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Education remains one of the biggest challenges for Latin American societies. However, the factors explaining this are hardly known, less so thoroughly understood. In
Skills, Values, and Development: The Political Economy of Education in Latin America, the authors approach the education problem in 21st-century Latin America by considering it as a political economy issue. This political economy approach allows refocusing research from the supply of education (educational outcomes, institutions, and reform trajectories) in existing scholarship on policy reforms, to the conflicting demands of education by different actors at the intersection of political and economic dynamics.
The book is divided into three sections: first, the authors examine how education expansion--or the lack of it--relates to common regional political trends, how these trends relate to skills, value-orientations, and developmental goals, and the conflictual dynamics between these goals. The second section of the book explores some of these issues from a historical perspective, while the final section discusses the political economy of investing in skills in the context of the region's attempts to successfully integrate itself into the knowledge economy and build more cohesive and prosperous societies. The book combines a variety of approaches and methodologies, including short and long-term perspectives, large N quantitative analyses, comparative methods, and country case studies.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Juan A. Bogliaccini and Aldo Madariaga
- Part I. Skills as Societal Values
- Chapter 1: Latin America's Education Systems in Comparative Perspective, 1945-2021: Patterns and Puzzles
- Agustina S. Paglayan and Katy Norris
- Chapter 2: The Value(s) of Education: On the Link between Skill Formation Regimes and Mass Public Attitudes in Latin America
- Marius R. Busemeyer
- Chapter 3: The Neglected Middle: Education in Latin America After a Half-Century of Reform
- Stephen Kosack
- Chapter 4: Technocratic Reform and Value-Based Opposition: The Pedagogical Movement of Colombia
- Christopher Chambers-Ju and Corrina Sullivan
- Part II. The Historical Underpinnings of Education and Skills Formation
- Chapter 5: Vocational Training Institutions in Latin America: Imported, Indigenous, and/or Mestizo?
- Andrew Schrank
- Chapter 6: Political Regimes, Reform Coalitions and Skill Formation: A Sub-national Comparative Perspective
- Fulya Apaydin
- Chapter 7: State Building, Education Centralization, and the Colonial Legacies of Racial Capital
- David N. Lopez
- Chapter 8: Early Childhood Education Policies, Delegated Provision, and Skills-Enhancing Goals in Latin America
- Melina Altamirano
- Part III. The Political Economy of Investment in Skills
- Chapter 9: Immigrants and Refugees in the Skill Systems of Middle-Income Countries
- Merve Sancak
- Chapter 10: The Skills Formation Challenge in Latin America: States, Firms, and Clusters in High-Tech Sectors
- Mariana Rangel-Padilla
- Chapter 11: Education for all? Structural Inequality in Latin America and the Broken Promise of Mobility
- Denisse Gelber and Carolina Castillo
About the author
Juan A. Bogliaccini, PhD, is Professor of Political Sciences in the Department of Social Sciences at the Universidad Católica del Uruguay (UCU). He is the author of
Empowering Labor: Leftist Approaches to Wage Policy in Latin America and several articles published at leading journals in the field. His research focuses on the political economy of distribution, on issues related to labor policy, skill formation, and human security.
Aldo Madariaga, PhD, is Associate Professor at Universidad Diego Portales, Chile, and director of the Max Planck-UDP Group Challenges of Green Growth. His research interests are comparative and international political economy, growth models, and sustainable development. His book
Neoliberal Resilience: Lessons in Democracy and Development from Latin America and Eastern Europe received honorable mentions for best book by ISA and SASE.
