Fostering Human Empowerment through Education: The Road to Progressive Political Institutions

This paper investigates the role of human empowerment and state capacity in forging political institutions that are progressive and democratic. The education-democracy nexus has been thoroughly examined in the literature, but the empirical literature on the effect of the right kind and quality of education remains sparse. Generalised method of moments and probit methodology are employed for a sample of 105 countries over the period 1981 to 2015 to address these shortcomings. The results indicate that education is a necessary condition for democracy, but by itself, not sufficient. The analyses show that education of the right kind and quality, one that fosters emancipative mindsets and critical-liberal orientations, is a strong driver of progressive or democratic political institutions in a society. Trade openness (as a sub-index of formal rules), that signals societies' openness to outside influence, also seems to matter, but when a more encompassing measure of regime-independent formal rules is used, formal institutions become an insignificant determinant of liberal democracy. Other avenues that are explored include an investigation into the role of geography and spatial democracy in political institutions. The evidence suggests that geographical and biological factors do not matter, but that spatial democracy does. This study, furthermore, finds that the probability of a more democratic regime outcome increases with increased levels of human empowerment and trade openness. A parliamentary democracy is the most probable when a society has high levels of human empowerment and openness.