Schools, Citizenship, and the Social Contract
Friday, September 4, 2:00 pm to 3:30 pm
2026 APSA Annual Meeting & Exhibition — Boston, MA | Register here
In-person | Full Paper Panel
Participants:
- (Chair) Pilar Manzi Gari, University of Chicago
- (Discussant) Jane R. Gingrich, University of Oxford
- (Discussant) Carlos Xabel Lastra Anadon, IE Universidad
Session Description:
In an era of democratic backsliding, rising polarization, and declining trust, schools remain one of the few institutions with the potential to rebuild democratic norms and foster social cohesion. Yet, as political science scholarship increasingly recognizes, education is not a variable defined solely by years of schooling. Rather, it is a complex political environment where funding structures, governance arrangements, and provider identities actively shape the citizenry.
This panel unites research from the Global North and South to examine how educational institutions contribute to—or undermine—democratic resilience. Across five papers drawing on evidence from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and the United States, we show how distinct institutional designs produce heterogeneous effects on citizenship and the social contract. Methodologically, the panel combines historical analysis, observational and quasi-experimental designs, survey experiments, and original survey data.
First, we examine how the provider of education shapes citizens’ relationship to the state, as well as with each other. Evidence from Peru shows that the marketization of education and exit from the public system erode support for redistribution, and increase perceptions of social distance, raising concerns about the sustainability of public provision in unequal democracies. Conversely, historical reforms that expanded state control over religious schools in Sub-Saharan Africa generated long-term shifts toward more egalitarian gender attitudes, highlighting how public authority can shape progressive norms.
Second, the panel investigates how school funding and narratives about reforms to schooling systems condition democratic accountability. In federal systems like the United States and Germany, the centralization of school funding is shown to weaken citizens’ ability to attribute responsibility for school quality, distorting local accountability. Complementing this, evidence from Argentina demonstrates that elite support for education reform depends critically on framing: moral and civic arguments prove far more effective than economic ones in building coalitions for sustainable reform.
Finally, we trace the roots of political inequality inside the classroom. Evidence from Germany reveals that peer socioeconomic composition and subjective perceptions of unfairness stratify political engagement among adolescents long before they reach voting age.
Collectively, these papers position schools as central political institutions that shape how citizens understand fairness, the social contract, authority, and collective responsibility. By linking education policy to broader questions of democratic resilience, the panel offers new insights into how education can either mitigate or exacerbate contemporary threats to democracy.
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