How Electoral Rules Impact Education Policy.

Much of the research that examines democratic institutions initially focused on political economic outcomes. More recently there has been increasing interest in how political institutions impact domestic and foreign policies beyond the scope of the fiscal and monetary domain. For instance, where once researchers mainly focused on governmental revenues and expenditures when examining the effects of democratic institutions, today there is a growing body of research that seeks to address the relationship between majoritarian and consensus democracy and social and foreign policy prescriptions. This research aims to expand our knowledge of political institutions on domestic policy-making by analyzing the relationship between electoral rules and education policy. I argue that democracies that produce greater representativeness will place greater importance upon educating their citizens. My research models whether democracies vary in how education policy is prescribed and educational standards achieved. The findings suggest that electoral rules effect how education policy is formulated. These results have far-reaching implications on how countries develop and provide opportunities to their citizens. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]