Policy Flux: The state of policymaking in the Iraqi Kurdistan
Pashew Nuri
Monash University, Australia
ABSTRACT
Many education systems in the Middle East (ME) are going through rapid policy reforms while facing challenging socio-economic and political challenges (Arar et al., 2021). As part of the ME and since 1992, the education system of the Iraqi Kurdistan (IK) has experienced disjointed modernising reforms in a post-conflict situation. Using document analysis techniques for education policymaking since 1992, my doctoral study examines the major policy conditions and imperatives that are seeking to reshape education in the IK. My work explores the roots and trajectories of policymaking rationalities in order to understand contemporary conditions of policy in the IK, and their possible futures. In this presentation, I will show that we need to understand an assemblage of policy forces such as nationalism, democracy, and neoliberalism which have generated conditions of policy flux. As a consequence, using IK as an example, I argue that addressing three key challenges facing education systems in flux requires recognising: the limitations of conventional approaches to policymaking, the effects of a disregard of locality, and the problems that emerge across the education sector of contradictory policy intentions.
Keywords: Education system, policymaking, Iraqi Kurdistan, policy flux
Doi: 10.23918/vesal2022a34