Education Policy and Power-sharing in Post-conflict Societies ― Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Macedonia

This book explores the nexus between education and politics in three post-conflict societies with important implications for all societies emerging from civil war. Drawing from an extensive body of original evidence (including interviews and official documents) and the existing literature on power-sharing and post-conflict education, the author compares education reforms in Lebanon, Northern Ireland, and Macedonia. This book demonstrates that education policy affects the resilience of political settlements by helping reproduce and cement the mutually exclusive religious, ethnic, and national communities that participated in conflict and now share political power. It does so through curricula (for subjects such as history, citizenship education, and languages) and structures (particularly the existence of state-funded separate or common schools). The book also shows that power-sharing constrains the scope for specific education reforms and offers some suggestions for effective reforms of education to aid political stability and reconciliation after civil wars.

Giuditta Fontana is a Visiting Research Fellow in Middle Eastern Studies in the Institute of Middle Eastern Studies, King’s College London, UK.