What do we mean by national unity? An overview of Argentinian educational federalism 2006-2019

Abstract

This article analyses the notions of national unity that underlie the ways of federal management of education policies for compulsory secondary education in Argentina. The analysis period goes from 2006 to 2019 and focuses on two national government administrations of different political labels (Frente para la Victoria -FPV- and Alianza Cambiemos -AC-), which conceived national unity in distinct ways and configured contrasting kinds of federal management. A comparative analysis was conducted on the basis of the underlying logics of the National Ministry of Education's institutional architecture and the management of national education programmes that each administration proposed. A qualitative methodology was adopted, based on document and secondary data analysis and semi-structured interviews with technicians and public officials. Among the results we found that while the FPV conceived national unity in terms of carrying out similar strategies in all the provinces, the AC associated it with the achievement of similar measurable results, without determining the concrete actions that each province had to take in order to achieve them. In the first case, a centripetal federalism was configured, and in the second a centrifugal one, both with strengths and weaknesses as well as broad limitations in their implementations.