Education and democratisation: tolerance of diversity, political engagement, and understanding of democracy

Transcription

1 2014/ED/EFA/MRT/PI/03 Background paper prepared for the Education for All Global Monitoring Report 2013/4 Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all Education and democratisation: tolerance of diversity, political engagement, and understanding of democracy Yekaterina Chzhen 2013 This paper was commissioned by the Education for All Global Monitoring Report as background information to assist in drafting the 2013/4 report. It has not been edited by the team. The views and opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and should not be attributed to the EFA Global Monitoring Report or to UNESCO. The papers can be cited with the following reference: Paper commissioned for the EFA Global Monitoring Report 2013/4, Teaching and learning: Achieving quality for all For further information, please contact

2 Education and democratisation: tolerance of diversity, political engagement, and understanding of democracy Yekaterina Chzhen (University of Oxford) Abstract While a positive relationship between education and pro-democracy attitudes in developed countries is well documented, evidence for transition societies is more limited. This paper analyses the effects of individual educational attainment on tolerance of diversity, political engagement and understanding of democracy for a diverse sample of 30 upper middle, lower middle and lower income countries from six world regions. More highly educated citizens are found to be significantly more tolerant of out-groups and more engaged in politics. They are also more likely to understand democracy in terms of free elections, civil rights, gender equality, and economic prosperity. Introduction Cross-country studies show that the higher the level of education in society, the better the democratic institutions. This has turned attention to the important question of why this might be the case. The paper explores three possible mechanisms through which education can exert an impact on democratic processes. Firstly, education can act through individual beliefs and values, with more educated people being more tolerant of diversity, which is an essential ingredient of a democratic state. Secondly, educated people are more likely to participate in democratic processes, including protest politics, which deepen the roots of democracy. Thirdly, educated individuals have a better understanding of the essential characteristics of democracy. The paper assesses these mechanisms using cross-national data from World Values Surveys (WVS), which include questions on tolerance of diversity, political activity and attitudes towards democracy. Harmonised data from the most recent wave of the WVS 1 are analysed for approximately 30 upper middle, lower middle and lower income countries from six world regions. The analyses then explores changes in the effects of education on political attitudes 1 European and World Values Surveys Four Wave Integrated Data File, , v , The European Values Study Foundation ( and World Values Survey Association ( 1

3 over time using data from the last four waves of the WVS for six large countries: Argentina, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey. Literature review Modernization theories postulate that economic development leads to widespread basic literacy and the expansion of tertiary education, which increase the skills and abilities of citizens necessary for engaging in democratic processes (e.g. Lipset 1959). Thus, mass education is conducive to democracy as a marker of cognitive mobilization: rising levels of education produce a more articulate public that is better equipped to organize and communicate (Inglehart 1997, p. 163). However, Inglehart finds only limited empirical support for the role of education: although societies where high proportions of the population have tertiary degrees are more likely to be stable democracies in 1995, there is no significant effect of education on the level of democracy in 1990 or on the change in the level of democratization between 1990 and In an alternative view of the effects of education on democratic citizenship, Nie et al (1996) view formal education as a marker for social position, emphasizing relative rather than absolute educational attainment. They find strong positive effects of education on political knowledge, political participation and voting, attentiveness to politics, and tolerance in the US in 1990, but stress that these would not necessarily increase with higher aggregate levels of education in society. In a revision of classic modernization theory, Inglehart and Welzel (2005) also suggest that education is not only an indicator of cognitive awareness, but also a marker for social status, because individuals from more privileged backgrounds are likely to receive more schooling in the first place. Empirical evidence for a diverse set of societies from the World Values Study (WVS) is broadly in line with modernization theories. Using data from the WVS for 36 countries, Kotzian (2011) finds higher levels of diffuse support for democracy, but lower levels of specific support for their government, among the higher educated. In a more recent study, Norris (2011) also finds the highest levels of democratic deficit among the better educated, as they are simultaneously more supportive of democracy in principle but less satisfied with the current governance of their country, using data for 43 diverse nations from the WVS

4 While a positive relationship between education and pro-democracy attitudes in developed countries is well documented, evidence for transition societies is more limited. Using data from the Afrobarometer surveys for six young electoral democracies from Sub- Saharan Africa, Bratton and Mattes (2001a) find higher levels of understanding of democracy among the higher educated, but no differences in diffuse support for democracy between university graduates and those with no formal education. In a separate study, Bratton and Mattes (2001b) find a positive effect of schooling on democratic support in Zambia, but no effect in South Africa or Ghana. When using the combined sample of 12 countries from the 1999 round of Afrobarometer surveys, Bratton et al (2005) observe a strong positive association between levels of completed education and support for democracy, controlling for a host of other demographic characteristics and political attitudes. However, they find that education affects demand for democracy indirectly through increased cognitive awareness of public affairs. Indeed, they argue that education has a positive effect on support for democracy in spite of rather than because of schooling, given the authoritarian features of the school systems in the region. In contrast, Evans and Rose find large positive effects of formal schooling on support for democracy in Sub-Saharan Africa, controlling for individual socio-demographic characteristics, using data from the first wave of the Afrobarometer survey for Malawi (2007) and from a more recent wave of the survey for 18 countries (2012). They show that the positive effect of education is progressively attenuated with the inclusion of indicators of political interest and comprehension. They interpret these findings as evidence for the cognitive/motivational interpretation of educational effects rather than the hypothesis that education is a marker for social status. Analysis of other regional barometer surveys also suggests that more highly educated citizens tend to prefer democracy to alternative political systems. Research on selected Arab countries observes a positive micro-level association between educational attainment and support for democracy (Tessler 2002; Jamal 2006). Studies of post-transition societies in Eastern Europe document a positive relationship between levels of completed education and pro-democratic attitudes on the individual level (Gibson et al 1992; Reisinger et al 1994; Rose et al 1998). Formal education tends to be associated with greater support for democracy in Latin America (Lagos 2008; Latinobarometro 2010), but there is evidence for this relationship being weakest among younger citizens (Lagos 2001). At the same time, research on East Asia tends 3

5 to focus on support for the governing regime rather than diffuse support for democracy. Using data from the Asian Barometer Survey , Park (2012) finds a negative effect of education on support for the existing regime in electoral democracies (Mongolia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand), with no significant effect of education observed in liberal democracies (Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan) or in competitive authoritarian regimes (Malaysia and Singapore). Similarly, Huang et al (2012) observe a negative association between education and support for the governing regime in 11 East Asian countries, controlling for satisfaction with democracy. Research on political tolerance also finds significant positive effects of education, but the literature is largely limited to industrial and post-industrial societies. In a seminal study, Bobo and Licari (1989) find a strong positive effect of education on political tolerance towards leftwing and right-wing out-groups, using data from the 1984 United States General Social Survey. This association is mediated by verbal proficiency scores, suggesting that cognitive sophistication accounts for a substantial fraction of the effect of education on tolerance (p. 303). Ohlander et al (2005) find significant positive effects of education on tolerance of homosexuality in the US in , also using data from the GSS. Andersen and Fetner (2008) also observe a positive association between education and tolerance of homosexuality, using pooled data for the United States and Canada from the World Values Surveys Evans and Need (2002) find higher levels of support for ethnic minority rights among the higher educated in post-transition Eastern Europe. Analysis of the role of education in promoting tolerance of diversity in developing counties is scarce, but findings from the World Values Surveys show that although agrarian societies are substantially less tolerant of women s rights and sexual liberalisation, educational attainment is still significantly associated with more egalitarian gender-role attitudes (Inglehart and Norris 2003). Education tends to play a positive role in political engagement in developed countries (see Almond and Verba 1989). Acting primarily through socialization, education is found to have a positive effect on political participation (Glaeser et al 2007), as well as on trust and social engagement (Helliwell and Putnam 2007), based on survey data for the US for the last three decades of the 20 th century. However, empirical evidence on the effects of education on political engagement in transition democracies is more limited. In a cross-country analysis based on data for 40 nations from the WVS, Norris (2011) observes a positive association between education and measures of protest activism as well as citizen interest. 4

6 Direct questions about whether one prefers democratic institutions to other forms of government tend to elicit high levels of diffuse support for democracy in all world regions, although levels of dissatisfaction with the way democracy works in practice are relatively lower (Lagos 2003; Norris 2011). Education is typically positively associated with democracy both on the macro and micro levels, so, to explore different mechanisms through which education may affect support for democracy, this paper focuses on the effects of education on individuals tolerance of diversity; political engagement; and understanding of democracy. In line with the modernization and socialization theories, education is expected to have large positive effects on each of these outcomes across transition societies, even after controlling for other important individual socio-demographic characteristics and country level factors, such as levels of democracy and economic development. Data and measurement Comparative analysis of public opinion and values relies on harmonized data from crosscountry social surveys. Regional barometer surveys 2 allow in-depth analysis of attitudes and political action in particular world regions, but these instruments are not ideal for global comparisons because they include only a limited number of common questions. In contrast, the WVS is well suited to cross-national comparison of attitudes, values and beliefs due to its comprehensive geographic coverage and a long running time series. Although not every country participated in each of the five waves between 1981 and 2008, the survey covers 87 societies across the world over nearly three decades 3. The WVS is criticized for its limited set of objective political behavior items (Bratton 2009), but it is a suitable data source for the present analysis, as it focuses on individual attitudes. This paper uses data from the most recent wave of the WVS, carried out in fifty-five countries over the period In addition, to explore changes in the effects of education over time, data from the last three waves are analyzed for six large countries: Argentina, China, India, Mexico, South Africa and Turkey. Twenty-three high income countries were excluded in order to analyse the role of education in transition societies with more comparable distributions of educational attainment. This leaves us approximately 30 2 For more information about the Global Barometer project, see 3 The Sixth Wave ( ) is currently in fieldwork. For more information about the World Values Surveys project, see 5

7 upper middle, lower middle and lower income countries from six world regions 4 (see Table 1). To study differences in political attitudes across educational groups, controlling both for individual and country level characteristics, multilevel models are used here (see Snijders and Bosker 2012). Multilevel analysis accounts for the hierarchical structure of the dataset, i.e. individuals being nested within countries. We model country-level residuals as normally distributed random effects, rather than fixed parameters estimated separately, because we want to learn about the population of all countries in the analysis, rather than each specific country; the number of countries is relatively large; and we can control for country level variables (e.g. wealth; level of democracy). Key variables are measured as follows. Educational attainment We use the highest level of completed education as a measure of educational attainment, rather than total years of schooling or school leaving age. The WVS includes a 9-point education level scale, from no formal education to university level education. Although it is still common to test for the effects of education on a linear scale (e.g. Norris 2011), we model education as categorical in order to allow for non-linear effects and for consistency with the concept of education as a series of transitions between levels. Due to substantial differences in the proportions of voting-age population with no formal education and in tertiary education rates between world regions, a number of categories were combined. This resulted in four groupings: no formal education or incomplete primary school; complete primary school; at least some secondary schooling (technical vocational or university preparatory); and university education (with or without degree). The secondary school category tends to be the largest in most countries, so it is used as the reference group here. Tolerance of diversity Tolerance of diversity is measured using the WVS question Could you please mention any [groups of people] that you would not like to have as neighbors? Those who pick people of a different race; immigrants/foreign workers; people of a different religion; people who speak a 4 Because some questions were not asked in certain countries, the number of countries varies across analyses. 6

8 different language; homosexuals; and AIDS sufferers are coded as intolerant on each of these items separately 5. Although these items could be combined into a six-point scale and modeled as a continuous variable, we analyze them separately using multilevel binary logistic regression models. It has to be noted that these are not ideal measures of political tolerance because they only gauge whether a particular out-group is disliked, without eliciting the degree of support for political rights for these groups. The classical definition of political tolerance is a willingness to permit the expression of ideas or interests one opposes (Sullivan et al 1982: 2). The WVS does not contain questions about political rights of disliked out-groups, but Peffley and Rohrschneider (2003) find a positive effect of education on support for disliked groups rights to hold public office and hold demonstrations, using data from the WVS Political engagement Political engagement is operationalised here as a binary variable using responses about experience of doing or willingness to do at least one of the following: signing a petition, joining in boycotts or attending peaceful demonstrations 6. Those who respond that they would never do any of these actions fall in the reference category. Norris (2011) uses this indicator, converted onto a 100-point scale, as a measure of protest politics. As a robustness check, we also analyse interest in politics as a proxy for political engagement 7. Understanding of democracy The wave of the WVS contains a battery of ten questions about democratic knowledge, asking respondents to rate the importance of each item on a 10-point scale from 1 not an essential characteristic of democracy to 10 an essential characteristic of democracy. These items refer to three types of understanding of democracy (see Norris 2011): procedural (women have the same rights as men; people choose their leaders in free elections; civil liberties protect against oppression; people can change laws through 5 The WVS also includes drug addicts, heavy drinkers and unmarried couples living together, but these items appear to measure a very different underlying construct (based on factor analysis and scale reliability analysis). 6 Respondents who have a missing value on all three items are coded as missing values on this binary variable. Seven countries that have 10% or more missing values are excluded from the analysis: Morocco (10%), Iraq (12%), Mali (14%), Burkina Faso (16%), India (19%), Ethiopia (26%) and Iraq (100%). Of the remaining countries, four have between 5% and 8% missing values (Serbia, Indonesia, Georgia and Bulgaria), so the results should be interpreted with caution. Jordan is excluded from all multivariate analyses because it lacks valid information on labour market activity status. 7 How interested would you say you are in politics? is recoded as follows: 0- not very/not at all interested, 1- somewhat/very interested. 7

9 referenda); instrumental (criminals are severely punished; people receive state aid for unemployment; governments tax the rich and subsidise the poor; the economy is prospering); and authoritarian (religious authorities interpret laws; army takes over when government is incompetent). To allow for a more nuanced relationship between education and democratic knowledge, we model each of these items separately instead of combining them into three scales. In addition to educational attainment, all multilevel models control for the relevant individual-level characteristics, such as age, gender, labour market activity status (employed; inactive; student; unemployed) and marital status (married or cohabiting; divorced, separated or widowed; single or never married). It would be useful to be able to control for occupation and the degree of urbanization, but these variables have disproportionate numbers of missing values in the survey, particularly for lower income countries. On the country level, we control for the world region, the level of economic development (GDP per capita in 2005 purchasing power parity constant international US dollars) and the level of democracy (21-point Polity IV score 8 for 2005). In line with modernization theories, the GDP per capita is expected to have a positive effect on tolerance of diversity, political engagement and procedural understanding of democracy. However, the polity score is used merely as a control. We also test for a number of cross-level interactions between education and country-level predictors. For instance, in a study of education and institutional trust, Hakverdian and Mayne (2012) find a positive effect of education in clean societies, but a negative effect of trust in corrupt societies. Although the positive correlation between the level of democracy and average educational level in a country is well established across nations, the causal effect of education is difficult to identify. In a study of 95 societies for the period , Acemoglu et al (2008) find no causal effect of education, measured as average years of total schooling in the population, on the level of democracy. On the micro level, causal effects of education are also challenging to model because unobserved characteristics of individuals can be correlated with the outcome (see Card 1999 for the review of the effects of schooling on earnings). For instance, unobserved intelligence may be simultaneously correlated with the level of education and 8 The polity score ranges from -10 (hereditary monarchy) to +10 (consolidated democracy). Countries with scores between -10 and -6 are commonly described as autocracies; those with the scores from -5 to 5 as anocracies, and the rest as democracies (see 8

10 various political attitudes. A way to overcome this problem is to use an instrument, which is correlated with education but not otherwise related to the outcome, but good instruments are rare. Dee (2004) finds significant effects of additional schooling on voting turnout and support for free speech in the United States, using the availability of junior colleges and changes in teen exposure to child labour laws as instruments for schooling. However, it is not clear whether this finding would hold for transition societies. Because the WVS does not contain suitable instruments for education, its effects cannot be interpreted as causal here. Results There are substantial regional differences in the distributions of educational attainment in (Table A1 in the Appendix). The majority of adults in Europe, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa (except Iraq and Morocco) have post-primary education. University education rates are highest in Europe, with the exception of Turkey, and lowest in Sub-Saharan Africa. Among East Asian countries, China and Thailand have the lowest educational attainment rates, with the majority of the population having no post-primary education, while at least three-quarters of adults in Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam have secondary education or higher. India, the only South Asian country in the sample, has education rates closer to those of China and Thailand, with only half of the adult population educated to the secondary level or higher. Thus, the most common educational level transitions tend to vary across the regions. In Sub- Saharan Africa, Middle East/North Africa, and South Asia (India), it is the transition from below primary to primary education as well as from complete secondary to university education. In Latin America, East Asia, and Europe, where the majority do complete primary and at least some secondary education, the most typical transition is from secondary to university education. Therefore, we expect to see the biggest differences in political attitudes broadly in line with the most important educational transitions in each region. Tolerance of diversity Table 2a shows multilevel binary logistic regression estimates for three separate models: whether a respondent expresses intolerance towards people of a different race, immigrants, or people of a different religion by refusing to have these groups as neighbours, while Table 3a presents the corresponding estimates for intolerance towards people who speak a different language, homosexuals, and people with AIDS. The effect of education varies across 9

11 regions 9, so it cannot be analyzed in isolation from regional differences. Thus, Figures 1a-1f compare the predicted probabilities of expressing intolerant attitudes across educational categories and regions. Tables 2b and 3b show the corresponding differences between each educational group and the reference category (secondary education) in the predicted probability of expressing intolerant attitudes and the associated p-values. Overall, the probability of reporting intolerance towards people of a different race tends to decrease monotonically with higher educational attainment everywhere except in East Asia, where those with incomplete primary education as well as those who attended university are significantly more likely to express intolerant attitudes than those with secondary education. In Europe, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, those with education below the secondary level are significantly more likely to express intolerant attitudes, while those with university education are significantly less likely to do so, than those with at least some secondary education. In South Asia (India), the only significant difference is between those with no formal qualifications and those with secondary education. In contrast, the only significant difference in Sub-Saharan Africa is between those who attended university and those with secondary education. However, rates of university education are relatively low in the Sub-Saharan sample, ranging from only 5 percent of adults in South Africa and Burkina Faso to 14 per cent in Zambia. Everywhere except in India, where adults without secondary education are significantly less likely to be intolerant of immigrants than those with secondary education, higher levels of education are associated with lower levels of intolerance towards immigrants. In East Asia and Latin America, adults with no schooling and those with primary qualifications only are significantly more likely to express intolerance of immigrants than those with secondary education. However, there are sizeable proportions of individuals without secondary education in both these regions. Only in Europe are there significant differences between the secondary education category and every other educational group, but the most important educational transition in the region is from secondary to university education. In the Middle East/North Africa, the only significant difference is between those with primary qualifications only and those with secondary education. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where 9 There were no significant interactions between education and GDP/capita or the democracy Polity IV score, however. 10

12 between 20% and 60% of adults have no primary school qualifications, the significant difference is between those with no formal qualifications and those with secondary education. With the exception of East Asia, where those with primary qualifications are significantly less likely to express intolerant attitudes towards people of a different religion than those with secondary education, higher levels of completed education are associated with lower rates of intolerance. In Europe, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, there are significant difference between each educational category and secondary education. In India, where 28% and 22% of adults attended secondary school and university, respectively, the only significant difference is between secondary and university education. There is no significant variation by education in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the rates of intolerance towards people of a different religion, net of important individual and country characteristics, are uniformly very low (below 10%). Higher levels of education are associated with lower levels of intolerance towards people who speak a different language in every region. In the Middle East/North Africa, India and Sub-Saharan Africa, the significant differences are between no qualifications and the secondary education category. In East Asia and Latin America, the probability of expressing intolerant attitudes for those with secondary education significantly differ from those with no qualifications on the one hand and those with university education on the other. In Europe, there are significant differences between secondary education and every other category: the predicted probability of expressing intolerance towards people who speak a different language declines from 25% for those with no formal qualifications to 12% for those who attended university. Levels of intolerance towards homosexuals and people with AIDS tend to be higher than towards any other out-group studied here in every region (see Table A2 in the Annex). However, in Sub-Saharan Africa, where HIV prevalence is highest, levels of intolerance towards people with AIDS are generally lower than those towards homosexuals 10. In Europe, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa, higher educated respondents tend to be less intolerant of homosexuals, although in Sub-Saharan Africa the significant difference is between those with primary qualifications and those with secondary education, while in Latin America and 10 In South Africa, where the prevalence of HIV among adults aged in 2005 was 18%, according to the World Health Organisation, only 8% of WVS respondents refuse to live near AIDS sufferers. Yet, HIV prevalence was not statistically significant in the models of intolerance of homosexuals or people with AIDS (results available on request). 11

13 Europe the differences between those with secondary schooling and university education are also significant. However, in South-East Asian countries those with no secondary qualifications are significantly less likely to be intolerant of homosexuals than those with secondary education. In the Middle East/North Africa, where levels of intolerance towards homosexuals are highest of all regions (93%-96%), educational attainment has a small but significant negative effect on intolerance. In Europe, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, educational attainment has a monotonically negative effect on intolerance towards people with AIDS, with significant differences between secondary education and every other category. In Sub-Saharan Africa, where levels of intolerance towards AIDS sufferers are lowest, there are significant differences between those with no qualifications and those with secondary education. Educational attainment has no significant effect on intolerance in East Asia, while in South Asia, those with no formal qualifications are significantly less likely to express intolerant attitudes than those with secondary education. To sum up, educational attainment tends to be positively associated with higher levels of tolerance towards out-groups, although evidence for South-East Asian countries is mixed. In Europe, Latin America and the Middle East/North Africa, where the majority of adults have at least some secondary education, the most notable differences in the levels of tolerance are between those with no formal qualifications and those with secondary education, as well as between those with secondary and university education. By contrast, the biggest effects of education in Sub-Saharan Africa tend to be associated with the transition from primary to secondary education. Across regions, Latin America and Sub-Saharan Africa tend to have the lowest rates of intolerance towards different out-groups, after adjusting for important individual and country level characteristics. Political engagement Table 4a presents multilevel logistic regression estimates for political engagement and political interest. The predicted probabilities of engaging in protest politics (reporting experience or willingness of signing a petition, joining in boycotts or attending peaceful demonstrations) across educational attainment categories and regions are presented in Figure 2a, while Figure 2b shows the corresponding probabilities of reporting moderate or high interest in politics. Table 4b presents the differences in probabilities of political engagement 12

14 and interest, respectively, between each educational group and the reference category of secondary education. As expected, educational attainment has a substantial positive effect on the likelihood of reported political engagement in every region. Those with higher qualifications tend to be noticeably more likely to engage in protest politics than those with lower levels of attainment, with the biggest differences being associated with the transition from secondary to university education. However, only 26 countries were included in this analysis, with the rest being excluded due to more than 10% of missing values on the outcome variable. Thus, Egypt is the only remaining country in the Middle East/North Africa region, while the results for Sub- Saharan Africa are based on the South African, Rwandan and Zambian samples only. Therefore, these results need to be interpreted with caution. Educational attainment is associated with a significantly higher likelihood of reporting interest in politics across all regions studied here. In East Asia, the transition from no qualifications to primary education has the largest absolute effect on the propensity to be interested in politics, while in Europe and Latin America, it is the transition from secondary to university education. Both of these transitions have sizeable effects in the Middle East/North Africa. Educational attainment differences are the least pronounced in Sub- Saharan Africa, however. Indeed, the only significant differences are between those with no qualifications, and those with primary education only, compared with respondents who attended secondary school. This is not surprising given that the most common transitions in Sub-Saharan African tend to be those between no schooling to primary qualifications and between primary and secondary education. Although the results of the two models are not strictly comparable, being based on somewhat different samples, there is less regional variation in political interest than in political engagement. Understanding of democracy Table 5 presents multilevel linear regression estimates for four different types of procedural understanding of democracy: people choose their leaders in free elections; civil liberties protect against oppression; people can change laws through referenda; and women have the same rights as men. Each item is measured on the 10-point scale from 1 not an essential characteristic of democracy to 10 an essential characteristic of democracy. Figures 3a-3d 13

15 report the corresponding predicted scores, adjusted for important individual and country level characteristics. Higher educational attainment tends to be associated with higher scores on each of the elements of procedural understanding of democracy, although the differences across educational groups are not substantively very large. In East Asia, the most notable transition tends to be the one between no schooling and primary education. In Europe, procedural understanding of democracy is uniformly high (around 9 points), irrespective of educational attainment. In Latin America and in Sub-Saharan Africa, the biggest differences tend to be between those with secondary education and those who attended university. Across regions, procedural understanding of democracy is least prevalent, on the whole, in the Middle East/North Africa, with small but significant differences between university educated respondents and the rest. On the other hand, respondents tend to overwhelmingly understand democracy in procedural terms in Europe and Latin America. The most striking regional differences are observed with regards to gender equality: net of individual and country characteristics, the mean score is around 7 out of 10 in the Middle East/North Africa, irrespective of educational attainment, compared with around 8 in East Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa, where there is a pronounced education gradient, and 9 out of 10 in Europe and Latin America, regardless of education. Overall, these results are consistent with the finding in Inglehart and Norris (2003) that gender-role attitudes are substantially more traditional in the Middle East/North African region. Table 6 covers regression estimates for four different types of instrumental understanding of democracy: governments tax the rich and subsidise the poor; people receive state aid for unemployment; the economy is prospering; and criminals are severely punished. Figures 4a- 4d report the corresponding predicted scores, net of individual and country level characteristics. Unlike for procedural understanding of democracy, there is no uniform pattern for the four instrumental items. Educational attainment has a negative effect on the first two, governments tax the rich and subsidize the poor and people receive state aid for unemployment, although its strength varies by region, but an overall positive effect on the third item, the economy is prospering. There is no discernible effect of education on the degree of agreement with the fourth statement, criminals are severely punished. Norris 14

16 (2011) combines these four items into one linear scale and finds a small, albeit significant, positive effect of educational attainment. The analyses of last two items, religious authorities interpret the laws and army takes over when the government is incompetent, are based on only 15 and 16 countries, respectively, with fewer than 10% of missing cases on the outcome variables. Although these results need to be interpreted with caution, educational attainment has a negative effect on the degree of agreement with each of these statements. For instance, in Europe and in Latin America, the mean fitted score for the first item, religious authorities interpret the laws, is around one whole point higher among those with no qualifications than among the university educated. In the Middle East/North Africa and in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the overall levels of agreement with this authoritarian interpretation of democracy is highest, the corresponding differences between the lowest and highest educated are about half a point. Only in East Asia are there no significant differences by educational attainment at all. As regards the second item, the largest differences by education are observed in Latin America. This is not surprising given the history of military rule in the region. The mean level of agreement with the statement that it is an essential characteristic of democracy for the army to take over when the government is incompetent, net of other predictors, is 1.6 points higher for those with no formal qualifications (5.35) than for the university educated (3.75). This is a substantively and statistically significant difference. However, there are no notable differences across regions for this item: the mean adjusted score is around 5 out of 10 across the board. Education and attitudes in six transition societies over time This section analyses the effects of education on tolerance of diversity, political engagement and support for democracy in six large countries Argentina, Mexico, China, India, South Africa and Turkey for the period of nearly two decades. Tolerance of diversity is measured here using the survey question about attitudes to homosexuality, as well as the questions about refusing to have people of a difference race, immigrants, or those with AIDS as neighbours. Political engagement is measured using the indicator of protest politics. Unfortunately, India had to be excluded from the analysis because of the high prevalence of 15

17 missing values 11. Interest in politics, which has valid information for every country except China, is also analysed here. Finally, support for democracy is measured using the 4-point scale describing having a democratic political system as 1 very good, 2 good, 3 bad or 4 very bad. However, it is only available in the last three rounds of the survey and it tends to have substantial numbers of missing values. Excluding the samples with more than 10% missing data on this indicator leaves only Argentina and Turkey. Alternative measures of support for democracy suffer from similar drawbacks 12. Table 8a shows average levels of agreement with the statement that homosexuality is justifiable. The 10-pont scale ranges from 1 never justifiable to 10 always justifiable 13. Everywhere except China, mean levels of tolerance of homosexuality rise noticeably over time. In China, average support dipped slightly from 1.4 to 1.1 between 1995 and 2001, rising to 1.6 in Overall, the two Latin American countries, Argentina and Mexico, show the highest levels of tolerance, while China and Turkey appear to be the least permissive of homosexuality. Educational attainment is significantly associated with higher levels of tolerance, on average, in each of the countries studied here except India, even after controlling for age, gender, labour market activity, marital status and religiosity, as well as year of the survey. Some of the largest effects of education are observed in Argentina and Mexico. Those with no formal qualifications or primary education only report levels of tolerance around one point lower on the 1-10 scale, on average, than those with secondary education in these two countries. In contrast, university educated respondents have mean tolerance scores of around half a point higher than those with secondary education, everything else being equal. The effects of education in China and South Africa are somewhat smaller in magnitude, albeit still statistically significant and of the expected sign. In Turkey, the only significant difference is between the university educated, who are the most tolerant, and those with secondary education or lower. At the same time, levels of tolerance do not vary significantly by education in India, except that respondents with no qualifications have higher average tolerance scores than those with secondary education. This difference of one-fifth of a point 11 8% in 1990, 31% in 1995, 16% in 2001 and 19% in Importance of democracy and understanding of democracy are only available in the fifth wave, while democracy is the best form of government is only available in the third and fourth waves. 13 Missing values were imputed with the mean score for each year that this survey item was available. However, the effects of education and other predictors are very similar if the original variable is used instead (results available on request). 16

18 is not substantively significant, however. Although education has substantial positive effects on tolerance of homosexuality, on average, these models explain relatively little of its variance: the adjusted R-squared ranges from only 3% in South Africa to 13% in Argentina and India. This suggests that various other important predictors have been omitted, such as the respondents own sexual orientation, for example, although marital status may capture some of its effects. Controlling for individual characteristics, average tolerance levels tend to be significantly higher in than in , with the largest increases in India, Mexico and Argentina, and the smallest wave-on-wave differences in China and Turkey. Interacting educational attainment with the year of the survey shows that everywhere except in Mexico and Turkey average tolerance levels of various educational groups vary at different rates over time (see Figures A1a-A1d in the Appendix; full estimates available on request). In Argentina, mean tolerance scores, adjusted for other characteristics in the model, rose fastest between 1995 and 2006 for adults with secondary education or higher, suggesting that the substantial overall increase in tolerance levels over this period was concentrated among the higher educated. At the same time, despite virtually no change in mean tolerance levels in China between 1995 and 2007, there was a non-negligible increase among the university educated from 1.6 to 2.6 on the 10-point scale. A similar pattern is observed in South Africa, with the largest increases concentrated among the university educated. In contrast, the largest increases in tolerance of homosexuality in India are observed among those without secondary education. Table 8c shows the proportions of adults in each of the last three waves expressing unwillingness to live near people of a different race, immigrants, or those with AIDS. Table 8d reports the differences in intolerance levels by education and year of the survey controlling for other relevant demographic characteristics. Overall, the two Latin American countries appear to be the most tolerant of diversity. More highly educated respondents tend to be the most tolerant everywhere on each of the three indicators. Average levels of racial intolerance tend to decrease over time in each of the countries studied here except India, where intolerance increases somewhat. There is some evidence to suggest that the effects of education on racial intolerance vary over time in Mexico, India, South Africa and Turkey (see Figures A2a-A2d in the Appendix), but the university educated remain the most racially tolerant in every period. 17

19 Average levels of intolerance of immigrants decrease in Argentina, Mexico and Turkey, stay roughly the same in China, and increase in India and South Africa. Including an interaction term between education and year of the survey shows that in China those with secondary education or higher became increasingly less intolerant between 1995 and 2001, while in the next period average levels of intolerance increased somewhat among all educational groups (Figure A3b). In India, intolerance levels went up among those with primary education or lower in the first period but decreased in the second period, while actually rising somewhat among the higher educated (Figure A3c). Intolerance of people with AIDS tends to decrease over time in Argentina, Mexico, South Africa and India, while remaining relatively stable at over 60% in China and Turkey. In India, intolerance levels decrease substantially from 60% to 39% between 1995 and 2001, only to go up to 44% by These fluctuations were largely due to the changing attitudes among the lower educated, while intolerance levels were gradually falling among those with secondary education or above (Figure A4c). The largest wave-on-wave decreases are observed in South Africa, the country with the largest prevalence of HIV in the sample, where the proportion of adults expressing intolerance of people with AIDS went down from 38% in 1996 to 25% in 2001 to 8% in 2007, at roughly equal rates among all educational groups. In China average levels of intolerance went up from 62% to 79% between 1995 and 2001, but decreased somewhat to 76% by Most of this later decrease was accounted for by steeply falling intolerance levels among the university educated, although intolerance was rising among those with incomplete primary education in this period (Figure A4b). Educational attainment is associated with significantly higher likelihood of political engagement in each country (Table 9). University educated respondents are between 1.6 and 2.8 times more likely to report experience of signing a petition, joining in boycotts or attending peaceful demonstrations than those with secondary education, all else being equal. In contrast, those with no formal qualifications are only 33% - 44% as likely to do so as those with secondary education. Figure 6 summarises the observed relationship between education and self-reported political engagement, net of other relevant individual characteristics. Among the lowest educated, between 42% and 61% are expected to engage in protest politics, compared with 73% and 88% of the highest educated. Overall, the lowest adjusted rates are observed in China and the highest in Mexico. 18

20 Average levels of political engagement tend to decrease in all countries over time, although for Argentina this may be an artefact of the survey year. Levels of political engagement were significantly lower in Argentina in 1999 than in 1995, with no differences between 1995 and 2006, while there was no survey in 2001, the year of mass protests. In South Africa, average rates of political engagement were highest in 1990, compared with subsequent survey rounds in 1996, 2001 and Levels of reported interest in politics are also significantly higher among the more highly educated, everything else being equal (Table 10). This is consistent with the results of multilevel analysis for the full sample of countries. The odds of being very interested in politics, as opposed to the combined categories of somewhat, not very, or not at all interested, are between 1.2 and 2.5 times higher for the university educated than for those with secondary education, holding other predictors constant. At the same time, those with no formal qualifications are only 63% - 33% as likely to report the highest level of interest in politics as those with secondary education. Figure 7a shows the predicted probabilities of reporting high interest in politics, ranging from 2% - 11% among the lowest educated to 14% - 25% among the highest educated. Figure 7b shows the corresponding predicted probabilities of reporting moderate interest, going from 8% - 28% among the lowest educated to 28% - 49% among the highest educated. The effects of education on political engagement and political interest tend to be stable over time. Higher educated citizens in both Argentina and Turkey are significantly more likely to view democracy more positively, even controlling for other relevant individual characteristics (Table 11). Those with no formal qualifications are about half as likely to describe having a democratic political system as very good rather than good, bad or very bad than those with secondary education, while the university educated are, in contrast, around 50%- 60% more likely to do so than the reference group. Figure 8 illustrates the magnitude of the positive effect of educational attainment on diffuse support for democracy. The probability to describe a democratic system as very good rises from 34% and 53% among the lowest educated to 63% and 65% among the highest educated in Argentina and Turkey, respectively. Overall, individual support for democracy in Argentina was significantly higher in 1995 and in 2006 than in 1999, while in Turkey, it was higher in 2007 than in 2001 or