Partisanship and Higher Education Development Is There a Left-Right Divide? a Perspective on Central and Eastern Europe

This paper analyses the relevance of the political orientation of parties in government for the development of higher education (HE) in 10 former communist countries that have become European Union member states. HE development is defined along two dimensions: public funding devoted to HE and HE enrolment. Its premise is that the political parties in power make decisions about the regulation of HE - captured here through funding and enrolment. It aims to test whether the commonly used classification of parties on a Left-Right axis and the cleavage implied by this classification can explain the decisions of parties in government concerning HE.

The paper provides an analysis of observed policy outcomes and suggests some inferences that can be drawn from the data about the effect of partisanship on HE development. Specifically, the data suggests that governments dominated by leftist parties have tended to spend more on HE between 1999 and 2012, whereas the effect on enrolment is less straightforward. Some more nuanced partisan effects are presented in three case studies. This contribution aims to integrate the partisan dimension into the analysis of skill formation and adds to the literature explaining policy outcomes in relation to cabinet composition.