Suchergebnisse

The main argument of this thesis is that research has to take the institutional character of education seriously. Educational institutions carry considerable weight for outcomes of education and their design is a matter of intense political debate. This work focuses in particular on the institution of tracking that has wide-reaching consequences for the structure of education. The thesis consists of an introductory essay, together with three empirical essays. The empirical essays all acknowledge the main argument but study different outcomes and relationships connected to education. Essay I studies how the institutions of political economy and education together affect equality of income and equality of educational opportunity. This essay contributes to the literature by distinguishing the effects of the different institutions of political economy and education, as well as how they interact to affect the two contrasting conceptions of equality. The results reveal that tracking hinders equality of educational opportunity but is also related to better incomes for vocational education graduates in certain institutional settings. Wage bargaining coordination reinforces the more equal educational opportunities of weakly tracked contexts and improves the relative income of vocational graduates in these contexts. Essay II explores how education and tracking affect social trust. It makes two contributions. First, the empirical approach provides strong support for causal inference. Second, it is the first study to consider how tracking affects social trust. The empirical evidence finds no general effect of educational attainment on social trust, but decreasing tracking has a positive effect on social trust for individuals who come from weakly educated backgrounds. Essay III aims to explain cross-country differences in tracking by focusing on the impact of government partisanship. The study contributes to the literature by being the first comparative study to explore how partisan politics may explain differences in tracking and being one of few comparative studies there are on the topic at all. The results show that tracking is strongly related to a dominance of Christian democratic governments, whereas detracking reforms have mainly been carried out by social democratic governments.

Political science has long viewed education as an instrumental factor in developing support for democracy and beneficial for democratization. However, governments, both democratic and authoritarian, have substantial control over the curriculum and develop education institutions with the specific aim to instill in students the norms and values that underpin the regime. With this in mind, this study asks, does the effect of education vary by the political regime in which education was undertaken? We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting European compulsory schooling reforms, implemented under both democratic and authoritarian regimes, to answer this question. We find that education has no effect on principle and functional support for democracy, but that education's effect on satisfaction with democracy is conditional on regime type. For those educated under a democratic regime, education led to greater satisfaction with democracy, whereas those educated under an authoritarian regime became less satisfied with democracy.

Political science has long viewed education as an instrumental factor in developing support for democracy and beneficial for democratization. However, governments, both democratic and authoritarian, have substantial control over the curriculum and develop education institutions with the specific aim to instill in students the norms and values that underpin the regime. With this in mind, this study asks, does the effect of education vary by the political regime in which education was undertaken? We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting European compulsory schooling reforms, implemented under both democratic and authoritarian regimes, to answer this question. We find that education has no effect on principle and functional support for democracy, but that education's effect on satisfaction with democracy is conditional on regime type. For those educated under a democratic regime, education led to greater satisfaction with democracy, whereas those educated under an authoritarian regime became less satisfied with democracy.

Political science has long viewed education as an instrumental factor in developing support for democracy and beneficial for democratization. However, governments, both democratic and authoritarian, have substantial control over the curriculum and develop education institutions with the specific aim to instill in students the norms and values that underpin the regime. With this in mind, this study asks, does the effect of education vary by the political regime in which education was undertaken? We use a quasi-experimental approach exploiting European compulsory schooling reforms, implemented under both democratic and authoritarian regimes, to answer this question. We find that education has no effect on principle and functional support for democracy, but that education's effect on satisfaction with democracy is conditional on regime type. For those educated under a democratic regime, education led to greater satisfaction with democracy, whereas those educated under an authoritarian regime became less satisfied with democracy.

In this study, we explore whether the economic integration of immigrants may function as a stepping stone to their political integration. We show that there are strong theoretical reasons to expect entrance into the labour market to be pivotal for the political socialisation of immigrants in the new host country and in extension for their opportunities to stand for office. Empirically, we make use of Swedish register data and study whether labour market entrance among refugees affects their chances of being nominated for political office in Swedish municipal councils. We focus on refugees that arrived in Sweden between 1985 and 1994 and explore whether they became political nominees in seven consecutive elections between 1994 and 2014. Our results indicate that getting an early foothold in the labour market has a significant positive effect on the likelihood of running for office. These results hold even when we make use of more exogenous variation in the labour market conditions that refugees encountered when they arrived in Sweden, which provides some support that labour market entrance may have a causal effect on political candidacy among refugees.

AbstractThis article contributes to recent scholarship on the effects of economic hardship on political participation, and particularly on the issue of how individual and contextual effects interact. More specifically, we study whether the effect of individual unemployment on turnout depends on the level of aggregate unemployment. In contrast to most existing researchers on this topic, we argue that contextual unemployment may reinforce the negative effects of individual unemployment. We also contend that previous studies have not adequately considered how the composition of the unemployed population differs across times of high and low unemployment. Our empirical approach uses state-of-the-art Swedish register panel data, which gives us good opportunities to control for the selection of the unemployed population over the business cycle. We find that once this problem of dynamic selection is taken into account, the negative effect of individual unemployment on electoral turnout is actually stronger in high unemployment contexts.

This article contributes to recent scholarship on the effects of economic hardship on political participation, and particularly on the issue of how individual and contextual effects interact. More specifically, we study whether the effect of individual unemployment on turnout depends on the level of aggregate unemployment. In contrast to most existing researchers on this topic, we argue that contextual unemployment may reinforce the negative effects of individual unemployment. We also contend that previous studies have not adequately considered how the composition of the unemployed population differs across times of high and low unemployment. Our empirical approach uses state-of-the-art Swedish register panel data, which gives us good opportunities to control for the selection of the unemployed population over the business cycle. We find that once this problem of dynamic selection is taken into account, the negative effect of individual unemployment on electoral turnout is actually stronger in high unemployment contexts.

Strong claims have been made about the incompatibility between large-scale migration and advanced welfare states. The free movement of workers within the European Union (EU) offers an interesting case for the study of the fiscal effects of unrestricted labor migration in different types of welfare states This article therefore investigates the alleged tension between advanced welfare states and liberal migration policies by analyzing how the fiscal effects of EU migrants vary across European welfare state regimes. In contrast to arguments commonly made in public debates, we argue and explain why theoretical reasoning should lead us to expect limited differences in fiscal effects of EU migrants in different welfare states. The empirical analysis, covering twenty-nine countries during 2004–15, shows that the net fiscal impact of EU migrants in the different welfare state regimes of West European countries is positive, and we find no major differences in the fiscal impacts of EU migrants across Western regimes. These results from the EU case cast doubts on the claim that advanced welfare states are incompatible with large-scale immigration because of adverse fiscal effects, and on the idea that broad institutional characteristics of welfare states have substantial consequences for the fiscal impact of migration.

This paper analyses whether and how the fiscal effects of EU migrants vary across European countries with different institutional regimes. In public debates on free movement, it is often claimed that different national institutions, especially welfare states and labour market regulations, lead to variations in the fiscal impacts of EU migrants across European countries. There are also some theoretical reasons why one might expect this to be the case, although the multidimensionality of national institutional configurations makes it difficult to formulate strong theoretical expectations. This paper is, to the best of our knowledge, the first cross-country empirical analysis of these issues. Distinguishing between five different institutional regimes covering 29 countries, our analysis of the links between national institutions and the fiscal effects of EU migrants is made possible by a unique new data set on the fiscal effects of EU migrants across almost all EEA countries (Nyman and Ahlskog 2018). ; The REMINDER project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research & innovation programme under grant agreement no 727072.

This paper analyses the determinants of public attitudes to the "free movement" of workers in the European Union. We add to the small but growing research literature on this issue by focusing on how the characteristics of national welfare institutions affect public attitudes to intra-EU labour mobility. More specifically, we explore the role of what we see as the degree of "institutional reciprocity" in national systems of social protection in explaining variations of attitudes to free movement across 12 EU Member States. We do not find evidence of a direct effect of institutional reciprocity on attitudes to free movement. However, we identify an interaction effect which suggests that higher degrees of institutional reciprocity in national social protection systems in general, and in unemployment insurance systems in particular, are associated with lower levels of opposition to free movement among unemployed people. ; The REMINDER project has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 727072.