Marketization without privatization in the Baltic countries: Path-dependency and policy change in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania

Lauri, T.; Pder, K.; Ngisto, J.

Research Handbook on Education Privatization and Marketization: 165-180

2025


ISSN/ISBN: 9781035311385
Accession: 097041973

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Summary
This chapter delves into education marketization without privatization in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, tracing its evolution through historical and political factors. We identify three periods: from early 1990s liberalization to state-led marketization without privatization in the 2000s, to the bottom-up privatization initiatives in the last decade. Despite the wider neoliberal consensus and contrary to broader privatization trends, Baltic countries followed a different path, prioritizing nation-building via public education. However, the urgency of nation-building not only determined state dominance in education but also made nationalism a salient issue, easily reconciled with the wider neoliberal consensus. While many similarities exist in Baltic educational marketization, there are also important differences in the rationale and political economy of educational marketization and diversification in the region. In Estonia, implicit tracking evolved via parental choice and public elite schooling within the comprehensive model, while Latvia and Lithuania were more open to tracks, either via implicit curriculum choice or explicit educational tracks. The ethnic cleavage supported right-leaning consensus in Estonia and Latvia, explaining the productive logic of education in those countries compared to the more egalitarian notion of education in Lithuania, promoted by its more diverse coalition-building dynamics and the lower salience of cultural cleavage.