implementation of IO outputs requires another step, namely a transfer to the national level before they can be put into practice (Steinebach et al. 2024).

In a nutshell, the world of education IOs has continuously grown since World War II. Similar to other policy fields, new IOs active in education were founded and existing IOs have expanded into the field of education. Since around 20 years, however, the growth of the field of education IOs has come to an end with around 30 organizations being active. Moreover, the analysis also showed that education IOs use the whole spectrum of mechanisms to seek influence on their members states (and even be-yond). They have some limited coercive means at their disposal, almost all are active in standard setting, and some collect and provide comparative data. It could therefore safely be said that IOs are an important element in the trajectory and translation of scripts in education. First, we need to be aware of the number and character of IOs dealing with education policy. Although there is evidence that the usual suspects, namely UNESCO, World Bank, and the OECD, are the most influential IOs in education and therefore worth receiving the broadest intension in academic studies due to their long standing, intrin¬sic mandate, the financial opportunities and the particular developed expertise, we also need to acknowledge that we know too little about the other actors in the fields and the extent to which they shape education policy in, for example, the regions in which they are active. Only recently have additional case studies on these actors emerged, such as SEAMEO or ICESCO (Krogmann 2022a,b). The extent to which such regional ac¬tors focus on regional rather than global scripts in education needs further examination. By demanding specific characteristics for membership (e.g. cultural or religious value), such regional or transregional IOs persist through unique selling points in their respec¬tive regional or cultural bubble.

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