From the Ballot to the Blackboard
The Redistributive Political Economy of Education
Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics Series

From the Ballot to the Blackboard provides the first comprehensive account of the political economy of education spending across the developed and developing world. The book demonstrates how political forces like democracy and political partisanship and economic factors like globalization deeply impact the choices made by voters, parties, and leaders in financing education. The argument is developed through three stories that track the historical development of education: first, its original expansion from the elite to the masses; second, the partisan politics of education in industrialized states; and third, the politics of higher education. The book uses a variety of complementary methods to demonstrate the importance of redistributive political motivations in explaining education policy, including formal modeling, statistical analysis of survey data and both sub-national and cross-national data, and historical case analyses of countries including the Philippines, India, Malaysia, England, Sweden, and Germany.

1. The redistributive political economy of education; 2. The expansion of education - theory and data; 3. The expansion of education - historical evidence; 4. The partisan politics of education; 5. High politics in higher education; 6. Conclusion.

Ben Ansell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Minnesota. He has published articles on education policy in International Organization and World Politics. He received his PhD from Harvard University, where he was awarded the Senator Charles Sumner Dissertation Award. He has served as a member of the UK's Leitch Review of Skills, has worked on education policy for Her Majesty's Treasury, and has held visiting fellowships at the Centre for Economic Performance at the LSE and the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute.