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SUMMARYAre individuals in emerging democracies more likely to embrace democratic values, to learn basic knowledge about political processes, and to engage in politics in response to donor‐sponsored civic education programmes? After more than a decade of civic education evaluations, it is a good time to take stock of what we have learned about the impacts of these efforts to strengthen democratic political culture in developing democracies. This article describes four US Agency for International Development‐sponsored evaluations that have been conducted since the late 1990s, summarizes their most important findings, and discusses the lessons learned. I show that civic education can have meaningful and relatively long‐lasting effects in terms of increasing political information, increasing feelings of empowerment, and mobilizing individuals, even in contexts beset by political and ethnic violence. However, these interventions are much less likely to affect 'deep‐seated' democratic values such as political tolerance, support, and trust. Moreover, the size of the effects depends critically on how the programmes are designed, the kinds of pedagogical methods employed, and the quality of the trainers. I conclude with a discussion of current developments in the field. © 2014 The Authors. Public Administration and Development published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Can democracy be taught? Are individuals more likely to embrace democratic values, to learn basic knowledge about political processes, and to engage the political process more effectively as a result of their exposure to donor-sponsored civic education programmes in emerging democracies? After more than a decade of evaluations of civic education programmes, it is a good time to take stock of what we have learned about the impacts of these efforts to strengthen democratic political culture in developing democracies. In this paper, I describe four USAID-sponsored evaluations that have been conducted since the late 1990s, and summarize their most important findings and lessons learned. It will be shown that civic education programmes can have meaningful and relatively long-lasting effects in terms of increasing political information, feelings of empowerment, and mobilizing individuals to engage in political participation, but that they are much less likely to affect more 'deep-seated' democratic values such as political tolerance, support, and trust. Moreover, the size of these effects depends critically on how the programmes are designed, the kinds of pedagogical methods employed and the quality of the facilitators or trainers, with much evidence suggesting that the potential for larger-scale changes in democratic orientations through civic education is not being realized in practice. I conclude with a discussion of current developments in the field, as a significant amount of recent new work has emerged.

This paper examines the effects of adult civic education programs on
political participation, civic competence, and support for democratic
values in three developing democracies, the Dominican Republic, Poland
and South Africa. I show that participation in civic education programs
conducted by NGOs in each country had meaningful impact on local-level
political participation in all three countries, and modest impact
on individuals' knowledge, efficacy and support for values such as
political tolerance. The effects of the programs were sharply increased
when individuals were trained more frequently and with more active,
participatory teaching methods. The results have important implications
regarding the extent to which democratic political orientations can be
"engineered" through civics training conducted by civil society groups,
as well as important policy implications regarding how such programs
should best be structured and implemented in practice.