Public Schooling, Indoctrination, and Totalitarianism

Governments use public education and public ownership of the media to control the information that their citizens receive. More totalitarian governments as well as those with larger wealth transfers make greater investments in publicly controlled information. This finding is borne out from cross‐sec...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of political economy 1999-12, Vol.107 (S6), p.S127-S157
Main Author: Lott, Jr, John R.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Children
Children & youth
Civil liberties
Communism
Democracy
Diminishing marginal utility
Divorce rates
Economic theory
Education
Education systems
Educational standards
Expenditure
Expenditures
Families & family life
GNP
Government
Government spending
Gross domestic product
Gross National Product
Human capital
Indoctrination
Information policy
Mass Media
Media policy
Per capita
Political economy
Political education
Political parties
Political regimes
Public good
Public health
Public Schools
Schools
Studies
Subsidies
Television stations
Time series
Totalitarianism
Transfer payments
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Governments use public education and public ownership of the media to control the information that their citizens receive. More totalitarian governments as well as those with larger wealth transfers make greater investments in publicly controlled information. This finding is borne out from cross‐sectional time‐series evidence acros countries and is confirmed when the recent fall of communism is specifically examined. My results reject the standard publicagood view linking education and democracy, and I find evidence that public educational expenditures vary in similar ways to government ownership of television stations. Country‐level data on the organization of families as well as data on South African public schools are also examined.
ISSN:0022-3808
1537-534X
DOI:10.1086/250106