Beyond Hierarchies and Markets

The state has experimented with a range of decentralized school organizations over the past half century, in part aiming to lift poor children. This movement stems from not only neoliberal ideology but also from the earlier “Third Way†of advancing public projects—severing local organizing from the state’s bureaucratic rules, while stopping short of atomized market remedies. This article first examines the economic and institutional forces that drive civic activists to advance decentralizing remedies, especially the spread of nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and client choice in the education sector. We then detail the uneven empirical benefits of three decentralizing segments of the education sector: preschools, parental vouchers, and charter schools. Finally we move beneath surface-level governance changes to highlight how particular social relations found inside decentralized organizations at times do yield discernible, even sizable, benefits. Comparative cases reveal a second generation of decentralists, who build from the lessons of their policy ancestors. Second-wave decentralists are keenly focused on a social architecture that motivates poor children and educators.