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Democratization and Government Education Provision in East Asia

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 March 2016

Jing Chen
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Abstract

Although it is commonly believed that democracy promotes public services such as education, efforts have just started to evaluate empirically how the recent trend of democratization affects education services in the developing world. This article reports on the first regionwide investigation in East Asia. By studying the effects of democracy on multiple education indicators in a time-series-cross-section dataset of eight East Asian countries/political entities, the article examines whether democratic governments increase education spending and access and which social groups are favored in the process. The statistical results, which are corroborated by findings from two case studies, show that democracy plays a progressive role in promoting education spending and school enrollment at the basic level in East Asia.

Keywords

democratizationeducation policyEast Asiaredistributioneducation spendingschool enrollmenterror correction modeltime-series-cross-section analysisTaiwanThailand
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of East Asian Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 2 , August 2008 , pp. 175 - 209
Copyright
Copyright © East Asia Institute 

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References

Notes

I thank Robert Kaufman, Stephan Haggard, Richard Lau, and Michael Shafer, as well as reviewers and editors of the Journal of East Asian Studies for their extremely helpful comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to Barak Hoffman, Alex Segura-Ubiergo, David Lehmkuhl, Dennis Quinn, David Brown, Luke Keele, and subscribers of the political methodology list for assistance with data collection and statistical modeling.Google Scholar

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46. Since I do not theoretically expect a long-run impact of election cycle on education spending, I have only included a differencing term for it.Google Scholar

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48. For a detailed derivation of the error correction model and the interpretation of the coefficients, see Appendix 2.Google Scholar

49. For formulas to interpret the coefficients, see Appendix 2.Google Scholar

50. Data for disaggregated spending are available only for the period 1971–1997, while data for aggregate spending covers 1971 to 2003. What compounds less data availability for disaggregated spending models is the problem of missing data in countries such as Indonesia.Google Scholar

51. The four measures are (1) another dichotomous measure of democracy that highlights its contestation and participation nature (Alvarez, Mike, Cheibub, José Antonio, Limongi, Fernando, and Przeworski, Adam, “Classifying Political Regimes,” Studies in Comparative International Development 31 [Summer 1996]: 3–36); (2) a continuous measure of the Polity score, (3) the liberty score published by Freedom House focusing on a list of political and civil rights that citizens should enjoy in a democracy (Gastil, Raymond Duncan, “The Comparative Survey of Freedom: Experiences and Suggestions,” Studies in Comparative International Development 25 [Spring 1990]: 25–50); and (4) a democracy score (polyarchy) constructed by Vanhanen, Tatu, “A New Dataset for Measuring Democracy, 1810–1998,” Journal of Peace Research 37, no. 2 (2000): 251–265, relying mainly on election results.Google Scholar

52. The positive impacts of democracy on secondary school enrollment are no longer significant when I use indicators that do not emphasize the institutional constraint dimension of democracy (Freedom House liberty score and Vanhanen's polyarchy index; see note 51).Google Scholar

53. For example, the explanatory variables already in the model (except capital stock as percent of GDP) can explain 35 percent of total government spending.Google Scholar

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55. Urbanization is included in the school enrollment models due to its high explanatory power.Google Scholar

56. Taiwan does not have data on capital account openness; Hong Kong lacks data on capital stock, polity score, and election.Google Scholar

57. I was able to include Taiwan in the estimation sample by dropping the explanatory variable of capital account openness; similarly, by dropping capital account openness, capital stock, election, and the changing of democracy specification from polity scores to Freedom House liberty scores, I was able to include both Taiwan and Hong Kong in the estimation sample.Google Scholar

58. Another advantage of case study is to help identify the underlying causal process, which is beyond the scope of this article.Google Scholar

59. Among other democratizing cases in the sample, South Korea, which democratized in the late 1980s and has a relatively high income, is well represented by Taiwan. The Philippines, with lower income and democratization in the late 1980s, is well represented by Thailand. Indonesia, which democratized in the late 1990s, is a less ideal candidate to study the effects of democratization, which may take some time to realize.Google Scholar

60. Three kinds of proelite spending inequalities have been identified by the Taiwanese education movement organizations: (1) the government devoted more resources to university education than to compulsory education; (2) investment in academic education was favored by the government over vocational education; (3) private education received few subsidies from the government compared with public education. Given the strict government control of enrollment in public universities and senior high academic schools, it is students coming from rich families that are more likely to go to the better-funded academic schools, public schools, and universities, as they can better afford extra exam tutoring and fees and have less need to make money. Xue, Xiaohua, Civil Education Reform Movement in Taiwan (in Chinese) (Taipei: Qianwei Publishing, 1996).Google Scholar

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64. Some authors argue that this is because the central government devoted most resources to defense spending. Zhu, Jingyi and Ye, Jiahui, “Private Education in Taiwan: Examination of Current Status and Policy Recommendations” (in Chinese), paper presented at the National Civil Education Reform Conference, January 8, 1994.Google Scholar

65. Due to the limitation of my research, I have no information on the names of these legislators or the bills they proposed.Google Scholar

66. Article 164 was abolished upon recommendation by officials in the executive branch, such as the Ministry of Finance and the Directorate-General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics, and the Executive Yuan, for reasons of inefficiency and waste. Chen, Lizhu, “The Crisis and Turning Point of Education Finance in Taiwan” (in Chinese), proceedings of the Taiwan Education Fundamental Act Conference, 2000); Huang, Shixin and Ding, Zhiquan, “A Study on Education Revenues and Expenditures: Reasons for Freezing Article 164 of the Constitution and Responses” (in Chinese), Taiwan: Ministry of Education, June 1999.Google Scholar

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