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Education and Democratic Citizenship in America. By Norman H. Nie, Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996. 268p. $48.00 cloth, $16.95 paper.
Michael X. Delli Carpini, Barnard College, Columbia University
The presumed importance of formal education to good citizenship has been deeply imbedded in the theory and practice of democracy in America since the founding. Education provides the skills and knowledge for creating a productive, informed, and engaged citizenry. It is the great equalizer that helps level the economic, social, and political playing field.
Survey research since the 1950s has provided consistent evidence of the value of education at the individual level. Indeed, in his 1972 essay, "Change in the American Electorate" (in Angus Campbell and Philip E. Converse, eds., The Human Meaning of Social Change), Philip E. Converse describes education as "the universal solvent," strongly and positively correlated with a host of valued civic attitudes and behaviors.
But there is a problem. Despite the steady increase in the average years of formal education attained by Americans, despite the shrinking gap in education among citizens, and despite the strong connection between individual measures of good citizenship and education, aggregate indicators of civic involvement show little evidence of increasing, and in many instances they have declined over the past several decades. It is this apparent paradox that Norman H. Nie, Jane Junn, and Kenneth Stehlik-Barry attempt to resolve in their excellent book, Education and Democratic Citizenship in America. The authors begin by arguing that, at the individual level, education enhances democratic citizenship through two distinct pathways. "Democratic enlightenment," defined as an adherence to democratic norms and the recognition of collective interests that can contradict and override one's individual preferences, is centrally affected by education's ability to increase the cognitive capacity of citizens. This in turn gives people the motivation and tools to appreciate both the logic of democratic norms and the potential legitimacy of views different from their own. "Democratic engagement," or the ability to understand one's own interests and effectively pursue them through the political system, is largely connected to education through one's social position and the resulting access to centers of political power and decision making.
In Part I (chapters 2 through 5), the authors use data from the 1990...