"Neoliberals" and the “Vertical of Power”: The Politics of Education and Science Reform in Russia in 2000-2014

"Neoliberals" and the “Vertical of Power”: The Politics of Education and Science Reform in Russia in 2000-2014
Date
-
Speaker: Igor Fedyukin, Associate Professor and Director, Center for History Sources, History Department, National Research University, Higher School of Economics
 
Beginning 2000, successive Russian cabinets pushed to implements wide-ranging reforms in education and science. From the introduction of SAT-like testing in high schools and the focus on measurable performance indicators at universities to the 2013 reform of the Academy of Sciences, these policies were explicitly inspired by the "neoliberal" paradigm and international best practices. Surprisingly, these reforms have not been rolled back even after the overall change of policy direction in 2013-2014. This raises the broader question of the role played by the "neoliberal" policies in authoritarian political settings.

This presentation will offer a reflection on the ways in which selective implementation of some "neoliberal" reforms in Russian education and science actually contributed to building a "vertical of power" in this sector, and what implications this might have for future policymaking in non-democratic regimes more generally.

Igor Fedyukin is Associate Professor of History at the National Research University – Higher School of Economics in Moscow and a Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2015-16. His research focuses on the history and politics of education, and his forthcoming monograph explores the role of administrative entrepreneurs, or “projectors,” in building new organizational forms in Russian schooling under Peter I and his immediate successors. Fedyukin received his Ph.D. in history from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill. He was a director for policy studies at the New Economic School in Moscow in 2007-2012 and a deputy minister of education and science of Russia in 2012-2013. Fedyukin has held appointments as a Diderot Fellow (2010-2012) and Directeur d’Études Associés (June-July 2015) at the Foundation Maison des Sciences de l’Homme in Paris and a visiting fellow at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen in Vienna (May 2015).