Learning by doing: The impact of experiencing democracy in education on political trust and participation
| Author | Johannes Kiess |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395721990287 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395721990287
Politics
2022, Vol. 42(1) 75 –94
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/0263395721990287
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Learning by doing:
The impact of experiencing
democracy in education on
political trust and participation
Johannes Kiess
University of Siegen, Germany
University of Leipzig, Germany
Abstract
This article investigates whether engagement in school or university, such as being the speaker
of class, a member of a student council, and so on, has an impact on political participation and
political trust. Following interactionist socialisation theory, engagement during adolescence should
develop ideas of citizenship, democracy, and political participation. Schools and universities are
arguably key institutions as they can promote democratic decision making in the classroom. This
strengthens democracy by increasing experienced political efficacy and through internalizing
democratic principles (‘learning democracy’): by acting democratic, one becomes a democratic
citizen. My findings show that respondents who experienced democracy in school or university
indeed tend to vote and engage even in contentious forms of political participation more often.
Also, the experience of democratic practices in school and university increases trust in political
institutions. Moreover, trust in political institutions, in turn, increases the likelihood of voting,
but not of engaging in other forms of participation. Thus, early democratic experiences seem to
foster vivid and participatory democracy without streamlining people into passive participation.
The article provides empirical evidence from nine European countries and an additional glance at
young cohorts based on online panels.
Keywords
civic education, interactionism, learning democracy, political participation, political trust,
socialisation, voting
Received: 5th June 2020; Revised version received: 8th September 2020; Accepted: 17th December 2020
Introduction
Comparative politics (Bara and Pennington, 2009; Lijphart, 1999; Lijphart and Schmidt,
1997) as well as foreign policy practice (Carothers, 2004; Dahinden, 2013; Lawson and
Corresponding author:
Johannes Kiess, Institute for Sociology, University of Siegen, Adolf-Reichwein-Str. 2, Siegen 57068, Germany.
Email: kiess@soziologie.uni-siegen.de
990287POL0010.1177/0263395721990287PoliticsKiess
research-article2021
Special Issue Article
76 Politics 42(1)
Epstein, 2019; Schimmelfennig and Scholtz, 2008) usually conceptualize, measure, and
engage with democracy in terms of the development of political systems. Thus, the focus
lies mostly on characteristics like majority rule, division of power, protection of minori-
ties, and institutionalised party competition. However, democracy is also considered a
principle lived and carried out by citizens: Political philosophers from Rousseau to
Habermas have insisted on the citizen as the constituent of democracy (Thompson, 2010),
the consent of the governed (Cassinelli, 1959; Cohen, 1997; Habermas, 1992), and the
important role of their mœurs (De Tocqueville, 1990 [1835]: 299f). From its beginning,
research on political attitudes has indeed described the importance of ‘civic culture’ for
the performance and stability of democratic societies (Adorno et al., 1950; Almond and
Verba, 1972). Since democracy, like any ethics, is not just ‘natural’ behaviour (Aristotle,
1818: 50), learning democracy is key. Moreover, democratic citizenship ‘refers to the
present and future capacity for influencing politics’ (Thompson, 2010: 2). Thus, experi-
encing participation in direct or indirect ways of political deliberation and decision mak-
ing ensures not only (input) legitimacy and coercion but also the very functioning and
stability of democratic societies. If people are not involved in the political process, they
might be more open to anti-democratic and populist campaigns, posing a threat to the
stability and functioning of democratic systems. Democracy promotion (e.g. Carothers,
2004; Dahinden, 2013; Lawson and Epstein, 2019; Schimmelfennig and Scholtz, 2008)
and civic education (Callan, 1997; National Council for the Social Studies, 2017; Ostrom,
1998) aims at stabilizing societies by establishing democracy in society not only in terms
of political institutions. How to enable people to be democratic and mature citizens is
then a recurrent task for civic and political education in particular. But what helps people
to become active and democratic citizens?
Based on the literature on civic education and interactionist theory of socialisation,
this article argues that learning democracy through direct engagement during school and
university education is one key to this question. The research question thus is whether
such engagement has positive effects on the likelihood of people engaging in politics as
well as on political trust. Taken together, these effects of learning democracy are then
expected to enable and stabilise democracy. Theoretically and to explain these effects,
learning democracy (cf. Dewey, 1916) needs to be conceptualised following interactionist
theory (going beyond resource-based approaches): doing, experiencing, and being
exposed to democratic practice in young age, in fact – and going back to Mead (1934) –
acts of communication between individuals, establish norms and identities via ‘role-tak-
ing’ and ‘role-making’ (Turner, 2001). Using a unique comparative dataset on political
participation covering France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Poland, Spain, Sweden,
Switzerland, as well as the United Kingdom and including additional sub-samples of
young people, the article tests whether participatory engagement within school or univer-
sity and therefore the direct experience of and socialisation in democratic practices indeed
has such positive effects on citizens in terms of voting, less formal confrontational and
non-confrontational participation, and political trust.
The article aims at deepening our knowledge on the effects of democratic experience
in school and university (in addition to civic education), providing timely empirical evi-
dence for nine European countries, and underlining the importance of such engagement
for democratic societies. More importantly, it offers detailed insights into the relationship
between experiencing democracy in education, political trust, and different forms of par-
ticipation showing that early democratic experiences indeed help to foster vivid and par-
ticipatory democracy without streamlining people into passive participation. After carving
out the theoretical framework and presenting formal hypotheses, the methods section
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