Comparative and International Education Society

Education, Democratization, and Globalization: A Challenge for Comparative Education Author(s): Noel F. Mc Ginn Source: Comparative Education Review, Vol. 40, No. 4, Special Issue on Democratization (Nov., 1996), pp. 341-357 Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Comparative and International Education Society Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1189270 Accessed: 25/02/2009 13:54
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Guest Editorial Essay and Presidential Address Education, Democratization, and Globalization: A Challenge for Comparative Education
NOEL F. MC GINN

Today, the U.S. government and many international lending agencies are promotingwhat Adam Przeworski has called "thegreatestideologically inspiredexperiment sinceJosef Stalininitiatedthe forced industrialization of the Soviet Union."' Old friends and former enemies alike are told to swallowpainful economic prescriptionswith the confident prognosis that these will bring modernizationand democracy."Shocktherapy"for disturbed economies is justified by the promise of political and economic sanity. Policies are dressed in scant evidence, evidence woven from crossnational studies that ignore the diversity of class, gender, ethnicity, and the changes of time. A key part of the "greatestexperiment"is the export of a "civiceducation" preaching that democracy is the free market plus capitalism and that democracy'sgrowth is to be measured by the increase of private wealth. The Siberian city of Krasnoyarsk,for example, has-with the promise of off-shore funding-invited Western educators to help plan for teaching the skills of the market economy.2The U.S.-based Center for International Private Enterprise receives public funds through the American Chamber of Commerce to provide skill training for business associations,information for economicjournalists, and entrepreneurship training for militaryofficers. The programsinsist on "accuracy, integrity, commitment to the basic principles of a market economy, and clear-eyed

EDITOR'S NOTE. -To commemorate the Review's fortieth year of publication, we are closing volume 40 with a special issue. This is a departure from our normal practice, which is to open each volume with a special edition. In view of this change, we will open volume 41 (February 1997) with a regular issue, and we will issue no special editions during 1997. For the current special issue, we invited Noel F. McGinn to serve as guest editor and acknowledge with gratitude the support furnished by the Harvard University Institute for International Development.

E. H. E.
Klees, Nasir Jalil, Mary McGinn, Mary Lou McGinn, Thomas Welsh, and James Williams. Their friendship is much appreciated. 1 Adam Przeworski, "The Neoliberal Fallacy,"Journal of Democracy3, no. 3 (1992): 45. 2 See Jan L. Tucker, "Global Lessons from Siberia," Social Education 57, no. 3 (March 1993): 101-3. Education Review, vol. 40, no. 4. Comparative ? 1996 by the Comparative and International Education Society. All rights reserved. 0010-4086/96/4004-0001 $01 .00
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In the process of preparingthis article,I receivedexcellent advice from ErwinEpstein,Steven

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cost-benefit calculation."3 The United States spent $35 million on voter education in South Africabefore the general elections there, leadingJesse Jackson to note that this was about $35 million more than Uncle Sam had spent educating Americans about how to vote.4 This is bitterly ironic, as the country promoting this civic education has low and declining levels of political participation, a rate of prison construction that leads the world, a worsening income distributionwith slow or no growth in real wages, and a citizenrywith a deepening distrust not just of the federal government but of all forms of collective action. The United States, like Britain, has become a country facing an age of diminished expectations.5 Some of America'sfriends have noted this contradictionbetween the United Statesat home and its efforts to export democracy. Czech president Vaclav Havel, for example, writes that "democracy in its present Western form arouses skepticism and mistrust in many parts of the world.... Democracy is seen less and less as an open system that is best able to respond to people's basic needs-that is, as a set of possibilities that continually must be sought, redefined and brought into being. Instead, democracyis seen as something given, finished and complete as is, something that can be exported like cars or television sets, something that the more enlightened purchase and the less enlightened do not."6 Educators face a special challenge and opportunity to address and redress these problems. The challenge is to reject false nationalism and through comparativescience to help satisfya worldwidehunger for a real democratization. The opportunity is to do researchthat celebratescultural and fosters social and political integrationof peoples. Educators diversity should reject the homogenizationthat follows from a centrallycontrolled world market.They should denounce the betrayalof democracy contained in the privatizationof politics. Four major issues call for attention from those who practicecomparative education. These are the decline of democraticpracticeand participation in the industrializedworld, our own confusion as to why education does not help resolve this problem, the impact of economic globalization on education and on democratization,and the urgency for comparative research on cultural diversity rather than individualdifferentiation and on social integration rather than political and economic homogenization.
3 See John D. Sullivan, "Democratization and Business Interests," Journal of Democracy5, no. 4 (1994): 146-60. 4 William Dalbec, "South Africa: A Voter Education Success Story," Campaignsand Elections:The Magazinefor Political Professionals15, no. 7 (1994): 27, 55, quote on 27. 5 Paul R. Krugman, The Age of DiminishedExpectations:U.S. EconomicPolicy in the 1990s (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994). 6 Vaclav Havel, "Democracy's Forgotten Dimension,"Journal of Democracy 6, no. 2 (1995): 4-10, quote on 7.
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The Declining Practice of Democracy

Voter turnout for U.S. elections is among the lowest of the industrialized countries and has been declining for the past 30 years.7 In the 1994 congressional election (which gave control of both houses of the national legislature to the Republican Party) only 38 percent of the electorate voted. Participation in municipal and school board elections-the hallmark of American local democracy-is most often less than 20 percent of the electorate. Groups of all persuasions are now bemoaning the decline of "civic society," considered essential for a democratic system.8 America's political Right is so concerned that the Heritage Foundation now calls its policy review journal the Journal of AmericanCitizenship.According to conservative Democrats, the United States should get closer to religious organizations to rediscover community and to rebuild the civic society. Mother Jones, a left-leaning magazine, urges tracing the nation's roots back to the American Revolution in order to reinvigorate the progressive movement.9 This "civic society" under discussion comprises all those organizations to which citizens can belong that make decisions and carry out actions that affect their lives. Such organizations include small business associations, veterans' clubs, women's groups, labor unions, ethnic societies, religious groups, bird-watching societies, and even bowling leagues. These organizations and the coalitions they form can counter the power of large corporations and the government. It is this balance of power that makes it possible for democratic practice to survive and thrive. The civic society, sometimes called the civic community, has four The first is civic engagement,or active participation major characteristics.10? in the discussion and resolution of public issues, which is much more important than voting per se. Associations act as schoolsfor democracyin which people learn how to argue without fighting. This is true in those associations that promote the second principal trait, political equality.Here the same rules are applied to all members, who are linked "by horizontal relationships of reciprocity and cooperation, not by vertical relationships of authority and dependency."11 These members therefore possess the third major characteristic of civic society, the attitudes and practices of mutual respect, of tolerance for disagreement, of willingness to disagree
7 This phenomenon is reported in Ruy Teixeira, The Vanishing American Voter (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1992). 8 Sidney Verba, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Henry E. Brady, Voiceand Equality:Civic Voluntarism in AmericanPolitics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995). 9 These events are reported in David S. Broder, "The Decline of Civic Life," Boston Globe (January 3, 1996). 10Robert D. Putnam, Making DemocracyWork:Civic Traditionsin Modern Italy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993). " Ibid., p. 88. ComparativeEducationReview
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without having to silence other views. Tolerance, a minimal condition, is a difficult concept. What is really called for is a willingness to allow opponents to continue to express their wrong beliefs. To do this requires shared or mutual trust, a confidence that the other will allow us to continue to express our beliefs even if they are not shared. This trust, in turn, depends on a belief in some common destiny, a solidarity in which we see the existence of others as important for some shared objective.12 All this is exercised and learned through the final key trait, active participationin associations of all kinds that permit learning how to disagree without mutual destruction and how to cooperate with solidarity in "social structures of cooperation." 13
Bowling Alone

Participation in assocations of all kinds has dropped notably in the United States and in other early industrialized democracies. The Boy Scouts, the Red Cross, women's groups, labor unions, the Lions, the Moose, the Elks, the NAACP, parent-teacher organizations, and the Audubon Society, are all examples of groups in decline. More and more of us are "bowling alone," and as a consequence there are fewer occasions in which serious public issues are debated.'4 If the flow of dialogue is taken as the measure of a community, then the mainstream appears to be drying up.15 At the same time, public attitudes toward others' behavior have become less tolerant.16 This withdrawal from public discussion, while serious, in itself is not mortal. What is life threatening for democracy, however, is the sharp decline of trust in democratic institutions and the consequent general retreat from the practice of democracy. This retreat is widespread in the industrialized countries. Some kinds of associations have suffered more than others. Membership in labor unions, for example, has declined in almost all industrialized
12 Single-minded pursuit of individual goals as some proponents of economic rationalism appear to propose ends up destroying the circumstances that permit individuals to enhance their personal positions. Ibid., p. 89. 13 Ibid. 14 Robert D. Putnam, "Bowling Alone: America's Declining Social Capital,"Journal of Democracy 6, no. 1 (1995): 65-78. 15 Some caution is in order in applying these findings to the entire body politic of the United States. The kinds of organizations included in the surveys on membership, including labor unions, are all "mainstream" associations. New forms of civic community, e.g., among immigrants or the disaffected, are likely to be underreported. This point is made in Stanley Aronowitz and Henry A. Education: Politics, Cultureand Social Criticism(Minneapolis: University of MinneGiroux, Postmodern sota Press, 1991). 16 The decline of trust in public institutions in the United States is reported in a series of articles in the WashingtonPost (Richard Morin and Dan Balz, "Americans Losing Trust in Each Other and Institutions," WashingtonPost [January 28, 1996]). Loss of trust in public institutions is not, apparently, limited to the United States but occurring in all industrialized nations except Canada. See Loek Halman, "Is There a Moral Decline? A Cross-National Inquiry into Morality in Contemporary Society," International Social ScienceJournal 47, no. 3 (1995): 419-39.
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nations. In part, this is a product of the flight of industrial capital to less-democraticcountries where worker organizations are repressed by governments. In part, it is the result of antiunion campaignsby corporations and conservative political parties.17 The decline of labor organizationsis a serious problem for democracy because they are typically(after religious organizations)the most common opportunity people have for political participation. The strength and militancyof these organizationsare more powerfully correlatedwith the level of democracy(based on political rights and civil liberties) than are scores on the Human Development Index or measures of education.18
Causes of the Decline in Participation

Several factors have contributed to the decline in popular participation. First, nondemocraticorganizations have proliferated, while direct participationassociations have lost membership. The number of special interest groups, political action committees, and lobbies has expanded geometrically.More and more individualsare limiting their participation to passive membership and financial support, or "checkbookparticipation."19 This increases the relative power of the wealthy few and leads to a privatizationof politics. Second, governments of developing countries have been encouraged international by agencies to turn over certainfunctions to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). While this has a democraticsound to it, most NGOs in developing countries are founded and controlled by elites and thus contribute little to popular participation.20 Third, the use of nonelected "expert"advisors, both national and international, in the formulation of national policies has become increasingly common worldwide.These "experts"are often wrong, however, as their policies are devised in ignorance of the ambitions and problems of the majority of the populace. More important, their leverage in public policy formulation comes at the expense of citizen participation.21 They are often an antidemocraticforce. Fourth, the latest wave of economic modernizationand globalization has widened the gap between rich and poor, powerful and weak. Studies
17For example, see Martin Jay Levitt and Terry Conrow, Confessionsof a Union Buster (New York: Crown, 1993). 18The methodology for estimating level of democracy is found in Raymond D. Gastile, Freedom in the World: Political Rights and Civil Liberties(New York: Greenwood, 1987). The importance of worker organizations for democratization is described in Ali R. Abootalebi, "Democratization in Developing Countries: 1980-1989," Journal of Developing Areas 29, no. 4 (1995): 507-30. 19Verba et al. (n. 8 above). Putnam refers to these as "mailing list" organizations (Robert D. Putnam, "The Strange Disappearance of Civic America," AmericanProspect24 [Winter 1996]: 34-48). 20 John Clark, "The State, Popular Participation, and the Voluntary Sector," WorldDevelopment 23, no. 4 (1995): 593-601. 21Brian Crisp, "Limitations to Democracy in Developing Capitalist Societies: The Case of Venezuela," WorldDevelopment22, no. 10 (1994): 1491-509.
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show that the forms of democracy-such as elections-are unable to overcome great inequalities in wealth and power, and these disparities block participation in public affairs.22
Why Education Has Not Resolved or Prevented This Problem

The evidence I have presented poses a special problem for educators. We are wont to believe that education contributes to democracy. However, the decline in the civic community and democratic practice is reported among the world's best-educated countries even as levels of education have risen sharply. Should we believe that even more education will increase participation? Here we should distinguish between the participation of individuals and rates of participation in a society. Research examining the impact of education on individual behavior has been extensive. For example, levels of education are significant (although not powerful) predictors of individual voter registration and voting.23 Participants in student protests of the 1960s were more likely to be high achievers in high school and to come from well-educated families.24 The number of years of schooling of individual Mexican-Americans and African-Americans is associated with their participation in elections.25 People who go to college are much more likely to both vote in elections and participate in civic associations than those who do not attend college.26 There is no doubt that education contributes to individual differentiation. When education is used to differentiate between people, however, overall expansion of education will not necessarily increase overall levels
22For a perspective from Brazil, see Malak Poppovic and Paulo Sergio Pinheiro, "How to Consolidate Democracy? A Human Rights Approach," International Social ScienceJournal 47, no. 1 (1995): 75-89. 23 See David Kaplan and Richard L. Venezky, Literacyand Voting Behavior: A Statistical Analysis Based on the 1985 YoungAdult LiteracySurvey(Philadelphia: National Center for Adult Literacy, 1995); Robert A. Jackson, "Clarifying the Relationship between Education and Turnout," AmericanPolitics Quarterly23, no. 3 (1995): 279-300. 24 Darren E. Sherkat and T. Jean Blocker, "The Political Development of Sixties' Activists: Identifying the Influence of Class, Gender and Socialization of Protest Participation," Social Forces 72, no. 3 (March 1994): 821-42. 23 Christopher G. Ellison and Bruce London, "The Social and Political Participation of Black Americans: Compensatory and Ethnic Community Perspectives Revisited," Social Forces 70, no. 3 (March 1992): 681 - 701; Terrence G. Wiley, "Literacy, Biliteracy and Education Achievement among the Mexican-Origin Population in the United States," Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education 14, nos. 1-3 (1990): 109-27. 26 William E. Knox, Paul Lindsay, and Mary N. Kolb, Does CollegeMake a Difference?Long-Term Changes in Activitiesand Attitudes(Greenwood, Conn.: Greenwood, 1993). Similar results have been reported for Italy, in a study on political participation at the level of regional government. Those individuals with more years of schooling both participate more and have more confidence in their ability to influence the course of events. More-educated persons are more likely to have coherent opinions on issues, to express these opinions, and to attempt to influence public decisions in accord with their opinions and are more willing to defend the right of others to disagree with them. See Putnam, Making DemocracyWork(n. 10 above).
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of participation. As a consequence, greater educational levels in the United States and Britain have not contributed to further democratization.27 The same holds for Italy, where there is no relationship between participation at the community or regional level and aggregate educational attainment, taken at various points in time.28 Community-level variations in educational attainment and gross enrollment ratios do not account for variations in the level of participation in the civic community.29 How might this failure of formal education to expand democracy in some cases be explained? There are at least four alternative explanations, three of which blame the schools while the fourth identifies antidemocratic forces that compete with schools. The first explains changes in the impact of education in terms of changes in who is being educated. The second looks at how much time is spent on civic education. The third examines changes in the quality of civic education. And the fourth argues that alternative institutions of learning have proliferated and that these institutions see democratization as a barrier to economic growth. The first hypothesis, which explains changes in the impact of education in terms of changes in who is being educated, is suggested by the work of Gerald W. Bracey. He answered critics of American public education by showing that while overall average test scores have indeed declined over a 20-year period, the scores of each subpopulation have increased.30 Even children from poor families and certain minority groups-who traditionally have scored lower on achievement tests-are doing better. However, because proportionately more poor and minority children are in public schools now than before, the overall average score has declined. In other words, Bracey pointed out, it is the success of public education in including those groups previously excluded that has provoked criticisms. Is it possible that the decline in political participation is a result of changes in the overall population of the United States? The population now has a
27Clive Harber, "Anti-racism and Political Education for Democracy in Britain," in In Education for Democratic Citizenship: A Challengefor Multi-ethnic Societies, ed. R. S. Sigel and M. Hoskin (Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum, 1991), pp. 25-43. The disjunction between level of education and level of democratic practice in the United States dates at least from the 1970s (Byron Massialas, "Education and Political Development," Comparative Education Review 21, nos. 2-3 [June-October 1977]: 274-95). 28 Putnam, Making DemocracyWork. 29 It is important to keep in mind the distinction between participation in the civic community and participation in the forms of electoral democracy. Even when denied the right to vote, some minority groups in the United States maintained their civic community. The elimination of discrimination in education increased voting rates among these groups but had no positive effect on the vitality of their civic community. Nonwhite voter turnout increased sharply after the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and as a consequence of increased expenditures on education for minorities. See John E. Filer, Lawrence E. Kenny, and Rebecca M. Morton, "Voting Laws, Educational Policies, and Minority Turnout," Journal of Law and Economics34, no. 2 (1991): 371-93. 30See Gerald W. Bracey, "The Third Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," Phi Delta Kappan 75, no. 2 (October 1993): 104-12, 114-18, and "The Fourth Bracey Report on the Condition of Public Education," Phi Delta Kappan 76, no. 2 (October 1994): 115-27.
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had proportionatelylarger share of ethnic groups that have traditionally lower levels of civic participation.31 If this explanationwere correct,then (morerapidly raisingthe educationlevelsof Latinosand African-Americans than they increase their share of the total population)might increasethe average level of political participationand rejuvenate democracyin the United States. The evidence is against this hypothesis, however. Robert Putnam'sdata suggest that declines in participation have occurred in all The second hypothesis focuses on changes in time spent on civic education, a topic that clearlyhas been relegated to secondaryimportance in U.S. curricula.At one time our schools were concerned with building a nation of democraticcommunities-John Dewey'sgreat dream. During the past 20 years, however, schools have increased their attention to individualizing moral education, reducing the time spent on civic
education.33 groups.32

The shift has been accompaniedby an increasedemphasison competition among students, a trend that raises pressuresfor individualachievement while reducing social solidarity.In another irony, what some consider our "best"schools produce bright students who withdrawfrom the The formula may larger society to live and work in elite communities.34 increases individualism to the detriment of community; be, "Schooling ergo, increasing education increases social disintegration."35 This negative result from schooling is especially likely when three conditionsare present. First,schooling is used to assign people to different
We are lacking a careful distinction between civic participation in the larger society and civic participation in the community of the minority group. The first is often constrained by discrimination by majority groups. 3 Putnam, "Strange Disappearance" (n. 19 above). 33See The Revival of Values Educationin Asia and the West,ed. William K. Cummings, S. Gopinathan, and Yasumasa Tomoda (Oxford: Pergamon, 1988). 34Schools attempt to teach working-class children to comply with rules over which they have little control, but middle- and upper-class children are taught how to organize the social system to their benefit (Jean Anyon, "Social Class and School Knowledge," CurriculumInquiry 11, no. 1 [1981]: 3-39). Robert Reich argues that elite public and private schools teach children to put their personal interests ahead of the community, essentially to "secede" from the community (Robert Reich, The Workof Nations [New York: Vintage, 1991]). 35 A study of 116 countries between 1960 and 1985 distinguishes two statistically independent measures of social disintegration. The first measure includes counts of coups, revolutions, constitutional changes, and reductions of political and civil rights. The variables refer to antidemocratic actions taken against or by the government. The level of primary education had a modest negative correlation with country scores on this measure. That is, coups and violations of civil rights are slightly less frequent in countries with higher levels of primary education than in those with lower levels. A second, independent measure of disintegration counted assassinations, riots, and strikes. Riots and strikes are not necessarily directed against a government, but they do reflect the absence of less aggressive mechanisms for conflict resolution. Countries with these characteristics were more likely to have higher levels of secondary education. That is, violent forms of protest are more common in countries with higher levels of secondary education (and blocked means for peaceful protest). See Robert Klitgaard and Johannes Fedderke, "Social Integration and Disintegration: An Exploratory Analysis of Cross-Country Data," WorldDevelopment23, no. 3 (1995): 357-69.
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levels of employment and, therefore, differentiated access to income and power. Second, the overall volume of employment is increasing less rapidly than the population. Third, the organizationof production is changing so that proportionatelyfewer highly educated workersare required. These conditions appear to describemany industrialized countries, which are characterizedby rising unemploymentlevels despite economic growth and an increasing gap in earnings based and an abundance of capital36 on education levels.37 of civic educaThe third explanation examines changes in the quality tion. Examination-drivenassessment measures citizenship in terms of cognitive knowledge, and the fever of global competitivenesshas exacerbated emphasison cognitivelearning.This focus reduces time for learning democraticbehaviors, despite clear evidence-that adult participationis Schools spend predictedby participationas a student- not by test scores.38 a lot of time teaching aboutdemocracy,leaving less time for doingdemocracy. Especially absent is practice in how to legitimately challenge the Students have little opclaims, assumptions, and promises of authority.39 portunity or encouragement to get involved in "adult"matters, almost never in the larger community and seldom in their schools. Finally, while schools have never had a monopoly on the education of children, much less adults, the message of the schools is enhanced by that of other institutions in societies that are integrated socially and politically.The fourth explanation for declining participationargues that other institutions now preach an antidemocraticmessage and that the is a resultof learningfrom these institutions. declineof politicalparticipation
The Impacts of Globali7ation

Most of the antidemocraticinstitutionscan be associatedwith the set of phenomena called globalization, which weakens the effectiveness of institutions for democraticgovernment in at least three ways. First, the rise of transnationalcorporations and banks-and a parallel growth of supranational organizations-reduces the sovereignty of even the most
36Jeremy Rifkin, "The End of Work?"New Statesman and Society8, no. 356 (June 9, 1995): 18-23.

37Richard Murnane and Frank Levy, "Why Today's High-School-Educated Males Earn Less than Their Fathers Did: The Problem and an Assessment of Responses," Harvard EducationalReview 63, no. 1 (Spring 1993): 1-19. 38 Verba et al. (n. 8 above). See also Judith V. Torney, A. N. Oppenheim, and Russell F. Farnen, Civic Education in Ten Countries:An Empirical Study (New York: Wiley, 1975), who argued that democratic values are not so much the result of school lessons as of the general political culture and the atmosphere of the school. Their data showed that emphasis on the learning of facts in civic education produces students who are less democratic. 39Edward G. Rozycki, "Education for Democracy: Is This More than Rhetoric?" Educational Horizons 73, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 57-59; Hilton Smith, "It's Education for, Not about, Democracy," Educational Horizons 73, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 62-69.
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powerful nation-states.40 International agreements such as the Bretton Woods Agreement (which created the International Monetary Fund in 1947), the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT, which created the World Trade Organization), and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) legitimate nondemocratic decision-making bodies. The members of these supranational organizations are neither elected by majorities from the countries they represent nor accountable to elected officials in those countries. The champions of free trade insist on decentralization and deregulation, while agreements on international trade are highly regulated and centralized. Once governments' hands are tied, they can then deny the legitimate requests of their citizens in the name of such agreements. This goes to the heart of the decline of confidence in democratic institutions. Democracy requires that government and people are able to honor their reciprocal commitments. Surrender of sovereignty breaks the bond of trust. Globalization also affects the consensus about the proper tasks of education. Except in colonies, schools are a product of communities-in some countries, local; in other countries, national. These communities organized education to reproduce values and institutions considered central to identity and progress, and schools developed more or less organically as a result, shaped by internal processes. The limitations or achievements of the school mirrored the limitations or achievements of the community. Schools taught democracy in democratic societies, authoritarianism in authoritarian societies. Globalization, however, brings winds of change to buffet communities. Information and images from other cultures-delivered by an uncontrolled global media-threaten cherished beliefs. Capitalists demand that workers be trained to accept technologies of production designed for other economies. New arrivals demand that education match the cultural expectations of their homeland. Structural readjustment breaks down relationships of reciprocity among social classes, with each pushing harder to meet its special requirements. Those who can withdraw into private schools, thereby weakening the organic connection of schools with the community and their ability to reinforce shared values. Once a country buys into a global economy, a broad set of decisions is removed from national debate. Countries reform their education sys40See John Calvert with Larry Kuehn, Pandora's Box: CorporatePower, Free Trade and Canadian Education (Toronto: Our Schools/Our Selves Education Foundation, 1993); Noel F. McGinn, "The Impact of Supranational Organizations on Public Education," InternationalJournal of Educational Development 14, no. 3 (July 1994): 289-98; J. Reiffers, Transnational Corporationsand Endogenous (Paris: Unesco, 1982); Joel Samoff, "The Reconstruction of Schooling in Africa," ComparaDevelopment tive Education Review 37, no. 2 (May 1993): 181-222. 350 November1996

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tems in response to decisions made in nonaccountable, nontransparent, and nondemocraticcorporate headquarters and international agencies. The adjustment of education to these so-called market forces is not new, but in the past those forces were shaped by national economic policies, making them at least partiallysubject to the will of the nation. Finally,globalizationbroadensthe source and the content of learning. All societies depend on multiple sources of learning for both children and adults. Schools are only one means of acquiring knowledge, despite the privileged position given them in research. Children and adults also learn in families, in marketplaces,in work settings, in churches, and in union halls. These various sources were normally located in the same community and governed by the same values, and their political integration made possible the civic associationsdiscussed earlier. Today, however, such community-basedsources of learning have diminished in importance,to be replacedby sourcesoutside the community. For example, in many countries children now spend more time watching television than they do in school, in athletic activities, or even playing These external sources of learning are highly centralized with friends.41 and encourage passive consumption, often in isolation. Both children and adults-while watching more-participate less, have less accurate information about history and current affairs, and have less social trust.42 The message here is not just about television but also about the alternative sources of learning that comparative research has ignored. It is quite possible that the school has no direct responsibilityfor the decline in democracy.Instead, it is most likely that schools have been replaced as primary sources of learning-at least of democraticbehaviors-by nondemocraticinstitutions based outside the community.
The Antidemocratic Stance of Economic Modernization

A major source of antipathy to democraticparticipation is current Participatorydemocracy is proposals for economic "modernization."43 once again devalued because of fears that it limitseconomic development.
41Patricia Greenfield, Mind and Media: The (CamEffectsof Television, VideoGamesand Computers bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1984). In 1996 the average student is estimated to spend 40 hours per week watching television. See Putnam, "Strange Disappearance." 42These insights were originally provided by Guillermo Orozco. See also Jay G. Blumler, Television and the Public Interest (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1992); Putnam, "Strange Disappearance." None of these findings are based on experimental studies, so it is possible that they reflect a selection bias rather than the impact of television. 43This section focuses on democratic control of economic policies, but there are those who argue directly against democratic control of public schooling. These arguments are summarized in David Plank and William Boyd, "Education Reform and the International Flight from Democracy," The FORUM for Advanced Basic Education and Literacy 3, no. 4 (1994): 2-3. On other periods in history in which "democracy" was a pejorative, see Pierre Rosanvallon, "The History of the Word 'Democracy' in France," Journal of Democracy6, no. 4 (1995): 140-54.
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For example, the apparent economic miracles of authoritarian governments in southeast Asia have encouraged some leaders to argue that excessive freedom-too much democracy-is the reason the expansion of wealth in Africa and Latin America has lagged.44 Democracy is suitable for a political system, one policy analyst offers, only "when it brings with it the rule of law and formation of human capital."45Politics, the process used to inform democratic choices, has been compared unfavorably with the market, the process used to insure economic rationality.46 The most sophisticated apologists for economic reform as the road to democracy suggest that the path follows a parabolic curve. In the initial stages, the rapid destruction of existing institutions increases social disorder. The transition to a new economic order, they argue, thus requires a firm governmental hand and limitations on democratic practices and civil rights such as protests, strikes, and the formation of political opposition-even a suspension of constitutional guarantees of political rights in some cases.47 But, the enthusiasts claim, once law and order are established, democratic institutions will flourish in the favorable conditions of a healthy market economy. There is, however, no convincing empirical support for an argument that "progress" requires the suspension or postponement of democratization. Even as compiled by proponents of economic "modernization," history shows that democracy sometimes impedes growth and sometimes helps it.48The present enthusiasm for economic reform is only the latest resurgence of the belief that capitalism can cure political ills, despite
The prime minister of Malaysia explains restrictions on democracy in his high-growth country by suggesting that democracy is the end, not the means: "Should we enforce democracy on people who may not be able to handle it and destroy stability?" (quoted in Jose Maria Mavall, "The Myth of the Authoritarian Advantage," Journal of Democracy5, no. 4 [1994]: 17-31, quote on 18). 45Juan Luis Londofio, Poverty,Inequality, Social Policy and Democracy(Washington, D.C.: World Bank, Technical Department, Latin America and the Caribbean Region, 1995), p. 37. 46John E. Chubb and Terry M. Moe, Politics, Markets,and America'sSchools (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution, 1990); F. A. Hayek, Law, Legislation,and Liberty(London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1982). 47 Barbara Geddes, "Challenging the Conventional Wisdom,"Journal of Democracy 5, no. 4 (1994): 104-18; Joan M. Nelson, "Linkages between Politics and Economics," Journal of Democracy5, no. 4 (1994): 49-58. Referring to Latin America, Geddes says, "one of the reasons that democratic [sic] governments have been able to carry out successful reforms is that the urban working class . .. has usually not proved capable of impeding adjustment, protecting itself from having to shoulder significant costs, or punishing the initiators of adjustment at the polls" (p. 110). The apologetics of one of the chief presiding physicians in the administration of "shock therapy" to countries in Eastern Europe (and earlier to Bolivia) is found in Jeffrey Sachs, Poland'sJump to the Market Economy(Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1993). Sachs is not opposed to democracy, but concern for the maintenance or construction of democratic institutions does not loom large in his prescription. All will follow, he argues, from faithful adherence to the treatment. For criticism of this perspective, see John Weiner, "The Sachs' Plan in Poland," Nation (June 25, 1990); Benjamin R. Barber, Jihad vs. McWorld(New York: Times Books, 1995). 48 See Robert Barro, "Democracy and Growth," National Bureau for Economic Research Working Paper (1994); Larry Sirowy and Alex Inkeles, "The Effects of Democracy on Economic Growth and Inequality: A Review," Studies in ComparativeInternationalDevelopment25, no. 1 (1990): 126-57.
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researchin the 1970s that clearlydemonstratedthat economic modernization had little or nothing to do with how political power was shared in a country. Politics-not economics-determines conditions of equity and justice.49 I note wryly that one expert claims that the evidence now is leaning toward the position that democracyis not a hindrance to economic growth.50 A second perspective,also held by proponents of capitalisteconomics, emphasizes the other side of the equation: economic growth is essential for, and therefore must precede, democratization. Proponentsof this view national on studies cross-national using aggregate data to claim that rely education and escape from poverty are essential conditions for democracy.51Democracy is threatened, such authors say, by the greedy rich who exploit the uneducated poor. Because free-marketeconomic growth expands the educated middle class, who champion order and stability, democraticprocesses are thus strengthened. The empirical evidence to support these assertionsis summarizedin this form: "Most wealthy [and educated] countries are democratic,and most democraticcountries-India is the most dramatic exception-are Evidence to support the claims made for marketcapitalismas wealthy."52 the wellspringof democracyis of the orderthat all of the world'sindustrialOther apologistsnote that cross-national ized democraciesare "capitalist." ratings of national "freedom"-defined as the existence of political and human rights-are positively associated with classificationas a capitalist economy. Consequently, it is too risky to start with democraticreform. The best strategy is to first promote economic liberalization,which will produce the economic growth that establishesthe conditions for democracy. Claimsfor the democratizing power of structuraladjustmentare based on cross-sectionalstudies that use crude techniquesto evaluate the overall in a country. Variations in political participation level of "democracy" based on gender, race, or ethnicity are often ignored. With the exception of voting, these studies do not examine which groups actually can and As a result, the "democratic" label is sometimes do exercise formal rights.53
49 See Irma Adelman and Cynthia Taft Morris, EconomicGrowthand Social Equity in Developing Countries(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1973). 50Jagdish Bhagwati, "The New Thinking on Development," Journal of Democracy6, no. 4 (1995): 50-64. 51 The classic work in this field is Seymour M. Lipset, Political Man (New York: Doubleday, 1963). His work and conclusions have been replicated in Edward N. Muller, "Democracy, Economic Development and Income Inequality," AmericanSociologicalReview 53, no. 1 (February 1988): 50-68. 52 Samuel P. Huntington, "Democracy's Third Wave," Journal of Democracy2, no. 2 (1991): 12-34, quote on 30. 53 The methodology is described in Freedomin the World:The Annual Surveyof Political Rights and Civil Liberties,1994-1995, ed. Adrian Karatnycky (New York: Freedom House, 1995). Comparative Education Review 353

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given to countries with legal forms of democracy but low levels of participation and denied to other nations with high but nonformal participation. Different results are produced in studies that define "democracy" on the basis of the level and distribution of actual participation in public affairs. An examination of political participation in 147 countries 198088 shows healthy democracies among some of the world's poorest countries and argues that it is not possible "to establish any lower limit of GNP [gross national product] per capita that could be required as a necessary condition for democratization."54 Studies using a comparative historical method that closely follows several countries over a relatively long period conclude that no deterministic relationship exists between economic development and democratization. The high road of history is littered with once-democratic countries that collapsed into authoritarianism despite high levels of economic activity.55These studies argue that the link between capitalism and democracy is often a function of special conditions that existed when those countries were founded and that may not exist today in other nations. A recent historical analysis by Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, andJohn D. Stephens compares processes in advanced capitalist countries with those in Latin America and the Caribbean. Democratization is defined in terms of inclusionary processes and of the institutionalization of opposition to government. The authors conclude that democratization depends on the ways in which interests based on class and gender are constructed, with these constructions varying according to conditions unique to each country. The middle class has not always been the guarantor of democracy, and on some occasions democratization has resulted primarily because of actions taken by the less-educated working class.56 For every high-growth country that appears to be moving toward greater democracy, there is another that is not moving at all. Although some of the newly industrialized countries appear to be democratizing (e.g., South Korea), others (e.g., Singapore) appear to be consolidating low levels of democracy. Economic growth and democratization take different paths and move at differing rates across countries and according to region and period of history. Rapid economic growth during the 1960s in some countries induced rapid social changes that broke down traditional institutions, which increased political instability and was followed by authoritar54Tatu Vanhanen, The Process Democratization: A ComparativeStudy of 147 States (New York: of Crane, Russak, 1990), p. 198. 55See, and Democracy(Boston: Beacon, e.g., Barrington Moore, The Social Origins of Dictatorship 1966); Guillermo O'Donnell, Modernizationand BureaucraticAuthoritarianism: Studiesin South American Politics (Berkeley: University of California, Institute of International Studies, 1979). 56See Dietrich Rueschemeyer, Evelyne Huber Stephens, and John D. Stephens, CapitalistDevelopment and Democracy(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992).
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Powerian regimes.57 Unfortunatelyfor some, there is no end to history.58 ful empires rise and fall, prosperous nations lose their wealth, and democraciescan become tyrannical.59
A Different Focus for Comparative Fducation

What does this mean for us as educators? I believe there are three major imperatives,the first being to abandona reliance on national comparisons. Because modern comparative education was conceived in the era of passionate nationalismthat followed World War I, it is not surprising that so much of our work has privileged national education systems as units of analysis.60The tradition of "our schools versus theirs," as Edmund King might put it,61continues with efforts to improve statistics and tests to show who is ahead in the global academicrace. These efforts are misguided, as so many of the leading figures of the Comparative and International Education Society-Arnold Anderson, Philip Foster, Harold Noah, Barbara Yates, and Gary Theisen, among others-have insisted in their criticismsof national comparisons.62 Today more than ever, an exclusive focus on national differences blinds us to the sources and benefits of internal diversity.We risk losing a unique chance to use our science to contributeto a worldwidemovement toward democratization.People worldwideare demanding a voice in the decisions that affect their lives. They want democracyin their relationships, in their families, in their communities, in their places of work, and in their governments. We hear their cries as a chorus, because each has a unique history. They contribute different values and different skills,
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E. Huntington, The Third Wave (Norman: Oklahoma University Press, 1991). See Francis Fukuyama, The End of Historyand the Last Man (New York: Free Press, 1992). 59See Paul Kennedy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers:EconomicChange and Military Conflict from 1500 to 2000 (New York: Vintage, 1987). 60"National rivalries are to be decried, but in one field alone can it be claimed without contradiction that competition is wholesome and that is in education.... If it is true that rivalries are due to misunderstanding, the study of national educational systems furnishes one of the most all-embracing of approaches to the comprehension of national aims and ideals" (I. L. Kandel, Educational Yearbook the InternationalInstitute of TeachersCollege, ColumbiaUniversity[New York: Macmillan, 1925], 1:ix). 61 Edmund J. King, OtherSchoolsand Ours, 5th ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1979). 62For example, Arnold Anderson, in "Comparative Education over a Quarter Century: Maturity and Challenges," ComparativeEducation Review 21, nos. 2-3 (1977): 405-16, noted that there is greater variation in "national systems" of education than between them. Max Eckstein, in "The Comparative Mind," ComparativeEducation Review 27, no. 3 (October 1983): 311-22, argued that the metaphor of "national system" obscures important internal differences. Philip Foster, in "Education and Social Differentiation in Less Developed Countries," ComparativeEducation Review 21, nos. 2-3 (1977): 211-29, commented on the differential allocation and content of education to groups within countries. Barbara A. Yates, in "Comparative Education and the Third World: The Nineteenth Century," ComparativeEducation Review 28, no. 4 (November 1984): 533-49, discussed variations within colonial transplants. Gary L. Theisen, Paul P. W. Achola, and Francis Musa Boakari, in "The Underachievement of Cross-National Studies of Achievement," Comparative EducationReview 27, no. 1 (February 1983): 46-68, decried the underachievement of cross-national studies.
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and some voices carry farther than others. Their diversity produces a rich harmony. Second, our work should seek to increase democratic participation among all peoples. Diversity is not only attractive, but also, more important, provides the means to offset the wasting power of entropy. Human, as well as physical, systems lose energy over time and can only survive and thrive by increasing organizational complexity, that is, by increasing both internal diversity and integration.63 Systems die when their membership becomes too homogeneous to respond to a changing as the participation of all environment. Democratization-understood in and decisions that affect them-is essential to making people framing social and political integration, because it makes possible concerted action without erasing fundamental differences. Research in comparative education can contribute to democratization by celebrating communities of interest at local, national, and global levels. Although the antidemocratic forces I have described are strong, we do not have to retreat into deterministic fatalism. The same flows that are so disruptive of national institutions of social and political integration also increase our international contacts, permitting integration at a higher level. The same economic forces that reduce the role of labor in the production of basic necessities permit us to design economies and strategies for worker organizations to achieve equity and justice. The same processes that reduce the effectiveness of schools as agents of socialization also make possible new kinds of education for the formation of international communities. Finally, our work should be designed to increase, rather than diminish, the role of public politics in social and economic life. Research on education and democratization clearly demonstrates that democratic engagement in adult life is the result of having participated as a youth. Cognitive knowledge and attitudes do not predict later participation, but student participation in adult political activities does. In other words, direct participation in political affairs is the best school for democracy. If schools increase such participation by young people, they also will increase overall levels of political activity in society. That is, the best way to increase democratic political participation is to politicize the societies in which we live.64 In addition to training in the skills of democracy-communication, deliberative process, negotiation, and coalition formationdemocratization requires increased awareness of unmet objectives and the
63 Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, OrderOut of Chaos:Man's New Dialogue with Nature (New York: Bantam, 1984). 64See Luis Albala-Bertrand, "The Need to Reinforce Citizenship Education Worldwide: A Conceptual Framework for Research," Educational Innovation and Information82 (May 1995): 2-9; Verba et al. (n. 8 above).
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obstacles to their realization. Each group has different objectives, and while democratizationrequires attention to those differences, it also seeks integration into a shared process of problem solving. Our research,therefore, should not be restrictedto the use of national aggregates to compare complex countries. Instead, we should elaborate the education and democraticbehavior of both international and local communities. It is important to remember that the term "nation"originally referred to a people with a common language and culture.According to that definition, there are about 5,000 nations in the world, although there are fewer than 200 nation-states. Differences of race and gender should be honored rather than ignored. We should abandon research that, even within countries, treats education or schooling as common across groups, varying only in quantity. We cannot design effective programs for integration unless we recognize the enormous wealth that resides in the diversity of the human species. The great experiment for CIES is to learn how to use all kinds of education to build a society that honors all people and where all work together in the pursuit of the good of all.

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