"Education policy is being reformed and re-worked on a global scale. Policies are flowing and converging to produce a singular vision of best practice based on the methods and tenets of the neo-liberal imaginary. Philanthropy, business and the governments are coming together in new networks and sites of policy outside of the framework of the nation state. This book is a first step in recording, mapping and making sense of the most important aspects of these new relations and dynamics of policy.Using the approach of policy sociology and the methods of social network analysis, Stephen Ball explores the policy activities of edu-businesses, neo-liberal advocacy networks and policy entrepreneurs, and of social enterprises and new philanthropy. He also addresses the ways in which education and education policy itself are now being exported and bought and sold as profitable commodities and how entrenched problems of educational development and educational quality and access are