Francisco O. Ramirez

World Society and the Nation‐State

The authors analyze the nation‐state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation‐states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world‐level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority; (4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions.

The Political Construction of Mass Schooling: European Origins and Worldwide Institutionalization.

This paper examines the origins of state educational systems in Europe in the nineteenth century and the institutionalization of mass education throughout the world in the twentieth century. We offer a theoretical interpretation of mass state-sponsored schooling that emphasizes the role of education in the nation-building efforts of states competing with one another within the European interstate system. We show that political, economic, and cultural developments in Europe led to a model of the legitimate national society that became highly institutionalized in the European (and later, world) cultural frame. This model made the construction of a mass educational system a major and indispensable component of every modern states activity. We discuss the usefulness of this perspective for understanding recent cross-national studies of education.

Institutional structure : constituting state, society, and the individual

PART ONE: THEORETICAL ISSUES Ontology and Rationalization in the Western Cultural Account PART TWO: THE WORLD-POLITY AND STATE STRUCTURE The World-Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State World-Polity Sources of Expanding State Authority and Organization, 1870-1970 Regime Changes and State Power in an Intensifying World-State-System Structural Antecedents and Consequences of Statism PART THREE: CONSTITUTING NATION AND CITIZEN Human Rights or State Expansion? Cross-National Definitions of Constitutional Rights, 1870-1970 Global Patterns of Educational Institutionalization On the Union of States and Schools World-Polity Sources of National Welfare and Land Reform PART FOUR: CONSTRUCTING THE MODERN INDIVIDUAL The Ideology of Childhood and the State Rules Distinguishing Children in National Constitutions, 1870-1970 Self and Life Course Institutionalization and Its Effects The Political Construction of Rape PART FIVE: RATIONALIZATION AND COLLECTIVE ACTION Comparative Social Movements Revivalism, Nation-Building and Institutional Change PART SIX: THE POSSIBILITY OF A GENERAL HISTORICAL THEORY Institutional Analysis

Development and Education

A positive relationship between education and economic, political, and cultural development is widely assumed throughout much of the modern and modernizing world, yet research suggests that this relationship is problematic. The problem has two aspects. First, although many empirical studies show a positive relationship between many forms of education and individual economic, political, and cultural development, the effects of education on development at the collective level are ambiguous. Second, at the same time evidence of this for ambiguity has been mounting, faith in education as the fulcrum for individual and for collective development has been growing in the form of international education conferences and declarations and national-level education policies. This chapter explores two aspects of the problem in distinct ways. First, in the sections on the effects of education on development and the effects of development on education, we review the empirical relationship between education and development, drawing on several decades of cross-national studies. Second, in Section 4, we examine the way education as an instrument to attain national progress and justice has been produced and diffused via development discourse, development organizations, and development professionals. Although the types of education prescribed varied from one decade to another, throughout the post-World War II period, education for all became an increasingly important component in the global blueprint for development. How did this blueprint come to be so widely disseminated? We suggest that two ration-

Human Rights in Social Science Textbooks: Cross- national Analyses, 1970-2008

In reaction to the disasters of the first half the 20th century and World War II, a dramatic world movement arose emphasizing the human rights of persons in global society. The contrast—celebrated in international treaties, intergovernmental and nongovernmental organizations, and much cultural discourse—was with narrower world emphases on the rights of citizens of national states. Since the 1970s, this movement has increasingly emphasized the importance of human rights education as central to sustaining human rights principles. This article examines the rise of human rights themes in secondary school social science textbooks around the world since 1970, coding data on 465 textbooks from 69 countries. The authors find a general increase in human rights discussions, especially since 1995. Human rights receive less emphasis in history texts than in civics or social studies ones, and there is less human rights emphasis in books that discuss national, rather than international, society. Human rights emphases are associated with the pedagogical student-centrism of textbooks: The proactive student is a rights-bearing student. Finally, a number of indicators of national development and especially political culture show positive effects on human rights emphases. These findings broadly support the arguments of institutional theories that the contemporary “globalized” world is one in which the standing of the participatory and empowered individual person has very great legitimacy.

Slowly But Surely? The Global Expansion of Women's Participation in Science and Engineering Fields of Study, 1972-92.

This cross-national study shows that womens enrollments in science and engineering fields in higher education increased between 1972 and 1992 throughout much of the world. This increase was positively influenced by womens level of enrollments in the non-science and non-engineering fields. This finding suggests a positive spillover effect for women. The level of male enrollments in these fields also had a positive effect thus suggesting that as fields of study become more open to men they also become more open to women. These cross-national findings raise questions about the applicability of the persistence of an inequality perspective to womens expanded access to higher education. (authors)

The Global Diffusion of Markets and Democracy: World society and human rights: an event history analysis of the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

A worldwide human rights regime has emerged, expanded, and intensified throughout the twentieth century, especially in the post-Second World War era. This regime involves a global system of expanding organizations, social movements, conferences, rules, and discourse promoting the human rights of individuals. This regime is universalistic in aspiration: all humans are expected to be covered by the regime. This universalism involves a discursive and organizational reframing of the more limited and more varying national citizenship emphasis; human rights in principle accrue to all individuals, regardless of their citizenship or residency. And, a growing number of types of individual persons can press for their human rights: women, children, ethnic minorities, indigenous peoples, gays and lesbians, the elderly, the disabled, and the imprisoned. The content of the human rights at stake also expands, from the rights of “abstract individuals” to the rights of individual members of a specific collectivity, e.g. from suffrage to reproduction rights for women. Also on the rise is both worldwide attention to human rights abuses and violations and national displays of commitment to human rights principles and policies. These unexpected developments have increasingly been highlighted by scholars working within both the disciplines of international relations (e.g. Donnelly 1986; Finnemore and Sikkink 1998; Keck and Sikkink 1998; Hathaway 2002; Vreeland (forthcoming)) and macrosociology (Hafner-Burton and Tsutsui 2005; Tsutsui and Wotipka 2004; Smith 1995; Soysal 1994).

Student Achievement and National Economic Growth.

Educational policy around the world has increasingly focused on improving aggregate student achievement as a means to increase economic growth. In the last two decades, attention has focused especially on the importance of achievement in science and mathematics. Yet, the policy commitments involved have not been based on research evidence. The expansion of cross‐national achievement testing in recent decades makes possible longitudinal analyses of the effects of achievement on growth, and we carry out such analyses here. Regression analyses appear to show some effects of science and mathematics achievement on growth, but these effects are due mainly to the inclusion of the four “Asian Tigers” and are not consistent over time. These empirical findings call into question educational policy discourse that emphasizes strong causal links between achievement and growth.

The effects of science on national economic development, 1970 to 1990

Expanded scientific activity is thought to benefit national economic development through improved labor force capacities and the creation of new knowledge and technology. However, scientific research activity expands as a global process and reflects the penetration of societies by a general rationalistic world culture. The authors point out that scientific expansion and the accompanying cultural penetration legitimate a broad progressive agenda of social amelioration (e.g., by identifying environmental and health problems, and social welfare and human rights issues) that can result in regulation and direct constraints on productive economic activity in the short term. Thus, science can be seen as encouraging a trade-off between short-term economic growth and broader (and longer-term) social development. The effects of dimensions of scientific infrastructure on national economic growth are examined over the 1970-1990 period. Cross-national analyses show that the size of a nations scientific labor force and training system has a positive effect on economic development, supporting conventional theories. However indicators of national involvement in scientific research activity show negative effects on economic growth. Corollary analyses show that this negative effect is partially explained by the expansion of scientific activity into more socially relevant domains (e.g., medicine, environmental sciences, etc.), thus supporting the main arguments

Accounting for Excellence: Transforming Universities into Organizational Actors

Throughout the world universities are increasingly engaged in activities that commit them to pursue excellence and account for progress toward excellence. Much of this accounting involves formalizing faculty assessments and standardizing university assessments. These assessments emerged in the United States earlier than Western Europe, but they are now worldwide. A crucial dynamic that facilitates this development is the transformation of universities from historically grounded and nationally specific institutions to organizational actors influenced by universalistic rationalizing models. As organizational actors, universities are expected to have goal and plans to attain them, as well as mechanisms for evaluating their progress. Universities are expected to act as if they can learn from other universities and from expertise on how to improve.