IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/injoed/v78y2020ics0738059320304089.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Does education indoctrinate?

Author

Listed:
  • Diwan, Ishac
  • Vartanova, Irina

Abstract

Do states manage to build education systems that produce students with political values they uphold? We test the indoctrination hypothesis using World Value Survey data spanning 96 countries. We devise an empirical strategy that can identify the effects of education on political values by using information about the political regime under which individuals live, and regimes under which they got educated. Our results suggest that state indoctrination is at work. For example, we find that higher education increases voting behavior by at least 45 percent more for cohorts that have studied in a democratic rather than an autocratic country.

Suggested Citation

  • Diwan, Ishac & Vartanova, Irina, 2020. "Does education indoctrinate?," International Journal of Educational Development, Elsevier, vol. 78(C).
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:78:y:2020:i:c:s0738059320304089
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ijedudev.2020.102249
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0738059320304089
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2020.102249?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Arthur Blouin & Sharun W. Mukand, 2019. "Erasing Ethnicity? Propaganda, Nation Building, and Identity in Rwanda," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 127(3), pages 1008-1062.
    2. Willa Friedman & Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2016. "Education as Liberation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 1-30, January.
    3. Edward Glaeser & Giacomo Ponzetto & Andrei Shleifer, 2007. "Why does democracy need education?," Journal of Economic Growth, Springer, vol. 12(2), pages 77-99, June.
    4. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/1mhdgtufmp9u2blp3nkko6i6f3 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Croke, Kevin & Grossman, Guy & Larreguy, Horacio A. & Marshall, John, 2016. "Deliberate Disengagement: How Education Can Decrease Political Participation in Electoral Authoritarian Regimes," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 110(3), pages 579-600, August.
    6. Yann Algan & Pierre Cahuc & Andrei Shleifer, 2013. "Teaching Practices and Social Capital," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 189-210, July.
    7. Yuriy Gorodnichenko & Gerard Roland, 2021. "Culture, institutions and democratization," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 187(1), pages 165-195, April.
    8. Bisin, Alberto & Verdier, Thierry, 2000. "A model of cultural transmission, voting and political ideology," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 16(1), pages 5-29, March.
    9. Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson & James A. Robinson & Pierre Yared, 2005. "From Education to Democracy?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 44-49, May.
    10. Davide Cantoni & Yuyu Chen & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Curriculum and Ideology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 338-392.
    11. Sears, David O. & Valentino, Nicholas A., 1997. "Politics Matters: Political Events as Catalysts for Preadult Socialization," American Political Science Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 91(1), pages 45-65, March.
    12. Dee, Thomas S., 2004. "Are there civic returns to education?," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(9-10), pages 1697-1720, August.
    13. John R. Lott, Jr., 1999. "Public Schooling, Indoctrination, and Totalitarianism," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 107(S6), pages 127-157, December.
    14. Leonardo Bursztyn & Davide Cantoni, 2016. "Tear in the Iron Curtain: The Impact of Western Television on Consumption Behavior," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 98(1), pages 25-41, March.
    15. Barro, Robert J. & Lee, Jong Wha, 2013. "A new data set of educational attainment in the world, 1950–2010," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 184-198.
    16. Finkel, Steven E., 2013. "The Impact of Adult Civic Education Programmes in Developing Democracies," WIDER Working Paper Series 064, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    17. Greif, Avner & Tadelis, Steven, 2010. "A theory of moral persistence: Crypto-morality and political legitimacy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 229-244, September.
    18. Mohamad Al-Ississ & Ishac Diwan, 2016. "Individual Preferences for Democracy In the Arab World Explaining the Gap," Working Papers 981, Economic Research Forum, revised Mar 2016.
    19. Stefano DellaVigna & Ethan Kaplan, 2007. "The Fox News Effect: Media Bias and Voting," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 122(3), pages 1187-1234.
    20. Bisin, Alberto & Verdier, Thierry, 2001. "The Economics of Cultural Transmission and the Dynamics of Preferences," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 97(2), pages 298-319, April.
    21. Mohamad Al-Ississ & Ishac Diwan, 2016. "Preference for Democracy in the Arab World," Politics and Governance, Cogitatio Press, vol. 4(4), pages 16-26.
    22. Leonard Wantchekon & Marko Klašnja & Natalija Novta, 2015. "Education and Human Capital Externalities: Evidence from Colonial Benin," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(2), pages 703-757.
    23. Alberto Alesina & Paola Giuliano & Bryony Reich, 2021. "Nation-Building and Education," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 131(638), pages 2273-2303.
    24. Steven E. Finkel, 2013. "The Impact of Adult Civic Education Programmes in Developing Democracies," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2013-064, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    25. Ticchi, Davide & Verdier, Thierry & Vindigni, Andrea, 2013. "Democracy, Dictatorship and the Cultural Transmission of Political Values," POLIS Working Papers 171, Institute of Public Policy and Public Choice - POLIS.
    26. Madestam, Andreas & Yanagizawa-Drott, David, 2012. "Shaping of the Nation: The Effect of Fourth of July on Political Preferences and Behavior in the United States," Working Paper Series rwp12-034, Harvard University, John F. Kennedy School of Government.
    27. Davide Cantoni & Yuyu Chen & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Curriculum and Ideology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 338-392.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Djemaï, Elodie & Kevane, Michael, 2023. "Effects of education on political engagement in rural Burkina Faso," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 165(C).
    2. Costa-Font, Joan & García-Hombrados, Jorge & Nicińska, Anna, 2024. "Long-lasting effects of indoctrination in school: Evidence from the People’s Republic of Poland," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 161(C).
    3. Tzuping Chiang, 2021. "Estimating the Artificial Intelligence Learning Efficiency for Civil Engineer Education: A Case Study in Taiwan," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(21), pages 1-11, October.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Ishac Diwan & Irina Vartanova, 2018. "Does Education Indoctrinate? The Effect of Education on Political Preferences In Democracies and Autocracies," Working Papers 1178, Economic Research Forum, revised 12 Apr 2018.
    2. Testa, Patrick A., 2018. "Education and propaganda: Tradeoffs to public education provision in nondemocracies," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 160(C), pages 66-81.
    3. Lai, Weizheng, 2024. "The effect of education on voter turnout in China's rural elections," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 221(C), pages 230-247.
    4. Davide Cantoni & Yuyu Chen & David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman & Y. Jane Zhang, 2017. "Curriculum and Ideology," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(2), pages 338-392.
    5. Bautista, M. A. & González, F. & Martínez, L. R. & Muñoz, P. & Prem, M., 2020. "Chile’s Missing Students: Dictatorship, Higher Education and Social Mobility," Documentos de Trabajo 18163, Universidad del Rosario.
    6. Belmonte, Alessandro, 2020. "State Capacity, Schooling, and Fascist Education: Evidence from the Reclamation of the Pontine Marshes," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 528, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    7. Campante, Filipe R. & Chor, Davin, 2014. "“The people want the fall of the regime”: Schooling, political protest, and the economy," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 42(3), pages 495-517.
    8. Guillaume Blanc & Masahiro Kubo, 2023. "French," Economics Discussion Paper Series 2308, Economics, The University of Manchester.
    9. Cinnirella, Francesco & Schueler, Ruth, 2018. "Nation building: The role of central spending in education," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 18-39.
    10. Chen, Wei-Lin & Lin, Ming-Jen & Yang, Tzu-Ting, 2023. "Curriculum and national identity: Evidence from the 1997 curriculum reform in Taiwan," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 163(C).
    11. Hyungmin Park, 2024. "Theory of developmental dictatorship," Discussion Papers 2024-10, Nottingham Interdisciplinary Centre for Economic and Political Research (NICEP).
    12. Willa Friedman & Michael Kremer & Edward Miguel & Rebecca Thornton, 2016. "Education as Liberation?," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 83(329), pages 1-30, January.
    13. Kersting, Felix & Wolf, Nikolaus, 2024. "On the origins of national identity. German nation-building after Napoleon," Journal of Comparative Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(2), pages 463-477.
    14. Matí­as Brum, 2018. "Do Dictatorships Affect People's Long Term Beliefs and Preferences? : An Empirical Assessment of the Latin American Case," Documentos de Trabajo (working papers) 18-18, Instituto de Economía - IECON.
    15. Monica Martinez-Bravo, 2017. "The Local Political Economy Effects of School Construction in Indonesia," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 9(2), pages 256-289, April.
    16. Becker, Sascha O. & Mukand, Sharun & Yotzov, Ivan, 2022. "Persecution, pogroms and genocide: A conceptual framework and new evidence," Explorations in Economic History, Elsevier, vol. 86(C).
    17. María Angelica Bautista & Felipe González & Luis R. Martínez & Pablo Muñoz & Mounu Prem, 2018. "The Geography of Repression and Support for Democracy: Evidence from the Pinochet Dictatorship," Working papers 5, Red Investigadores de Economía.
    18. Thang Dang, 2019. "Quasi-experimental evidence on the political impacts of education in Vietnam," Education Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 27(2), pages 207-221, March.
    19. Chevalier, Arnaud & Doyle, Orla, 2012. "Schooling and Voter Turnout: Is there an American Exception?," IZA Discussion Papers 6539, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Park, Hyungmin, 2023. "Developmental Dictatorship and Middle Class-driven Democratisation," The Warwick Economics Research Paper Series (TWERPS) 1485, University of Warwick, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Civic action; Democratic values; Preference for democracy; Voting; Elite and mass education systems; Opinion polls; Indoctrination; State socialization;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I25 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Economic Development

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:injoed:v:78:y:2020:i:c:s0738059320304089. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/international-journal-of-educational-development .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.