Finland’s Ministry of Education and Culture in the Light of Its Working Groups

Abstract

The Ministry of Education and Culture (MEC) has traditionally been considered as the most central actor and the powerhouse in the education policy field in Finland. While the position of the MEC in the Finnish education policy system seems stable, there have been several organisational changes within the MEC over the past three decades. One of these is the disintegration of the committee system and its replacement by the working groups system, a trend that is part of a more general change from governing to governance since the 1990s. In this chapter we analyse data containing the MEC’s working groups and their members with social network analysis in order to understand the ways in which the working group system affects the MEC and its operation. Our analysis suggests that the MEC is organised rather strongly by departments: early childhood and general education, vocational education and training, higher education and research, culture and arts, and youth and sports. Analysing the network through the individual working group members we observed that, in addition to public officials, individuals representing interest organisations such as labour and trade unions were important links between the working groups.