Diana Rafailova (European University Institute)

School Quality under Distinct Political Regimes: Do Autocracies Discourage Critical Thinking?

Abstract: Do democracies provide better schooling compared to their non-democratic counterparts? While democracy predicts some improvements in the quantity of education, prior research has observed the null relationship between political regimes and average student achievement. This paper argues that, unlike democratic governments, autocrats do not cultivate critical thinking in schools, which results in subject-specific associations between democracy and student achievement. To test this argument, I conduct a time-series cross-sectional analysis of the largest database on students’ learning outcomes. The results show the positive association between democracy and students’ scores in subjects that require critical thinking, but not in those that require primarily subject-specific knowledge. Complementarily, multilevel analysis of individual-level performance in PISA provides more fine-grained evidence that democracy accounts for concrete critical thinking abilities. To illustrate how autocracies may discourage such abilities, I conduct a qualitative case study of Russia, a country where state-approved textbooks with noncontroversial and uncritical narratives transmit values of political loyalty. Taken together, the findings shed new light on school quality under distinct political regimes.