A Tool for Legitimacy? The Right to Education in Education Reforms by Autocratic Regimes

• In Event: 50604 - Rethinking Educational Reform Across Contexts

Abstract

We study the discourse on the right to education in national education reforms, challenging assumptions about its inherent association with liberal democracy. Using the World Education Reform Database (WERD), which includes over 10,000 reforms across 179 countries from 1965 to 2018, we employ Structural Topic Modeling to analyze trends in education reform discourse. Our findings reveal that autocratic regimes—characterized by weaker democratic institutions, poor human rights records, and weak rule of law—were more likely to emphasize the right to education, particularly during the post-Cold War era when global liberal norms were most dominant. We argue that autocracies strategically adopted this discourse as a tool for international and domestic legitimacy, aligning with broader patterns of ‘selective compliance’ observed in human rights treaties and gender equality reforms. The study highlights the unique role of education as a means of state control to explain why adopting the right to education discourse is a low-cost commitment that allows autocrats to signal conformity with international norms. Additionally, the observed decline in rights-based education discourse after 2008 aligns with broader trends of challenges to the liberal international order. Our findings contribute to ongoing debates on the diffusion of global norms, the political utility of education, and the evolving nature of human rights rhetoric.

Authors

• Tom Nachtigal, Stanford University

• Jieun Song, Stanford University

• Marcia Yang, Stanford University

• Minju Choi, Stanford University