Journal of Contemporary Central and Eastern Europe, Volume 27, 2019 - Issue 2-3


Political theory accommodates two main ideas about the relationship between education and the health of democracies. One stresses that education furthers liberal ideals, regularly theorized as the view that democracy sustains open societies. The other maintains there is no coherent “party of the educated” that has an impact on politics. This debate rose a notch when some highly educated European states recently turned towards less open societies. This paper argues that the causal connections among education, politics, and open societies need to be situated within a broader set of social and data contexts to grasp how education can promote open societies.