Democracy and Education: Testing Rival Perspectives (Comparative Study of Intergovernmental Data from 1970 to 2018)

Scholars have long considered the relationship between democracy and the educational system at least in four rival perspectives: education as a prerequisite for democracy, educational services in democratic governments, reproductive communication, and the false relation between education and democracy arising from economic infrastructure. The purpose of this article is to test these forms using inter-country data. The method used in the present study is the secondary analysis of data collected for 180 countries between 1970 and 2018. Generally, the results showed that there is a significant relationship between democracy and educational indicators, but the effect of democracy on education is more considerable and have more explanatory power. The mediating role of class inequality alone was not confirmed, but this variable along with other variables such as student-teacher ratio and students out of school rate had a significant effect on the relationship between democracy and education. Finally, implications for further research are discussed