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See the empirical work of Angus Campbell and others, THE VOTER DECIDES (Evanston, Ill., 1954); V. O. Key, PUBLIC OPINION AND AMERICAN DEMOCRACY (New York, 1963); and Edgar Litt, “Civic Education, Community Norms, and Political Indoctrination,“ THE POLITICAL IMAGINATION, ed. Edgar Litt (Glenview, Ill., 1966). For a useful analysis and summary of several of these studies, see Burton A. Weisbrod, EXTERNAL BENEFITS OF PUBLIC EDUCATION (Princeton University Research Report Series 105, Industrial Relations Section; Princeton, N. J., 1964), pp. 95–99. A survey of the empirical studies of the relationship between education and citizenship quality gives tentative support to the view that citizenship quality is improved by education (and especially by an educational program set up with this end in mind). However, it also points up the relative scarcity of empirical tests of the widely accepted notion.
See Mancur Olson, Jr., THE LOGIC OF COLLECTIVE ACTION (Cambridge, Mass., 1965), for a useful discussion of the relationship between the size of the group and the nature of externalities.
See Milton Friedman, “The Higher Schooling in America,” THE PUBLIC INTEREST, No. 11 (Spring, 1968), pp. 108–12; Karl Shell, Franklin M. Fisher, Duncan K. Foley, and Ann F. Friedlander, “The Educational Opportunity Bank: An Economic Analysis of a Contingent Repayment Loan Program for Higher Education,” NATIONAL TAX JOURNAL, Vol. XXI, No. 1 (March, 1968), pp. 2–45; Andre Daniere, HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE AMERICAN ECONOMY (New York, 1964); and William Vickrey, “A Proposal for Student Loans,” in THE ECONOMICS OF HIGHER EDUCATION, ed. Selma Mushkin (Washington, D. C., 1961), for representative presentations of this view. However, each of these writers does complement his advocacy of a free market solution with suggestions for correcting various imperfections in a free market allocation of educational resources. The problem of the externalities of elementary and secondary education is treated at some length in M. V. Pauly, “Mixed Public and Private Financing of Education: Efficiency and Feasibility,” AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW, LVII, No. 1 (March, 1967), pp. 120–30; Pauly has a useful discussion of the implication of these externalities for the choice of an optimal mix of public and private financing of education. In his essay, “The Role of Government in Education,” CAPITALISM AND FREEDOM, pp. 85–107, ed. Milton Friedman (Chicago, Ill., 1962), Friedman recognizes that the political benefits of education have egalitarian implications for the allocation of educational resources.
See Shane Hunt, “Income Determinants of College Graduates and the Return to Educational Investment” (unpublished Ph. D. dissertation, Yale University, 1963), for evidence that the rate of return to quality education is higher for the more able student. Dael Wofle and Joseph Smith, “The Occupational Value of Education for Superior High School Graduates,” JOURNAL OF HIGHER EDUCATION (April, 1956), pp. 201–02, 232, present data that suggest that the rate of return on college tends to be greater for the more able student. See Alan L. Sorkin, “Some Factors Associated with Tuition in Public and Private Colleges and Universities” (Brookings Institution, 1968) (mimeographed), for better evidence that the able student tends to attend better quality colleges. See Robert J. Havighurst, AMERICAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN THE 1960'S (Columbus, O., 1960), pp. 28–46, for evidence that the able are more likely to attend college.
For example, there has been some interesting discussion, recently, of the efficacy of high school social science courses, as presently constituted, in improving citizenship quality. Thus, see the empirical study by Edgar Litt, op. cit., pp. 487–94. Litt found that high school civics courses have a positive effect on the development of a student's civic attitudes. But a more recent empirical analysis by Kenneth P. Langton and M. Kent Jennings (“Political Socialization and the High School Civics Curriculum in the United States,” AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Vol. XII, No. 3 (September, 1968), pp. 852–67) discounts the value of high school civics courses. Jennings (with Richard G. Niemi) has commented (“Patterns of Political Learning,” HARVARD EDUCATIONAL REVIEW, Vol. IXXXVIII, No. 3 (Summer, 1968), pp. 443–67) that the small net effect of civics courses observed in the Langton and Jennings study must be seen in relation to the contributions made by history and other high school social science courses in improving citizenship quality. Further empirical research is cited which suggests that, in spite of their numerous shortcomings the total of high school social science courses taken by the student probably does have a positive effect on citizenship quality.
Cf. the majority voting analysis in James M. Buchanan and Gordon Tullock, THE CALCULUS OF CONSENT (Ann Arbor, Mich., 1962), and in Anthony Downs, AN ECONOMIC THEORY OF DEMOCRACY (New York, 1957). An important variant of the majority voting model is, of course, representative democracy (cf, the discussion of representative democracy in Buchanan and Tullock and in Downs). The representative form may require a lower level of education on the part of the voter than does direct democracy. However, the questions raised here on the optimum distribution of education among the voters apply both to the direct and the representative forms.
See N. S. above.
See, for example, the evidence presented in Elihu Katz and Paul Lazarsfeld, PERSONAL INFLUENCE (Glencoe, Ill., 1955).
See Key, op. cit., on the role of business elites in the mass media and on the influence of the mass media on the political system. For a particularly strong statement of the national elite theory, see C. Wright Mills, THE POWER ELITE (New York, 1956). For a summary of a number of studies of local “power elites,” see Nelson W. Polsby, COMMUNITY POWER AND POLITICAL THEORY (New Haven, Conn., 1963).
See Polsby, op. cit.
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Many helpful comments were made by E. S. Mills, of the Department of Political Economy, J. S. Coleman, of the Department of Social Relations, and F. E. Rourke, of the Department of Political Science, all of The Johns Hopkins University. Work on this paper was supported in part by a grant from the College Scholarship Association and in part by a grant from The Johns Hopkins University Center for the Study of the Social Organization of Schools.
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Owen, J.D. Education for majority voting?. Public Choice 6, 59–70 (1969). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01718578
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01718578