How the State Shapes Society: Comparative Education Politics

Session Submission Type: In-Person Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Education has enduring effects on society. As such, education policy is often highly contested and politicized, as competing political elites and interest groups fiercely debate who gets educated, and how. Control over education and the ability to implement targeted education reforms provides political elites with myriad benefits, ranging from legitimacy and political support, to economic growth, and to patronage opportunities for supporters or interest groups. Understanding when and how political elites craft education policy, govern educational institutions, and adopt reform projects can shed light on elite strategies, policy formation, and how policy feeds back into governance. Education, as a human-centric service that demands a large bureaucracy, provides a unique lens into these persistent themes in political science.

Those who control education are well-positioned to capture the hearts and minds of citizens, generating support for the regime (Cantoni et al. 2017, Paglayan 2017). Yet education is different things to different political actors. Not only is education a way to win hearts and minds, but it also promotes industrialization and economic growth (Gellner 1983). In democracies, education is a visible service that politicians can exchange for votes (Harding and Stasavage 2013). Education is also bureaucratic, and bureaucratic interests exert substantial pressures on political leaders to design the education sector in particular ways (Grindle 2004). In this panel, we explore the politics of education provision from these varied perspectives. We move beyond questions surrounding expansion of and access to education. Instead, we ask: who provides education, what type of education do they provide, and to what end? Both Butt and Read study who holds the authority over educating citizens, with Ahsan Butt examining how right-wing nationalists come to control education sectors, while Blair Read studies the politics of outsourcing education to non-state providers in contemporary India. Julia Coyoli examines not who provides education, but what type of education they provide, proposing a theory and supporting evidence of when politicians invest in quality-improving education reforms. Coyoli uses subnational variation in Mexico with original data on reform implementation. Finally, Hollenbach and Pierskalla examine how authoritarian regimes govern universities, balancing between fostering human capital and limiting dissent among university-educated citizens.

These papers can help scholars understand several distinct yet interrelated questions. How and when does the state uses education to shape citizen identity? When do political elites use education to craft an inclusive and pluralist political culture, versus an exclusive one that elevates a particular social group at the expense of other groups? How and when is education reform beholden to special interests? And finally, when does education strengthen or undermine a political regime? We draw on a diverse set of cases ranging from Latin America to South Asia, studying historical and contemporary trends in education policy from a variety of methodological traditions.

Sub Unit

• Division 59: Education Politics and Policy

Cosponsor

• Division 11: Comparative Politics

Individual Presentations

• The Determinants of the Subnational Implementation of Costly Reforms - Julia Smith Coyoli, Harvard University

• Citizen Voice, State Exit: Electoral Incentives and Education Provision in India - Blair Read

• Dictators and Universities - Florian Hollenbach, Copenhagen Business School; Jan Henryk Pierskalla, Ohio State University

• Right-Wing Nationalists, Historical Narratives, and Education - Ahsan Ishaq Butt

• Non-State Origins of State Education: Evidence from British Burma - Htet Thiha Zaw, University of Michigan

Chair

• Robin Harding University of Oxford

Discussants

• Ben William Ansell University of Oxford

• Agustina S Paglayan UCSD