<p>Why Does Democracy Need Education<br/></p><p>Across countries, education and democracy are highly correlated. We motivate<br/>empirically and then model a causal mechanism explaining this correlation. In our<br/>model, schooling teaches people to interact with others and raises the benefits of<br/>civic participation, including voting and organizing.<br/>In the battle between<br/>democracy and dictatorship, democracy has a wide potential base of support but<br/>offers weak incentives to its defenders. Dictatorship provides stronger incentives to<br/>a narrower base. As education raises the benefits of civic engagement, it raises<br/>participation in support of a broad-based regime (democracy) relative to that in<br/>support of a narrow-based regime (dictatorship). This increases the likelihood of<br/>successful democratic revolutions against dictatorships, and reduces that of<br/>successful anti-democratic coups.<br/></p>