Democratic values, education, and political trust

Abstract

This article examines the links between education, democratic values, and political trust. Research on education systems as carriers of modern orientations and democratic values worldwide predicts that educated individuals will exhibit more democratic values than less educated ones, regardless of the country’s level of democracy. In the political culture approach, political trust can be understood as a reflection of the congruence or incongruence between individual democratic values and the level of democracy of the political system, which emphasizes trust’s relational character. Integrating these strands of literature, I formulate hypotheses about the mediating effect of democratic values between education and political trust. To test these hypotheses, I employ multilevel models of data from the World Values Survey and the European Values Study covering 73 countries. The results show that democratic values partially mediate the effect of education on political trust, but the magnitude of this effect depends on the level of democracy. Analyses also show that, while education is positively associated with democratic values regardless of the country’s level of democracy, this association is much stronger in democratic countries than in non-democratic ones.

Modeling public opinion over time and space: Trust in state institutions in Europe, 1989-2019

“…Second, what are the differences in trust levels between age, sex, or education groups? The recent debate on democratic deconsolidation has primarily focused on differences between age groups and cohorts, but differences between education groups have been identified as consequential in explaining the links between political trust and democracy in cross-country studies (Hakhverdian and Mayne, 2012;Kołczyńska, 2020b). Longitudinal studies of political and social attitudes also point to important dynamics in between-sex differences (Shorrocks and Grasso, 2020;Goossen, 2020;O'Grady, 2020).…”

“…More research has delved into the role of educational attainment, finding that differences in political trust between education groups depend on the country's democratic quality and on the pervasiveness of publicsector corruption: in more democratic and less corrupt countries education tends to be positively associated with trust (Hakhverdian and Mayne, 2012;Kołczyńska, 2020b). The question about the causal mechanism remains unsettled, but Hakhverdian and Mayne (2012) and Mayne and Hakhverdian (2017) point to the accuracy-inducing and norm-inducing role of education as potential explanations.…”

Quality of Democracy Makes a Difference, but Not for Everyone: How Political Interest, Education, and Conceptions of Democracy Condition the Relationship Between Democratic Quality and Political Trust

“…In addition, a number of researchers have pointed to the role of education, suggesting that apart from its accuracy-inducing function (see above, hypothesis 3), education also has a norm-inducing function. According to this view, higher education elicits stronger support for core democratic values and principles (Evans and Rose, 2007;Kotzian, 2011;Kołczyńska, 2020), which then leads to citizens attaching higher priority to democratic quality when evaluating their political system (Hakhverdian and Mayne, 2012;van der Meer and Hakhverdian, 2017;Monsiváis-Carrillo and Cantú Ramos, 2020). Empirically, while previous studies confirm a moderating effect of education on how democratic quality relates to political trust (see above), evidence for an interaction between democratic quality and citizens' value orientations is scarce and at best mixed.…”

The STEAM approach: Implementation and educational, social and economic consequences

“…Throughout these pages we have dealt with STEAM education from a double perspective: first, starting from an already established STEM education, we discuss what a STEAM education integrated with the arts is and could be like; second, we address the consequences that an education thus conceived has for the economy, the individual and society, highlighting the need from each of these three areas the need to train in the humanistic field, without forgetting the scientific, to provide a well-rounded education that responds to the needs of our world at all levels, including the economic one. We follow this twofold approach because we contend, alongside with many other authors (e.g., Kołczyńska, 2020;Rusinek & Aróstegui, 2015), that education holds both technical and political issues that we cannot ignore, hence the need for delineating "a policy thought as a key element of the education and professional life of any teacher" (Schmidt, 2015, p. 47).…”