Kosack 2012

Kosack, Stephen. 2012. The Education of Nations : How the Political Organization of the Poor, Not Democracy, Led Governments to Invest In Mass Education. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

• Chapter 1:
• education is important for development, development without education leads to low-road economies (3)
• Argument: Government will choose to expand quality education based on two factors: (3-4)
• a tight but flexible skilled labor market, with little ability to attract skilled foreign workers
• government engagement in political entrepreneurship of the poor...that is, government subsidized collective action on the part of poor people
• looks at Ghana, Taiwan, Brazil to show theory
• (7-8) governments don't seem to invest in education based only on the needs of businesses...shows some poorer countries spend way more on tertiary education than they should
• most scholars think democratic regimes are more interested in educating citizens. This book suggests that overall and throughout recent history regime hasn't been as important a variable as others think (9-10)
• he suggests that it is less the regime type and more the existence of collective action demanding education that will result in education spending (11)
• the key is political entrepreneurship, where collective actions problems and costs are overcome (12-14)
• government needs the support of a "vital constituency", and political entrepreneurship will determine if the poor are part of this constituency or not (14-15)
• employer demands for labor (skilled, unskilled, trained by govt or not) also affect govt motivations for providing education (15-16)
• (17) 3x3 matrix of when government will provide mass education. short story: any time poor are part of the vital constituency (either as part of it or as all of it) AND when employers need workers in a flexible skilled labor market
• Chapter 2: the government's educational goals
• education is NOT a public good (24)
• education as "bad collateral" (Milton Friedman), and thus banks don't want to invest in individual's education (26)
• demands of families
• the richer the family, the more they can afford education, the more they want government to subsidize TERTIARY/higher levels of education, and low enrollments overall (30-31)
• poor families are the opposite, they can't afford much of anything, so they want govt to spend lots of money on primary (and maybe every other level, too), high enrollments at every level (30-31)
• demands of employers:
• three types of demands for worker training:
• none: from biz that either doesn't need skilled workers or can import them (34)
• broad: biz needs skilled workers, can't import them, and wants a lot of them to lower wages of skilled workers (35)
• selective: biz needs skilled, can't import, and can't expect wages to be lowerd (thanks to unions or govt employment or sthg) (35)
• type of education system created depending on vital consituency:
• bottom up = more spending on primary, when VC is only poor
• all levels = equal spending, when VC is cross-class
• top-down = more spending on tertiary, when VC is elites (45-48)
•  
• see also 69-71
• chapter 3
• lots of tools in the governments use, like fees, buildings, outsourcing, to point educational resources toward the vital consituency (49-60)
• but constraints like budget size, inherited school systems, and need to keep social peace affect how govts allocate schooling resources (61-67)
• chapters on Taiwan, Ghana, and then...
• Brazil!
• Vargas era
• cross class alliance, Vargas as the political entrepreneur for the poor, but not the VERY poor (228-230)
• Vargas and his direct successors created an All-Levels system, but enrollment was limited so basically only those in the vital constituency (workers, middle class) had access to education (about 42% enrollment rate, rural sectors had low enrollment) (235)
• middle class had the access, also had high quality teachers, making the eudcation system pretty nice, but tradeoff was that it didn't serve many people (236-7)
• some intra national differences during the dictatorship, state-level becomes important when federal level politics are sort of cut off (253-254)
• top-down education system built between 1964 and 1990 to serve the agricultural elites who were the vital consituency (254-267)
• education projects were also a great way to dole out jobs in a clientelistic style, meanign rural landowners used education spending more for the sake of remaining in power than for actual education...foreign education grants were essentially wasted funding these patronage networks (259-262)
• soem equalizing after return to democracy, post 1990, but system still retains many of the private school advantages, better track for elites, it just opened up primary schools to more people (278-287)
• analysis stops at 2000, so doesn't include PT's rise to power, not sure how that affects the edcuation system
• Conclusion:
• regime type does not predict improvements in mass education, at times democracies don't fund education and yet autocrats do (300)
• could be that pro-poor collective action is what spurs any sort of pro-poor policymaking, rather than relying on ideological feelings of the leaders or some sort of platform: if the poor take to the streets adn demand things, they are more likely to get them! (302-4)