The Effect of Education on Nationalism and Ethnic Exclusionism: An International Comparison

In most studies on ethnic attitudes, a rather strong negative relationship has been found
between educational attainment and positive ingroup attitudes (or negative outgroup attitudes).
However, it is not well known to what extent this educational effect varies across
different national contexts. This study investigated the effect of education on different
dimensions of nationalism and ethnic exclusionism with the use of 1995 survey data
gathered in 22 countries. Notions from socialization theory were used to test whether the
educational effect varies according to the length of liberal-democratic tradition and the
degree of religious heterogeneity within a country. Results indicate that educational
attainment is strongly related to ethnic exclusionism as well as chauvinism, but not to
patriotism. Moreover, the effect of education on ethnic exclusionism is smaller in recently
established democracies. The hypothesis regarding stronger educational effects in
societies with more religious heterogeneity was not supported.

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