Katharina Sass is Associate Professor of Sociology and Didactics at the University of Bergen.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Back to the roots; 3. Political playing fields: Actors' power resources and social base; 4. The class cleavage: Struggles over comprehensive schooling; 5. The crosscutting cleavages: struggles over religion, centralization, language, anticommunism, and gender; 6. Conclusion.

'This book is a masterful account of how political forces have a lasting impact on the development trajectories of secondary school systems. Adopting a framework rooted in Rokkanian cleavage theory, Katharina Sass carefully reconstructs the historical processes that put Norway and Germany on different policy trajectories. Her contribution will fundamentally influence the way we think about the politics of education.' Marius R. Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, author of Skills and Inequality

Katharina Sass is Associate Professor of Sociology and Didactics at the University of Bergen.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Back to the roots; 3. Political playing fields: Actors' power resources and social base; 4. The class cleavage: Struggles over comprehensive schooling; 5. The crosscutting cleavages: struggles over religion, centralization, language, anticommunism, and gender; 6. Conclusion.

'This book is a masterful account of how political forces have a lasting impact on the development trajectories of secondary school systems. Adopting a framework rooted in Rokkanian cleavage theory, Katharina Sass carefully reconstructs the historical processes that put Norway and Germany on different policy trajectories. Her contribution will fundamentally influence the way we think about the politics of education.' Marius R. Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, author of Skills and Inequality

Katharina Sass is Associate Professor of Sociology and Didactics at the University of Bergen.

• 1. Introduction; 2. Back to the roots; 3. Political playing fields: Actors' power resources and social base; 4. The class cleavage: Struggles over comprehensive schooling; 5. The crosscutting cleavages: struggles over religion, centralization, language, anticommunism, and gender; 6. Conclusion.

'This book is a masterful account of how political forces have a lasting impact on the development trajectories of secondary school systems. Adopting a framework rooted in Rokkanian cleavage theory, Katharina Sass carefully reconstructs the historical processes that put Norway and Germany on different policy trajectories. Her contribution will fundamentally influence the way we think about the politics of education.' Marius R. Busemeyer, University of Konstanz, author of Skills and Inequality