Publication alert!🚨
My chapter with @margaleon.bsky.social in the Handbook of Social Care Policy is out!
We review the partisan politics of family policy in Sweden, Germany & Spain and classify research into demand (electoral) and supply (functional/ideational). 🧵
www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook/b...

Thank you for the fantastic discussions about the role of states in VET! Talk soon

New 📝 out in @reggovjournal.bsky.social

1. Governments are taking a more active role in education and training

2. Linking technical issues to politically salient debates, such as climate change and digitalization, helps open the door to new public policies

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

Thanks @eliaskoch.bsky.social!

This paper has benefited from excellent feedback from great colleagues, many of whom are not on this platform. I hope there are more discussions on the role of states in VET to come. Special thanks to @ndurazzi.bsky.social; @aenrea.bsky.social; @mwegemann.bsky.social; and @isahuning.bsky.social

The qualitative case study, based on 32 elite interviews, shows how digitalization and climate change imperative created a window of opportunity to redefine the role of the state in vocational education and training in Germany - a least likely case for increased state intervention.

The paper uses a mixed-methods design, using seeded LDA topic modelling to analyse standardized descriptions of VET systems. It finds that language associated with state involvement grew notably in most EU member states compared to private governance between 2005 and 2022.

New 📝 out in @reggovjournal.bsky.social

1. Governments are taking a more active role in education and training

2. Linking technical issues to politically salient debates, such as climate change and digitalization, helps open the door to new public policies

onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/...

There's also this great related paper by @manuel-alvarinho.bsky.social and @milanthies.bsky.social: www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

See the full stream description below:

In case of any questions on the stream, you can contact @aenrea.bsky.social (aernea@tcd.ie) or me (milan.thies@eui.eu).

This stream aims to bring both together. We welcome all submissions that focus on the politics and policies of education, such as the drivers of education policy reforms, trajectories of institutional change in education systems and effects of education on political attitudes and social preferences.

The determinants and mechanisms shaping these reform processes show striking similarities as well as instructional differences to the dynamics underlying welfare state development. Yet, education policy has traditionally been at the margins of welfare state research.

At the same time, education systems are also fundamentally reshaped by these challenges. Consequent conflicts about the distribution and control over skill formation, values, and educational credentials have resulted in institutional differences across countries.

Education systems aim to prepare citizens for the labour market and the digital age, to integrate migrant
youth, and to sensitize future leaders about climate change. Education policy plays thus an important role in addressing today's pressing challenges.

Join us in Milano in August 2025 for the #ESPAnet conference to present your research on the the politics or policies of education.

Submit your abstract here: www.espanetmilano2025.it/en-US/submis...

I would love to be included

On #FirstView -

"Conviction or Consent? Tracing the Influence of Coalition Partners on Family Policy under Centre-Right Ministers" - doi.org/10.1017/gov....

Manuel Alvariño and Milan Thies

Just joined Bluesky? Here is an aspirational starter pack on social policy! I hope it is a useful nudge to connect the network: go.bsky.app/AvJWyV4

In 'Conviction or Consent?', with @milanthies.bsky.social, we argue that the CDU 🇩🇪 and the PP 🇪🇸 adopted a progressive leave reform bending to coalition pressures and bureaucratic continuity from progressive parties. Key insights on reform attribution in coalition governments!
doi.org/10.1017/gov....

Thanks @irobo.bsky.social and Julia Schulte-Cloos for having me! Next up: a presentation in the new Empirical Social Science Reseach Seminar Series next Wednesday. Just reget having missed the last presentation by @garritzmannj.bsky.social

How fun can teaching be? Today was the last day of my Computational Text Analysis seminar @UniMarburg. Super proud of the progress the students made. Most had little to no prior R-knowledge. Today they presented impressive results having applied (un)supervised machine learning and more