Keeping pace with the intensification of interdependence and coordination of human activities on a worldwide scale, new and diverse spaces of regulation (transnational, regional, local) have been established in the field of education policies (Rizvi & Lingard, 2009). Nowadays, the fabrication of education policies cannot be separated from the multi-directional processes that include re-interpretation, de-contextualisation and re-contextualisation, and where national, local, regional, and international agencies intertwine (see, e.g., Popkewitz, 2000, van Zanten & Ball, 2000, Steiner-Khamsi 2004). In these dynamics new actors take part (members of commissions, “task-forces”, international projects), participating in the legitimation of national policy options and in the harmonization of education policy to a supranational scale. These are actors that perform “trough the frontiers” and that participate actively in a “European space of education policy” (Lawn & Lingard, 2002). They are simultaneously constructors of a space and constructed by their engagement (Lawn, 2006). In this paper we will focus on a  group of actors – academics, professionals, technicians from the Ministry, experts - that due to two interstitial locations and relationships of mediation (cognitive and social) that they weave, seem likely to have more centrality or more relevance in the fabrication of public policies. Following Nay & Smith (2002), we identify them as intermediary actors. They are actors who engage themselves in a set of cognitive and social operations to the construction and stabilization of interactions between ideas, individuals, and technical devices (Callon, 1986).

Delvaux, B. & Mangez E. (2010). Knowledge and policy: a new deal. Policy implications of KNOW&POL, an EU-funded research project involving twelve teams from eight countries. European Policy Brief (June). Callon, Michel (1986). “Some elements of a sociology of translation”, in Law, J. (ed.), Power, Action and Belief. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 196-233. Lawn, M. (2006) Soft governance and the learning spaces of Europe, Comparative European Politics, 4, 272-88. Lawn, M. & Lingard, B. (2002). “Constructing a European Policy Space in educational governance: the role of transnational policy actors”, European Educational Research Journal, 1(2), pp. 290-307. Nay, O. & Smith, A. (2002) Les intermédiaries en politique: mediation et jeux d’instituitions, in Nay, O. & Smith, A. (dir), Le government du compromise: courtiers et generalists dans l’action politique. Paris: Economica, pp. 1-21. Ozga, J. (2008) Governing knowledge. European Educational Research Journal, 7 (3), 261-272. Popkewitz, T.S. (Ed), Educational Knowledge: Changing relationships between the state, civil society, and the educational community. Albany: State University of New York. Rizvi, F. & Lingard, B. (2009) Globalizing Education Policy. London: Routledge. Steiner-Khamsi, G. (Ed) (2004). The Global Politics of Educational Borrowing and Lending. New York: Teachers College Press. van Zanten, A. & Ball, S. J. (2000) Comparer pour comprendre: globalisation, reinterpretations nationales et recontextualisations locales, Revue de l’Institut de Sociologie, 1(4): 112-131.