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International studies have indicated some of the major changes that are taking place in the field of education policy. Much of the debate focuses on the incorporation of global processes in the world of education. Europeanization of the policies concerning education is one aspect of the issues and it is argued that the Europeanization of Education occurs as an element of a wider process of globalisation in education. The theorisation of these processes is getting more attention also because these processes do require a new consideration on how policies are formed, shaped and directed. Several policy levels can be influenced by globalisation, but it can also work the other way around; globalisation is affected by the activities conducted at the different policy levels. The aim of the paper is to clarify the concepts of globalisation, Europeanization and multi-level governance and discuss how these processes affect education systems. The theoretical discussion will be linked to empirical evidence of these processes in a Swedish context, based on a study that focussed on the sub-national, national and supranational aspects of new policy formation. The main research problem focuses on the question how multi-level agenda setting and policy dissemination are taking place and what important factors are involved in these new forms of governance. The distribution of ideas and the activities of agents need more attention in the research on policy processes. This paper therefore also focuses on the key-players in the policy process. The theoretical framework for this research is provided by authors as Dolowitz, Masch, Dale, Taylor, Stone, Marginson and Rhodes, to mention a few. Theoretical concepts of policy transfer and policy diffusion are linked to studies concerning structural analysis of policy change. 

The research is based on a combination of policy documents at supra-national, national and sub-national levels and interviews with key- players at the national and sub-national level in a Swedish context. The main findings of this study show clear evidence of the aspects of multi-level educational governance in a European context. The processes show that governance takes place in networks and that these are both bottom-up and top-down steered.