Nonviolent protest and ideological change in education: a public choice approach

This paper applies a public choice framework to examine how successful nonviolent protest campaigns are associated with changes in the ideological orientation of state education systems. We conceptualize education as a site of political bargaining in which organized interests shape educational governance and classroom political socialization. Using cross-national data on political mobilization and educational ideology, we estimate the effects of successful nonviolent campaigns on nationalist, socialist-communist, and democratic ideological emphasis within classroom instruction. We find that successful nonviolent campaigns are associated with declines in nationalist and socialist-communist ideological emphasis alongside increased emphasis on democratic norms and democratic institutions. We do not interpret these shifts as movement from indoctrination to ideological neutrality. Rather, following recent work on political socialization and educational ideology, we treat all educational systems as engaged in ideological transmission and interpret the findings as shifts in the ideological orientation emphasized within educational practice. The results suggest that successful nonviolent mobilization is associated with broader political and institutional realignment that reshapes educational political socialization. Parallel estimates for successful violent campaigns do not display the same consistent pattern, although this contrast is descriptive rather than a direct test of the difference between campaign types.