Schooling, nation building and industrialization
| Published date | 01 January 2021 |
| Date | 01 January 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0951629820963192 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Journal of Theoretical Politics
2021, Vol.33(1) 56–94
ÓThe Author(s) 2020
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DOI: 10.1177/0951629820963192
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Schooling, nation building
and industrialization
Esther Hauk
Institut d’Ana
`lisi Econo
`mica (IAE-CSIC), Spain; BarcelonaGraduate School of
Economics, Spain
Javier Ortega
Kingston University London,UK; CReAM, UK; IZA, Germany
Abstract
We consider a Gellnerian model to study the transformation of a two-region state into a nation
state. Industrialization requires the elites to finance schooling. The implementation of statewide
education generates a common national identity, which enables cross-regional production, while
regional education does not. We show that statewide education is chosen when cross-regional
production opportunities and productivity are high, especially when the same elite holds power
at both geographical levels. By contrast, a dominant regional elite might prefer regional schooling,
even at the loss of large cross-regional production opportunities if it is statewide dominated. The
model is consistent with evidence for five Europeancountries in 1860–1920.
Keywords
Education; industrialization;nation building
1. Introduction
How does a state turn into a nation state? According to Gellner (1964, 2006), the
transition results from the implementation of a mass education system to get work-
ers ready for industrialization. Because workers, through schooling, acquire a com-
mon national identity that enables them to communicate with each other, they also
become mobile, which enhances the production potential of the economy.
Corresponding author:
Javier Ortega, Kingston University, PenrhynRoad, Kingston upon Thames, KT1 2EE, UK.
Email: j.ortega@kingston.ac.uk
Historically, however, not every state becomes a nation state, as nation building at
the state level can fail and give rise to stateless or peripheral nations, such as
Quebec, Scotland, Catalonia or Flanders (see, e.g., Keating, 1993, or Laitin, 1989).
To understand nation building success or failure, our paper presents a
Gellnerian model in which the transformation of a state into a nation state, or
instead the emergence of a peripheral nation, is modelled as an equilibrium out-
come stemming from the interaction among elites in the decision to set up a school-
ing system.
To this purpose, we model a state composed of two regions characterized by an
initial degree of heterogeneity
1
or imperfect market integration. The state is popu-
lated by masses and by two elite groups (landowners and bourgeoisie), with both
masses and landowners evenly split across regions, but bourgeois over-represented
in one region. Political power is in the hands of one of the elite groups, referred to
as the ‘dominant group’, which is not necessarily the same at the regional and state
levels. Value is created through bilateral production between the members of the
elites and the members of the masses. Initially, the state is pre-industrial and pro-
duction takes place only within each region.
The economy is hit by a productivity shock representing an industrialization
opportunity, which can only be exploited if the elites decide to finance the set-up
of a schooling system. If this is the case, the masses attending school become more
productive, and particularly so in the matches with the bourgeois.
2
In addition to raising productivity, schools generate a national identity.
3
If the
statewide dominant elite implements schooling in both regions (a ‘unified school-
ing’ system), this creates a common identity to both regions, which enables the
bourgeois to produce with the masses of the other region, and this to an extent
determined by the degree of market integration. Alternatively, if a regionally domi-
nant elite implements schooling for a region alone without sharing the associated
costs and benefits with the wider state-level elites, no common cross-regional iden-
tity is created, cross-regional production remains infeasible and a peripheral nation
arises. In both cases, the dominant group decides on how the school set-up cost is
shared with the dominated elite at the relevant geographical level – but the domi-
nant group cannot force the dominated to make payments that leave them worse
off than under no education.
We first characterize equilibrium education levels and show that education is
implemented for sufficiently large industrialization shocks, with a larger share of
the investment being paid by the dominated group as the industrialization oppor-
tunity becomes better. The identity of the dominant group does also matter, and
equilibrium education is shown to be higher when bourgeois dominate, since they
benefit more from industrialization than landowners. Specifically, for relatively
low industrialization shocks, dominant bourgeois might choose to fully finance
education even if this makes the dominated landowners worse off, while instead in
a similar situation dominant landowners are not willing to implement education.
As for the choice of the schooling system, unified schooling is always (weakly)
preferred at equilibrium whenever the dominant group is the same at the regional
and state levels, and market integration and/or productivity are sufficiently high.
Hauk and Ortega 57
This result stems from the technological advantage given to unified schooling.
Specifically, a dominant bourgeoisie prefers this system because it can directly ben-
efit from a large number of cross-regional matches, while dominant landowners
also favour it because the bourgeois are willing to pay a larger share of the school-
ing cost under this system.
However, if both market integration and the industrialization shock are low, the
gains from cross-regional production stemming from the unified system become
much smaller, and then the dominant bourgeois from the bourgeois-abundant
region prefer regional schooling because the greater number of bourgeois in that
region reduces the per-capita set-up cost of education. Similarly, if dominant, the
landowners from that region will chooseregional schooling, this time because bour-
geois are more willing to implement education in that region or more willing to pay
than under unified schooling.
In addition, we show that regionally and statewide dominant elites never choose
to implement regional schooling in the bourgeois-scarce region, as this would entail
the double disadvantage of a loss of (however small) cross-regional production and
a greater per-capita set-up cost of education.
When the regionally dominant elite does not control power at the state level, its
incentives to choose regional schooling become greater, simply because more costs
can be transferred to the other elite at that level. Specifically, regionally dominant
but statewide dominated landowners always support regional schoolingwhen feasi-
ble. For them, indeed, being dominated under a unified system is particularly dan-
gerous as the large gains that bourgeois might enjoy under that system can result in
the bourgeois fully financing schooling and making them worse off than under no
schooling.
Regionally dominant but statewide dominated bourgeois will still choose unified
schooling when the cross-regional production gains are large, i.e., when both the
industrialization shock and market integration are large, as in that case it is still
profitable to get a smaller share of a much bigger cake. At the same time,
bourgeois-led regional schooling can still arise in situations in which cross-regional
production gains are very large and market integration is perfect: indeed, if the
productivity gain from the masses’ education is much smaller for landowners, sta-
tewide dominant landowners will choose not to implement unified schooling even
if the bourgeois are willing to fully pay for it, leaving regional education as the best
(and only) option for the bourgeois.
We also show that the regionally dominant but countrywide dominated bour-
geois of the bourgeois-scarce region may have an incentive to implement regional
education, as the greater per-capita costs can be compensated for by a larger part
of the total cost being transferred to landowners. This equilibrium outcome can be
related to Gellner’s famous example of the creation of a national identity in back-
ward Ruritania (Gellner, 2006).
Finally, we relate our model to the educational choices for 1860–1920 of five
European countries characterized by different power configurations within the
elites and different nation building outcomes. To this purpose, we first draw on the
history literature
4
to determine for each of these countries the identity of the
58 Journal of Theoretical Politics 33(1)
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