people and planet

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and when individuals had sufficient prior political
resources to act on messages received through training
(Finkel, 2002, 2003).
EDUCATION CAN CHANNEL DISCONTENT INTO
NON-VIOLENT CIVIL MOVEMENTS
From the Occupy movement to the Arab Spring and
mass protests on the streets of Brazil and Turkey, people
around the world are increasingly using unarmed tactics
to challenge oppressive, corrupt and unfair political and
economic systems. Education makes it more likely that
discontented citizens will channel their concerns through
non-violent civil movements, such as protests, boycotts,
strikes, rallies, political demonstrations and social noncooperation
and resistance. In China, citizens with a
college degree not only agreed on the need to improve
democracy, but supported various types of political
participation, such as mass demonstrations and political
rallies, and resisted the official government petitioning
system (Wang et al., 2015).
Such non-violent actions take place outside traditional
political channels, making them distinct from other
non-violent political processes such as lobbying,
electioneering and
legislating. For those
Studies from 106
who fail to get what they
need from the political
states show that
system through the
groups with higher electoral system or by
education are less
direct communication
or negotiations, nonviolent
civil actions offer
likely to engage in
violent protests the potential for issues
to be heard and possibly
addressed. Using data on
238 ethnic groups in 106 states from 1945 to 2000, a
study found that ethnic groups with higher levels of
educational attainment were more likely to engage in
non-violent protests than those with lower levels of
education (Shaykhutdinov, 2011).
authoritarian regimes fall to non-violent uprisings
are much more likely to transition to democracy and
experience civil peace than if regimes fall to armed
uprisings (Chenoweth and Stephan, 2011). Non-violent
action was a central component of 50 out of 67
democratic transitions from 1973 to 2005 (Johnstad,
2010; Karatnycky and Ackerman, 2005).
In some countries, protest has arisen from higher
educated individuals lacking suitable jobs. In the
years leading up to the Arab Spring, the expansion
of schooling in the Arab world increased the pool of
individuals who had completed primary school and
attained some secondary schooling (and beyond) but
had not seen that education rewarded in the labour
market. According to one study drawing on the World
Values Survey from 2005–2007, in many countries
in the Middle East marked by the Arab Spring, more
educated individuals were more likely to engage in
demonstrations, boycotts and strikes; the link between
education and political protest was stronger among
individuals who had poor outcomes in the labour
market (Campante and Chor, 2012).
INVESTMENTS IN EDUCATION AND
DEMOCRACY CAN BE MUTUALLY SUPPORTIVE
Broad and equitable access to good quality education
plays an important role in sustaining democratic practices
and institutions. Higher literacy levels, induced by the
expansion of mass primary schooling, accounted for half the
regime transitions towards higher levels of democracy over
1870–2000 (Murtin and Wacziarg, 2014). The likelihood of a
country establishing and maintaining a democratic regime
is higher the more educated its population. Oligarchic
societies that started with a more equal distribution
of education would be expected to democratize
sooner (Bourguignon and Verdier, 2000). A study of
104 countries over 1965–2000 found that, even after
controlling for country-specific effects, a more equal
distribution of education was the main determinant for
the transition to democracy (Castelló-Climent, 2008).
Not all non-violent actions succeed, but such activities
are effective means of achieving significant social
and political change. An analysis of 323 non-violent
and violent resistance campaigns for regime change,
anti-occupation and secession from 1900 to 2006
showed that non-violent resistance was nearly twice as
effective as violent resistance in removing incumbent
governments from power. Moreover, countries where
In many countries, greater access to tertiary education
has played a critical role in promoting the transition
to democracy and sustaining democratic regimes.
University students were a driving force behind the
popular protests that brought down many authoritarian
regimes in sub-Saharan Africa in the early 1990s (Bratton
and Walle, 1997). A study on Benin, Ghana, Kenya and
Senegal showed that elected representatives with
2016 • GLOBAL EDUCATION MONITORING REPORT 101