Policy networks in recalibrated political terrain: the case of school curriculum policy and politics in South Africa

Abstract

School curriculum policy and politics in South Africa are discussed in this article as a means of highlighting the nature of Governmental power and functioning in a post‐liberation developing country. The notion ‘policy networks’ is used as a lens to understand the ways in which specific constellations of policy interests informed the consecutive policy cycles that led to the curriculum policy trajectory. The article is based on a series of interviews with key policy participants. The two consecutive policy networks that dominated the policy processes established their influence relative to the recalibrated structural and discursive terrain of the 1990s. The article discusses the processes that led to the school curriculum policy that was authorized in 1997, as well as the basis upon which it was displaced by a policy review process during 2000. Key to understanding network functioning and displacement in these processes is the specific epistemic basis upon which the networks acquired and established their dominance.

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