Democratization and Indoctrination

• In Event: Historical Development of Education Systems: Motivations and Consequences

Abstract

Against the conventional wisdom that the spread of democracy was a leading driver of the expansion of primary schooling, recent studies show that democratization in fact did not lead to an average increase in primary school enrollment rates (Paglayan 2021; Aghion et.al. 2019). One of the reasons for this null effect is that there was already considerable provision of primary education before democratization. Still, it is possible that the spread of democracy did improve other characteristics of education systems, such as the content of education and the extent to which teaching jobs are politicized. Studying this cross-nationally has been impossible until now due to data limitations. To address this gap, we extend Paglayan (2021) by taking advantage of a new dataset covering 163 countries from 1945 to 2021 (Neundorf et.al. 2023) that contains information about the presence of indoctrination in schools and the politicization of teacher hiring and firing decisions. Our preliminary analysis suggests that transitions to democracy tend to be preceded by a decline in the degree of indoctrination that occurs in schools as well as a decline in the politicization of teaching jobs. However, soon after democratization occurs, this decline either halts or, in some cases, partially reverses. We stress the role of elite capture of democratic institutions as an explanation for these results.

Authors

• Agustina S. Paglayan, UCSD

• Anja Neundorf, Unveristy of Glasgow

• Wooseok Kim, University of Glasgow