In the Western world, education policy has increasingly become a local matter. Localities and schools adjust education to meet specific local needs, fragmentation and diversity. Globalization and the greater emphasis on knowledge in society however, also embody strong streamlining tendencies. This edited volume examines and compares the way in which local education systems in Britain and Sweden are created in the interplay between common tendencies of change and particular local conditions.

The Oxford Handbook of Local and Regional Democracy in Europe analyzes the state of play of democracy at the subnational level in the 27 member states of the EU plus Norway and Switzerland. It places subnational democracy in the context of the distinctive Anglo, French, German, and Scandinavian state traditions in Europe asking to what extent these are still relevant today. The Handbook adapts Lijphart's theory of democracy and applies it to the subnational levels in all the country chapters. A key theoretical issue is whether subnational (regional and local) democracy is...