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We investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is a ected by country characteristics. Using individual survey data, we nd that political participation is more responsive to schooling in land-abundant countries, and less responsive in human capital-abundant countries, even while controlling for country political institutions and cultural attitudes. We propose an explanation that centers on how individuals allocate the use of their human capital. A relative abundance of land (used primarily in the least skill-intensive sector) or a scarcity of aggregate hu- man capital increases both the level of political participation and its responsiveness to schooling, by lowering the opportunity cost of production income foregone. We nd related evidence that political participation is less responsive to schooling in countries with a higher skill premium, as well as within countries for individuals engaged in skilled occupations, suggesting that these patterns are indeed in uenced by the opportunity cost of engaging in political rather than production activities. We ar- gue that this framework can provide a joint explanation for patterns of political participation at the individual level and di erences in public investment in education at the country level.

The recent uprisings in the Arab World carry a broader lesson, highlighting the importance of sustaining an economy that provides sufficient job opportunities for an increasingly educated and skilled middle class.

We provide evidence that economic circumstances are a key intermediating variable for understanding the relationship between schooling and political protest. Using the World Values Survey, we find that individuals with higher levels of schooling, but whose income outcomes fall short of that predicted by their biographical characteristics, in turn display a greater propensity to engage in protest activities. We discuss a number of interpretations that are consistent with this finding, including the idea that economic conditions can affect how individuals trade off the use of their human capital between production and political activities. Our results could also reflect a link between education, ''grievance'', and political protest, although we argue that this is unlikely to be the sole explanation. Separately, we show that the interaction between schooling and economic conditions matters too at the country level: Rising education levels coupled with macroeconomic weakness are associated with increased incumbent turnover, as well as subsequent pressures toward democratization.

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the joint evolution of cultural norms and human capital investment, and how these affect patterns of political participation. We first present some empirical evidence that cultural attitudes towards obedience systematically influence an individual's propensity to engage in different political activities: obedience discourages more confrontational modes of political activity (such as public demonstrations), while raising participation in non-confrontational civic acts (such as voting). These cultural attitudes further appear to be determined in part by cultural transmission across generations. Motivated by this evidence, we develop a dynamic model in which human capital and obedience are both inputs in political and production activities. Individuals optimally choose how to allocate their human capital across these activities, taking their obedience levels as given. They also decide how much to invest in their child's human capital and the degree of obedience to imbue them with. In a baseline case in which the economy features only one traditional sector (say, production-line manufacturing) in which obedience raises productivity, we find that the steady state features a strict complementarily between obedience and human capital: depending on other exogenous forces such as the productivity of human capital, a country could end up in either an \East Asian" steady state of high obedience, high human capital, and relatively non-confrontational politics, or in a converse \Latin American" steady state. However, a richer set of results emerges when we introduce a second production sector (innovation) in which obedience is counter-productive. In particular, a steady state in which obedience is low but human capital levels are high is now possible. Our approach thus illustrates how cultural norms, human capital accumulation, and political participation evolve as the economy advances.

We investigate how the link between individual schooling and political participation is a ected by country characteristics which determine the relative productivity of human capital in political versus production activities. In our model, individuals face an e ort-allocation decision over the use of their human capital. Focusing on the role played by country factor endowments, we show that the abundance of a factor that is used in the least (respectively most) human capital-intensive sector will increase (respectively decrease) both: (i) the level of individual political participation; and (ii) the responsiveness of individual political participation to increases in human capital. We provide empirical evidence for these predictions by showing that the interaction of individual-level data on schooling with country-level measures of factor endowments helps to explain patterns of individual political participation (from the World Values Survey). Our model further allows us to derive predictions regarding the level of human capital that would be chosen by a utilitymaximizing ruler who anticipates the e ort-allocation decisions of his citizens: The abundance of any factor endowment that is used intensively in the least human capital-intensive sectors will tend to increase political participation ex post, and hence will lead the ruler to discourage human capital accumulation. We nd broad empirical support for this in the cross-country data. Our model thus o ers a framework which jointly explains patterns of individual political participation, as well as country di erences in levels of public investment in education.