Competence-based approaches (CBAs) in education have becomean internationally important educational policy concept in recentdecades. However, a substantial body of research has suggestedthat in order to understand and explain the evolution of CBAs,there is a need to analyse curriculum-making as a complex andmulti-layered practice. To contribute to this research field, thispaper makes use of Vivien Schmidt’s concept of discursiveinstitutionalism(DI), which focuses on ideas and discourse. First,we compare ideas of competences as expressed in four influentialCBA frameworks, and second, we exemplify how these ideas, withspecial reference to the Organisation for Economic Co-operationand Development, have been translated when re-contextualisedwithin Swedish curriculum policy-making. The results show thatwhen re-contextualised within national borders, transnationalideas of competences are reconfigured. In the case of Sweden,this process has led to a national interpretation of CBAs,discussed in this paper as ‘hybrid competences.’