Racial populism, partisan spillover, and Americans’ quest for citizen education policy control: implications for European democracies
通过两项调查实验，研究美国白人对教育政策由公民而非专家控制的偏好，发现这种偏好源于种族化而非党派溢出效应，尤其体现在历史和国际研究课程上，且与种族怨恨情绪相关。
Ethnoracial populism and partisan polarisation have become key factors in education politics, intensifying the crisis in education policymaking across the West. Rightwing elites promote exclusionary education policies, dubbed ‘anti-woke,’ that threaten minority and immigrant integration, upending progressive gains. In the US, populism is reflected in many Whites’ support for citizen over expert control of education policymaking, including monitoring teacher behaviour through tiplines and penalties, policies that harm morale and perpetuate conflict. Here, we ask whether Whites’ support for citizen control in education results from partisan spillover or policy racialisation processes. Two survey experiments show that White Americans are more supportive of citizen control in education when compared with policing. Within education, we find a preference for citizen control over history and international studies curricula, a finding we do not observe with math and physics. Furthermore, support for citizen control is stronger among those who score highly on racial resentment, providing strong evidence of the racialisation of education policy at the local level. By contrast, partisanship is not a consistent predictor of preferences.