State Formation and the Evolution of Mass Education

• In Event: By Sword and Market: The Comparative Politics of Education Regimes

Abstract

What explains historical differences in how modern states govern mass education around the world? This paper is based on a book project that advances a theoretical framework to explain the evolution of different “mass education regimes” during formative periods of state-building. Given the long-term payoffs, political risks, and administrative demands that constructing a system of mass schooling entails, rulers have incentives to neglect education to focus on state-building efforts that are more likely to secure political survival in the short-run (i.e. economic development, military capacity). Yet, some degree of central government intervention in education is a common feature of state formation, even in countries where political uncertainty and limited state capacity may otherwise discourage rulers from pursuing educational development. To explain the developmental trajectories of state-sponsored schooling, this project highlights two important factors that resolve uncertainty facing rulers around mass education as a state-building project. First, information capacity through national censuses and statistical agencies bolsters the “legibility” of the state, which in turn provides central governments complex population data that inform the introduction and reach of education laws. Second, the deployment of ideas by prominent elites toward the role of education in the emerging political order also informs initial phases of educational development. Elite consensus over the political importance of centralized education is more likely in cases where ideological proponents of state education for “civilizing” the masses gain influence at critical junctures. This paper specifies how the interplay between information capacity and competing educational theories among elites shapes the timing and centralization of mass education systems. In this paper, I introduce an original dataset of education laws and institutions as well as new data on historical dimensions of state capacity in Europe and the Americas since 1800. I present empirical tests of a number of observable implications of the theory and posit a typology of mass education regimes around the world. This project contributes to the “informational turn” in state capacity research and highlights the persistence of ideas in shaping the contours of public institutions.

Author

• David Lopez, New York University