Wiseman, A.W. (2013, May). The Development and Impact of Youth Political Socialization through Formal Mass Education Worldwide: Evidence from ICCS 2009. Paper presented at the Sino-American Academic Symposium: Comparative Research on Cultivating Respon

Editor's Notes

• #2: Youth political socialization means many things to different people and in different disciplines. This symposium is a perfect example of that. We could probably have a whole day of the symposium dedicated to just discussing what “youth political socialization” means.For example, in some countries, youth political socialization is the development of knowledge and skills related to active democratic participation in community life and the political process.In other countries, YPS is more about affiliation with and support of a particular political agenda or economic perspective. And, there are other ways of thinking about YPS as well:In Saudi Arabia, for example, the development of youth into Saudi citizens has more to do with instilling an understanding of the collective benefits of being members of Saudi society and an awareness that taking care of the environment advantages both individuals and the country.In South Africa, however, developing the concept of rights and responsibilities for all people regardless of race, ethnicity, or community origin is a large part of youth political socialization and the effort to overcome the legacy of apartheid.We could also debate how youth political socialization occurs.Is it a family and community process?Is it a personal choice?Is it the product of overt government agendas?Or, as I’m going to suggest, does formal mass education play a role in the political socialization of youth?
• #3: I’ve been doing work on youth political socialization for several years now, and approach the phenomenon from the perspective that national education systems play a key role in the political socialization of youth.Speaking very broadly, much evidence suggests that schools worldwide are often populated by government trained or certified teachers, and often teach students a government-approved curriculum.School attendance is often mandatory and schools enroll large percentages of the youth population during some of the most important developmental years of their lives. In fact, national education systems can be tools for politically socializing a country’s entire youth population while also teaching them the core subjects.There are two approaches to thinking about schools as components in the political socialization of youth:Civic education assumes a considerable although formalistic and narrow, impact on citizenship development, chiefly delivered through overt civics curricula and instruction.Political socialization instead suggests that formal mass education provides the structure and opportunity for youth citizenship development to occur without overt civics curricula and instruction.My definition of youth political socialization blends these approaches a bit and acknowledges that both overt instruction/curriculum and institutionalized educational structure/opportunity contribute to youth political socialization in countries worldwide.
• #4: For example, prior cross-national research suggests that, “schools are politically constructed institutions, which contribute to the creation of loyal and productive citizens” largely through the development of youths’ political identity and civic values.Political identity is both relational and contextual.In a relational sense, youth political identity explains or represents how youth politically relate to others in either their community or country. This can take the form of patriotism, or other types of overt identification with a political group or system. In a contextual sense, political identity is more about the ways and degrees in which youth participate in political activities in their schools and communities.Civic values, however, are indicators of understanding, expectations, and literally what has value, which facilitate youths’ understanding of the interconnectedness of society and interests within it. Civic values have been defined as knowledge of government systems as well as expectations and attitudes that reflect what youth value in their communities, such as diversity, equality, and human rights.So, we arrive at this point knowing that formal mass education disseminates the ideology and expectations of the government; we know that formal mass education has a measurable impact on youth political socialization; and we know that measures of political identity and civic identity comprise key empirical evidence of the youth political socialization process.We’d like to know more about the variation in political identity AND civic values among youth by regime type, however, to confirm whether the global development of civic knowledge, skills and political attitudes is as evident as previous analyses suggest.
• #5: Regime theory is an approach suggesting that international institutions or regimes affect the behavior of states (or other international actors).Krasner (1983) defines regimes as "institutions possessing norms, decision rules, and procedures which facilitate a convergence of expectations.“One approach to regime theory suggests that social institutions or actors (like national education systems or educators) canNOT be separated out of their surrounding socio-political context, and that it’s not only interests or power that matter but perceptions and environment as well.Therefore, governance regimes have potentially large influence over youth political socialization because they contextualize the development of political identity and civic values occurring within national education systems (ie, schools) by influencing curricular and pedagogical:Decision-makingPolicymakingAccountabilityEnforcement
• #6: In work that I did using data from the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009, and reported on here at a different conference last year looked at the development of youth political socialization in terms of political identity and civic values in the only participating communities that were linked to an autocratic government: Cyprus and Hong Kong. That preliminary work suggested that the strong role formal mass education plays in youth political socialization tended to be influenced by national governance regime type more for civic values than for political identity. So, to follow up on this, my research question for this study asks: Does youth political socialization in national education systems vary by regime type?
• #7: Regime types are often measured in broad categories as democracies, anocracies, and autocracies in cross-nationally comparative social science research.This chart shows the global trends in governance (ie, regime types) from 1948-2008. The most significant trend is the recent rise in democracies relative to both anocracies and autocracies.
• #8: Distribution of governance regimes worldwide gives an indication of the variation in regime type.Which suggests that there may be significant variation in the ways that governance regime impacts youth political socialization through national education systems worldwide.
• #9: Based on the research and theoretical literature reviewed earlier, political identity is empirically measured using indicators of patriotism or political participation, while empirical measures of civic values include indicators of knowledge about government and citizenship as well as awareness of diversity and equality issues along with human rights issues.My preliminary analyses and regime theory suggest, the development of political identity may be highly valued in more autocratic countries because a strong affiliation with the national political system and citizens’ responsibilities are valued in autocracies more than individuals’ preferences in governance or awareness of political rights. Following this reasoning, I hypothesize that:H1: Students’ political identity is more positively associated with autocratic regimes than democratic ones.On the other hand, my preliminary analyses and regime theory suggest that the development of civic values may be more highly valued in democratic regimes because those values are seen to guide individuals’ choices in their political participation and citizenship. Following this reasoning, I hypothesized that:H2: Students’ civic values are more positively associated with democratic regimes than autocratic ones.
• #11: I used different dependent variables based on the core components of youth political socialization: political identity and civic values.For political identity, three variables were used which represent student patriotism as well as civic participation in both community and school.
• #12: For civic values, two variables were used to represent students’ understanding of the importance of social movements, and their interest in the intersection between politics and social issues. I also included several measures of student background characteristics as independent variables at the student level, including student sex, socioeconomic status, immigration status, and language.
• #13: At the school level, the context for youth political socialization was represented by school principals’/leaders’ perception of the importance of political institutions, citizens rights/responsibilities, local community and school participation, and preparation for future political engagement in the school curriculum and teachers’ pedagogy.
• #14: Finally, at the country level the key indicator was regime type, which was measured on a scale varying between -10 (autocracy) and +10 (democracy).As this chart suggests, the sample of countries in this data set is overwhelmingly biased in terms of democratic regimes, so a cross-national analysis of all countries in the national sample largely yield results representing democratic regimes (even though there is some variation among them).My analyses consisted of some descriptive analysis to investigate the variability and central tendency of these key DVs and IVs, but then I also conducted several interpretive analyses including bivariate correlations at the national level to determine if there were cross-national trends in regime type association with the indicators of youth political socialization, within country analyses of internal variation to see which countries had the most significant differences in political identity and civic values from school to school, but the key analysis was a series of HLM (hierarchical linear modeling) analyses using the 5 student level indicators as key DVs in 5 different HLM models.
• #15: Although I do not have the time to discuss the statistical results in full here, I can report that my hypotheses were NOT confirmed. In none of my analyses both cross-nationally at the country level nor in my HLM models (which account for nested variation within different levels) was governance regime type significantly associated with the measures of youth political socialization. Most of the school level predictors were significant and positive estimates of youth political socialization, but NOT country governance regime type.Interestingly, although none of the regime type coefficients in the HLM analysis were statistically significant, it is noteworthy to mention that they were all negative (except for students’ civic participation at school), which suggests that more democratic regimes may be negatively associated with youth political socialization at school – which was the opposite of what the literature, preliminary analyses, and my hypotheses expected.
• #16: In spite of the busted hypotheses, several interesting findings still emerged:First, in-school processes and resources seem to guide the political socialization of youth in national education systems, as indicated by the consistently strong and positive impact of school level context/expectations for youths’ political socialization.School-based processes like those mentioned above have the same or similar impact in all of the countries (national education systems) included in the analysis, which suggests that these school processes are shared to some degree across political and national boundaries.Regime type is not associated with youth political socialization, and if it was a statistically significant relationship it would be a negative one meaning that democratic regimes may be the least likely to impact the development of political identity and civic values among youth in schools.
• #17: Takeaways for policymakers and educators are that:Schools (and national education systems) continue to be key institutions for incorporating youth as political/national citizens, and that school curricula and teacher pedagogy can (and do) play a measurably significant role in this process.So, curricular, pedagogical, and resource investment in civic education and political socialization efforts in schools have genuine returns in developing youth political identity and civic values.Regime type does not influence youth political socialization as previous research has suggested, which either means that political identity and civic values among youth are becoming more shared across political/national boundaries than before, or that civic education in schools worldwide is increasingly similar, especially in countries that have more similar regime types to begin with.So, those investments in civic education curriculum, pedagogy, and resources may not lead to youth political identities or civic values that are unique to only one community, but may support the development of shared identities and values.So, perhaps this research does confirm previous work which has suggested that there is evidence of a shared “global” development of civic knowledge, skills and political attitudes among youth as a result of formal mass education. Given the growing amount of evidence, it’s certainly worth testing this idea further.