Federal dynamics substantially influence educational systems and progress in many countries. Educational policy priorities have continually been shaped by regional and local needs, and these policies in many systems are designed to promote quality-based accountability standards across a country. Part of this accountability concerns resource allocation designed to “equalize” fiscal disparities among communities when it comes to educational spending without tampering regional and local preferences. The balance between centralization and decentralization in federal and multilevel systems varies across institutional and policy domains. Given these issues, Forum programming on education and federalism aims at developing cutting-edge comparative analysis addressing the functional division between governmental layers as well as mechanisms of vertical and horizontal intergovernmental cooperation.
