Creating a Crisis - Selling Neoliberal Policy Through the Rebranding of Education

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Muffet

How neoliberal education policies, often without strong evidence, gain public endorsement—especially from communities they marginalize—is the focus. The study uses critical policy analysis grounded in historical development and political sociology, combining it with marketing branding literature. It examines Ontario, Canada’s government education platform as a case of how exclusive policy is packaged and promoted. The conclusion argues for moving beyond accountability jargon to re-center education’s purpose and mutual responsibility.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages17

Reading Time43 min

AccessFree to download

Introduction

Theory and Methods

Creating a Crisis: Selling Neoliberal Policy Through the Rebranding of Education Lana Parker, York University Abstract How is it that neoliberal education policies, often lacking evidentiary basis, come to be endorsed—often by the very people they alienate and marginalize? This work seeks to expose how this kind of exclusive policy is sold to a public through intricate hortatory tools. Using critical policy analysis with an emphasis on historical development and political sociology, I employ marketing literature on branding as the analytical framework for a case study of the government’s education platform in Ontario, Canada. At the conclusion, I propose that it is necessary to step away from accountability jargon to reconsider the purpose of education and to recuperate what it means to be responsible for rather than accountable to one another. Keywords: politics, policy, accountability, media, educational policy, ethics Introduction That contemporary education policy is heavily influenced by neoliberalism has been broadly discussed among scholars in recent decades. Evidence of the principal tenets of neoliberal theory in education commonly manifests in policy discourse as goals of economic rationality, efficiency, and accountability (Apple, 2005; Dale & Hyslop-Margison, 2010; Pinto, 2012) . To interrogate the entrenchment of neoliberal values is to provide some context for these influences, allowing stakeholders insight into how and why policy is written and enacted. Why does the public continue to embrace neoliberal education policies that work against their own best interests? How is it that these policies, often lacking evidentiary basis, come to be endorsed—often by the very people they alienate and marginalize? In response to these queries, and in complement to the growing body of literature on whose voices are often missing in policy debates and formation, this work seeks to expose how the public becomes convinced of the merit of these kinds of exclusive policies through the use of intricate hortatory tools. I use marketing literature on branding as the analytical framework for this case study of the government’s education platform in Ontario, Canada. In this way, I investigate how education policy is sold to the public, just as products are packaged and sold to consumers. At the conclusion of this analysis, I propose that it is necessary to step away from accountability jargon to reconsider the purpose of education and to recuperate what it means to be responsible for rather than accountable to one another, so that neoliberal discourse does not become the only story of how education (and education policy formation) can be. Theory and Methods Using Ontario, Canada as the site of the case study, I approach this work from a critical policy analysis perspective that pays particular attention to the historical development and political sociology (Ball, 2005; Brewer, 2014) of a host of policies that emerged in support of an increasingly neoliberal agenda. Building on this idea, and because this is not singularly a discourse analysis, I find it productive to draw from Howarth’s (2010) work thinking through the interrelationships among power, discourse, and policy. Howarth’s (2010) conception of the possibility of political analysis being situated in a “problem-driven” approach is particularly relevant to this study. It “involves the construction of particular problems in specific historical contexts” and asks the questions: “What are the origins of particular discourses and policies? How can they be characterized? How and why are they sustained? When and how are they changed?”(Howarth, 2010, p. 324) . In congruence with Howarth’s (2010) problem-driven framework, the issue motivating this case study is the way in which local politicians sought to create a crisis, without substantive evidence, to stimulate voter fear and to generate a new discourse of accountability that has since become self-sustaining. Aft

FAQs

What is the central question driving the study?

How neoliberal education policies that often lack evidentiary basis come to be endorsed by the public, including those they alienate and marginalize.

What analytical framework does the research use?

Critical policy analysis emphasizing historical development and political sociology, supported by marketing literature on branding to study policy promotion.

What does the study propose in its conclusion?

To move away from accountability jargon, reconsider education’s purpose, and restore the meaning of being responsible for one another rather than merely accountable to one another.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Muffet