5: Education and Political Development

Abstract

Since World War II, national educational systems have expanded rapidly (Coombs, 1968) and have become increasingly structured by centers of political authority. Nation-states have also consolidated their control over more aspects of social life. These two phenomena are related. The consolidation of national political authority extends education throughout society as a means of incorporating its human material in its structure, and politically incorporated educational systems integrate and legitimate political action. This chapter reviews the research literature on these reciprocal effects of education and political developments. Because both political development and educational expansion occur within the context of a particular world system (Cohen, 1970; Wallerstein, 1973), the first section of the review discusses the ways in which this context affects the two processes. The second section considers educational effects on political development, and the third discusses the effects of national political development on education. Most studies of education and political development investigate the interrelations between the educational and political attributes of individuals. Yet both political development and education are institutional properties. We must, then, review research efforts to address the relations among these institutional structures using data on individuals. Because the making of inferences about institutional relations using individual-level data is problematic, there is a great need for more comparative and institutional-level studies.