Jan Pieskalla (Alesina Seminar)

Speaker & Title

Jan Pieskalla (Ohio State), "Higher Education and the Making of Democratic Elites"

Abstract

What is the effect of universities on democratization? Existing research has shown the democratizing effects of mass-level literacy and educational attainment, but has paid less attention to elite education. We argue that, besides mass education, universities can be important as a driver of democratization. Higher education, when autonomous from state control, offers alternative ruling elites the ability to forge social ties, acquire organizational skills, and engage in the production of ideological frames necessary for political collective action. This fosters intra-elite competition by politically empowering new social and economic elites, making democratization more likely (Ansell & Samuels, 2010). Using data on all public and private universities in the world and measures of academic freedom, we show that autonomous universities are positively associated with political liberalization. To illustrate the mechanism historically, we examine 19th-century Germany as a case study. A comparison of the University of Berlin and Heidelberg’s role during the 1848 revolution and an analysis of biographical data from parliamentarians in the 1848/49 Frankfurt Parliament shows that many of the liberal leaders had university backgrounds in law, philosophy, and the emerging social sciences, often at institutions with significant academic autonomy. These universities served as hubs for intellectual exchange and political  networking, fostering the liberal and constitutional ideas that underpinned the revolution and early experiments with representative government.