From the Ballot to the Blackboard

467 Pages·2006·6.97 MB·English

From the Ballot to the Blackboard

The Redistributive Political Economy of Education

A Dissertation Presented by

Ben W. Ansell

to

The Department of Government
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Political Science

Harvard University
Cambridge, Massachusetts
September 2006
© 2006 – Benjamin William Anthony Ansell

All rights reserved
From the Ballot to the Blackboard:
The Redistributive Political Economy of Education

Dissertation Advisor Ben W. Ansell
Beth Simmons

ABSTRACT

This dissertation presents a unified redistributive theory of public education
spending. The project develops a formal model of the cross-cutting redistributive forces
that determine political preferences over education and develops from these a series of
hypotheses about the key determinants of national education policy, which are then tested
using statistical techniques and case histories. In particular, three critical factors are
highlighted: a state’s regime type; its openness to the international economy; and partisan
control of government within the state.
Since wealthy individuals dislike education spending because of its negative
fiscal, scarcity, and lottery effects on their children’s income, regime transition to
democracy should be associated with higher education spending. Since the scarcity
effects of expanding education are weaker in highly open states, a state’s degree of
openness to the international economy should also be positively associated with
education spending. Finally, left-wing governments are associated with higher levels of
education spending, both absolutely and relative to other government spending but this
relationship is much weaker in states with proportional electoral systems.
The dissertation also examines the composition of education spending, noting that
wealthy individuals have an incentive to promote spending on higher education at the
expense of primary education. These hypotheses are tested on a variety of cross-national
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panel datasets, both within and outside the OECD group of wealthy countries,, using
several econometric techniques. Furthermore, the mechanisms suggested in the
dissertation are tested in case histories of the Philippines, India, Malaysia, Spain,
Portugal, Greece, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Germany.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

1.1 The Puzzle
1.2 Theories of Education
1.3 Methodology
1.4 Structure of the Dissertation

CHAPTER TWO: A FORMAL MODEL OF EDUCATION SPENDING

2.1 Introduction and Synopsis
2.2 The Baseline Model of Education Spending
2.3 The Baseline Model – Simple Extensions
2.4 Coalitional Politics

CHAPTER THREE: DEMOCRACY, AUTOCRACY, AND EDUCATION SPENDING

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Theoretical Development
3.3 Measures of Democracy
3.4 Time Series Analysis of Democracy and Absolute Education Spending
3.5 Time Series Analysis of Democracy and Relative Education Spending
3.6 Cross-sectional Analysis
3.7 Dummy versus Continuous Measures of Democracy
3.8 Conclusion

CHAPTER FOUR: DEMOCRACY EXTENSIONS

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Disaggregating Democracy
4.3 Varieties of Autocracy
4.4 Private Spending
4.5 Democracy and the Composition of Education Spending
4.6 Conclusion

CHAPTER FIVE: GLOBALIZATION AND EDUCATION SPENDING

5.1 Introduction
5.2 Theoretical Development
5.3 Measures of Globalization
5.4 Time Series Analysis of Globalization and Absolute Education Spending
5.5 Time Series Analysis of Globalization and Relative Education Spending
5.6 Interactions between Democracy, Income, and Globalization
5.7 Cross-sectional Analysis
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CHAPTER SIX: DEMOCRACY AND GLOBALIZATION – CASE ANALYSES

6.1 Introduction
6.2 The Philippines: Examining Democratic and Trade Volatility
6.3 India and Malaysia: Comparing Two Puzzles
6.4 Dual Shocks: Southern Europe Joins the European Union
6.5 Conclusion

CHAPTER SEVEN: PARTIES AND ELECTIONS IN THE OECD

7.1 Introduction
7.2 Theoretical Development
7.3 Measures of Partisanship
7.4 Testing Partisan Preferences: Does Partisanship predict Expressed Preferences?
7.5 Testing Partisan Preferences: Does Partisanship predict Revealed Preferences?
7.6 Does Policy Reflect Voters or Politicians
7.7 Cabinets vs. Parliaments
7.8 Partisan Policy Under Electoral Constraints
7.9 Conclusion

CHAPTER EIGHT: TARGETED SPENDING IN THE OECD

8.1 Introduction
8.2 Testing Partisan Preferences and the Composition of Education Spending
8.3 A Higher Education Trilemma
8.4 Empirical Analysis of the Trilemma
8.5 Conclusion

CHAPTER NINE: PARTISANSHIP IN THE OECD - COUNTRY CASES

9.1 Introduction
9.2 The United Kingdom: Education Policy since 1833
9.3 Sweden: Education Policy since 1842
9.4 The Higher Education Trilemma in Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom
9.5 Conclusion

CHAPTER TEN: CONCLUSION
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Before writing this thesis I had often heard that dissertation writing is a solitary,
painful, confusing, and interminable process. This was emphatically not my experience.
Instead, I have had a relatively enjoyable process completing this work and hope that is
apparent within the project. Credit for that accomplishment lies not in my hands but
firmly in the mentors, colleagues, friends, and family who have supported, advised,
cajoled, and criticized me at every point along the way.
I would like to begin by thanking the most critical academic influences on this
dissertation: my thesis committee. In particular, I want to single out Beth Simmons who
represents the single continuous presence in my graduate school career, since it was at
her suggestion I moved from UC Berkeley, where I began graduate school, to Harvard.
Both schools have affected me equally, in highly contrasting manners, but Beth Simmons
has always been a constant source of advice and support. She tolerated my frequent
absences, whether in Europe or California, and always strongly supported my ambitions
and interests. I can safely say that without her encouragement and interest at Berkeley, I
would never have developed my interest in political economy, nor learned the techniques
I would need to research that interest. Her astonishingly detailed pencil notes on many
assignments, working papers, and finally dissertation chapters, were the most vivid
testament to her deep devotion to making sure her students’ arguments are bold, clear,
and right.
The other two members of my thesis committee – Torben Iversen and Michael
Hiscox – also seem as if they accompanied me from Berkeley to Cambridge because both
made me feel so immediately welcome at Harvard, enabling me to assemble and defend a
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newborn prospectus within the proverbial nine months. I would not be alone in thanking
Torben for his indefatigable energy and interest in his students’ work – I know of several
equally grateful graduate students. But I would like to extend particular thanks to him for
the many extended conversations we had in his offices at the Center for European Studies
and the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences. It is extremely rare for graduate
students to get much longer than half an hour with faculty members to talk over work.
With Torben, a meeting lasting less than ninety minutes was unheard of and it was in
these meetings that the core theoretical apparatus of this dissertation was developed.
Torben also arranged a variety of opportunities for me to present and discuss work with
major names in the field – an absolutely priceless opportunity. Michael Hiscox also met
with me on my first trips to Harvard, even taking the time to study closely the rough
working papers I had emailed him hopefully. Mike has always been willing to work with
me on this project over a beer and some ‘friendly’ Anglo-Australian sports banter – a
great relief from the normal academic process. Furthermore, it was Mike who really
aided me in figuring out how to express my ideas about the interaction between
globalization and education spending in the language of trade theory, thereby helping me
build an essential section of this project. His generous provision of data developed with
Scott Kastner also aided me enormously with the study of the effects of global integration
on education spending.
A number of other Harvard faculty aided me so greatly in this project that I would
like to thank them for their de facto ‘shadow’ membership of my committee. Jim Alt in
fact made a cameo appearance in my prospectus defense and was an ever-present in the
GOV3007 political economy workshop where this project met its most intense criticism
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and advice. Jim has seen this project develop from a term paper through to a dissertation
and has offered cheerful and pointed advice at every point along the way, especially in
terms of approaching the horrors of the job market. Jeff Frieden also has an intimate
knowledge of this project, particularly since he, for unknown reasons, was continuously
nominated to serve as discussant of my GOV3007 iterations of this paper. As his students
know, Jeff has an uncanny ability to dissect your argument and help you discover what
matters and what is irrelevant and I hope some of his incisiveness has made its way into
this thesis. Peter Hall should also be credited for helping me first develop the prospectus
from which this project germinated in his research workshop. His highly detailed notes
helped to steer me in the current direction and away from the vague and potentially
impossible projects I had been intending. The fact that this dissertation was completed in
fairly rapid time owes much to his advice. Finally, I would like to offer special thanks to
Pepper Culpepper, for whom I worked for almost three years as a research assistant, with
varying degrees of timeliness. Pepper, as well as being a hugely engaging and
knowledgeable boss, really helped me to develop a sense of where my project would fit
in the broader political economy and comparative politics literatures, as well as providing
me with an exemplar of precise, detailed research that dealt with big questions in
interesting ways. I would like to thank him further for his great encouragment of me and
my wife in our travails on the job market.
Whilst at Harvard I have been fortunate enough to receive funding from a variety
of sources. I would like to thank the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences for funding
my transfer to Harvard, the Center of European Studies – in particular – for financing
both summer research in Europe (the outcome of which is Chapter Nine), providing me
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with office space, and, critically, granting me a year’s dissertation writing fellowship.
Finally, I would like to thank the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs for
housing me for the last two years of the dissertation and providing me with seed money
for conferences and computer equipment. I would like to thank three individuals in
particular for supporting me at graduate school: Trisha Craig at the Center for European
Studies, Clare Putnam at the Weatherhead Center, and the ever-helpful, and often life-
saving, Thom Wall at the Government Department.
I began my graduate career at Berkeley, receiving the lion’s share of my training
there, and no set of acknowledgements would be complete without referencing the many
scholars there who helped to shape me as a researcher. I would like, in particular, to
thank John Zysman, who first piqued my interest in political economy and who supported
me for the first precarious years at graduate school through the Berkeley Roundtable on
the International Economy. I hope that this work displays some of John’s ability to find
interesting answers to interesting puzzles, and that it meets his ‘why should I care?’
threshold. I also learned a great deal from graduate seminars at Berkeley with Steve
Weber, Jonah Levy, Jim Robinson, Bob Powell, Brad DeLong, Gerard Roland, Matt
Rabin, George Akerlof, and Laura Stoker. I would also like to thank Nick Ziegler and the
late Judy Gruber for their care and understanding when I made the difficult decision to
move to Harvard. Finally, I would like to thank my undergraduate tutors at the University
of Manchester, particularly James Vernon, Arthur Mawby, and Mark Micale. Mark, in
particular, inspired my interest in studying in America, and I owe a great deal to his early
interest in my work.
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