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Democracy and Education in twentieth‐century Latin America
Author(s) -
Eterovic Dalibor S.,
Sweet Cassandra M.
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
economics and politics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.822
H-Index - 45
eISSN - 1468-0343
pISSN - 0954-1985
DOI - 10.1111/ecpo.12033
Subject(s) - democracy , operationalization , latin americans , competition (biology) , political science , democratization , politics , work (physics) , inclusion (mineral) , political economy , development economics , economic growth , public administration , sociology , social science , economics , law , mechanical engineering , ecology , philosophy , epistemology , biology , engineering
Do democratic electoral systems strengthen a country's outcomes in education? Does the degree of inclusiveness of a democratic system matter? This article offers evidence that political competition and the inclusion of marginalized populations in electoral systems transformed education over an 80‐year period in Latin America. It finds that democracy has a positive effect on education enrollment and illustrates how current work on democracy and development has overlooked important democratic subcomponents, specifically, who votes and how. Our results deepen current work on democracy, operationalizing the impact of electoral expansion in comparative analysis and showing how democracies respond to specific education demands.