In recent decades, a robust body of scholarship has examined the influence of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in shaping the global educational landscape (Chabbot 2002; Fontdevila 2023; Elfert and Ydesen 2023). Within this literature, research inspired by Social Network Analysis (SNA) and the so-called “network turn” (Hafner et al. 2009) has highlighted UNESCO’s unique capacity to structure diverse networks oriented toward the fulfillment of international educational agendas. Notable examples include the Education for All initiative (Read 2019), Sustainable Development Goal 4 (Bandola-Gill et al. 2022), and the Global Education Coalition during the COVID-19 pandemic (Saura 2020). Recently, Zapp et al. (2024, 21) characterized UNESCO as the “queen bee” around which international educational activity is organized—a position that “demonstrates UNESCO’s legitimacy and its appeal to a large number of members in the field.” In sum, academic research has identified networks as a primary mechanism through which UNESCO produces, legitimizes, and consolidates its agenda (Fuentes et al. 2025; Addey 2021).
Despite these advances, knowledge regarding UNESCO’s role as a promoter of networks within specific national systems—particularly in Global South contexts—remains notably limited (Alarcón 2015; De Raedt 2014). This gap is further deepened by a general scarcity of data on non-state actors in the Global South, a field of study largely dominated by analyses of “North/West” actors (Erfurth and Ridge 2021). This lack of attention is especially significant given that the Global South has historically been a priority area for UNESCO’s development efforts (Jones and Coleman 2005), and that, for many of these countries, the organization represents a vital “repository of knowledge and expertise for capacity building” (Sayed et al. 2022, 523).
Building on this literature, this paper analyzes the collaborative and discursive networks promoted by the UNESCO Regional Office for Education in Latin America and the Caribbean (UNESCO/OREALC) within the Chilean school system. Specifically, it examines the organizational dynamics of UNESCO/OREALC’s partnerships and the discursive transformations these collaborations have fostered in the Chilean education sector between 1990 and 2025. The Chilean case is particularly relevant for two reasons. First, since the return to democracy in 1989, the education system has maintained high levels of both endogenous and exogenous privatization, with only limited variation in its organizational model (Villalobos et al. 2025; Bellei and Muñoz 2023). Second, UNESCO has historically regarded Chile as a central hub for the production and dissemination of educational knowledge in Latin America (Alarcón 2015; Cutroni 2018). Consequently, analyzing these networks offers valuable insights into how an international organization of major relevance in the Global South shapes educational policy at the national level (Verger and Fontdevila 2024).
Conceptually, the article is situated within contemporary debates on epistemic communities in global governance. It draws on the concepts of symbolic, instrumental, and political community developed within constructivist approaches in international relations (Bueger 2015; Lacatus 2025; Seabrooke and Tsingou 2021). This perspective contends that international organizations create networks of varying scales and degrees of cohesion to promote ideas that enhance their legitimacy and political standing within specific decision-making arenas. However, in doing so, particular actors and their educational products—discourses, ideas, and solutions—can gain legitimacy and influence political trajectories (Demortain 2017).
The research questions guiding the study are: (i) What are the main characteristics of the network structure and the actors convened by UNESCO/OREALC in Chile, and how has this network evolved between 1990 and 2025? (ii) What educational discourses circulate within these networks, and how have they changed over the last 25 years? By addressing these questions, the study contributes to a more granular understanding of how global agendas are translated and institutionalized in national contexts through techno-political mediation.

Methodologically, this paper employs social-semantic network analysis (SNN) to integrate knowledge of UNESCO/OREALC’s networks (Avelar and Ball 2023; Hodge et al. 2020; Menashy and Verger 2019) with the discourses circulating within them in post-dictatorship Chile (Basov and Roth 2025). SNN is an emerging methodological approach that combines social network analysis with semantic discourse analysis. Its central premise is that networks not only position actors but also shape the production and circulation of discourses, which co-evolve with their social environments (Basov and Roth 2025; Roth and Cointet 2010). The study compiles, systematizes, and analyzes a corpus of 140 policy documents produced by UNESCO/OREALC between 1990 and 2025. These documents, publicly available through the UNESDOC platform, constitute a key source for identifying both UNESCO/OREALC’s partners and the discourses they produce (McCaffrey and Church 2024). The classification of UNESCO/OREALC partners was informed by an “ideal types” framework, developed following the typological approaches of Srivastava et al. (2024) and Wieczorek et al. (2023), which allowed social attributes to be assigned to the different partners. To examine discourses, an inductive codebook was elaborated based on the leitmotifs commonly promoted by international organizations (Niemann and Martens 2021; Vanderhoven 2023; Villalobos et al. 2025). This procedure facilitated the systematic categorization of the discourses mobilized within the network. The article uses UCINET software to calculate centrality and betweenness measures for the actors. NetDraw was also used to generate two-layer network visualizations that illustrate the relationships between actors and the discourses they promote. Finally, a historical perspective was adopted to analyze changes and continuities, both in the dynamics of the networks and in the physiognomy of the discourses (Steiner-Khamsi 2025).

Preliminary findings indicate that UNESCO/OREALC has maintained connections with an extensive network of collaborators (n = 350), particularly through seminars, technical meetings, and commissioned reports. However, these networks are characterized by low density and by the sporadic and episodic nature of many partnerships. In contrast, several actors within the network display high levels of centrality and homophily, particularly those located within the Chilean academic sphere (e.g., the Center for Educational Research and Development, the Catholic University of Chile, among others). These actors provide UNESCO/OREALC with critical cognitive resources that strengthen the organization’s scientific authority in areas such as policy planning, educational information systems, and teacher training. Additionally, notable changes have occurred in the centrality of global education actors: while the participation of the World Bank has markedly declined, collaborations with the OECD and UNICEF have increased significantly in the context of the SDG 4 agenda. With respect to discourses, and given the sporadic and multifaceted nature of UNESCO/OREALC’s collaborations, the networks reveal the coexistence of thematically heterogeneous narratives. Yet when observed in historical sequence, an important discursive shift becomes evident. During the early 1990s, UNESCO/OREALC’s policy texts echoed and, to some extent, supported local privatization dynamics, with a strong emphasis on concepts such as quality, learning, and efficiency. Since the early 2000s, however, the discourses circulating in the network exhibit a moderate but identifiable critique of the national accountability system, accompanied by calls for a more active and coordinating role for the state in the provision of education. The increasing prominence of concepts such as rights, social cohesion, and development underscores this transition. Taken together, these shifts suggest a gradual reorientation in the organization’s discursive strategy, moving from an alignment with market-led reforms to a more balanced and state-centered approach to educational governance.

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