Conceptualizing Education Policy in Democratic Societies

Oligarchic versus Democratic Societies

This paper develops a model to analyze economic performance under different political regimes. An “oligarchic” society, where political power is in the hands of major producers, protects their property rights but also tends to erect significant entry barriers against new entrepreneurs. Democracy, where political power is more widely diffused, imposes redistributive taxes on producers, but tends...

Corruption dynamics in democratic societies

This paper investigates the dynamics of corruption at the top (i.e., by politicians). For this purpose a dynamic, politico-economic framework is developed and analyzed. A particular feature of this investigation is an analytical characterization of the dynamic properties of the system. This allows one to interpret these properties in terms of economic and institutional parameters. As an example...

Incentives and prosocial behavior in democratic societies

This paper studies the relationship between monetary incentives to encourage citizens’ contributions to a social good (voting, charity donation, etc.) and the society’s consideration for that good in the presence of social signaling. We establish that, no matter how much citizens value the social good, low incentives (or disincentives) may emerge as the unique majority voting outcome when conce...

Action for Democratic Education

A subtle, yet noticeable, shift is occurring in recent debates over the reform of public schooling. In response to the reform reports of 1983 which stressed the need for schools to prepare workers, more recent reports have instead focused upon the preparation of citizens—in particular, the preparation of democratic citizens.* This new wave of proposals echoes a traditional resistance against th...

The renewal of democratic practices in knowledge societies