Research framework and broader academic knowledge base
Serbia: documented application of the same framework
How do those in power shape what we consider fact, knowledge, and shared memory?
The government influences the common knowledge much wider than the daily news. It decides what is measured in the official statistics, what documents are opened, who receives professional titles and research money, what enters the textbooks and what events we mark or keep silent.
If the data are not collected, archives are closed, experts are punished, and one version of the past becomes a condition of belonging to the community, the society loses the language with which to recognize the problem. This does not mean that the state should be absent from education, culture or statistics. It is crucial whether there are public criteria, multiple sources and the possibility of professional challenge. The deepest control is not when one fact is forbidden, but when people no longer have institutions and procedures to establish in common.
Education and expertise can help both freedom and control. The content, the way of work, the independence of teachers and the reaction of students and the public should be looked at in particular.
Works supporting this answer, with their evidence type and an explanation of how they relate to the claim.
Explain how the system works
Wallace, J. (2022), Seeking Truth and Hiding Facts: Information, Ideology, and Authoritarianism in China, Oxford University Press.
- Contribution to this answer
- Wallace shows one paradox of authoritarian knowledge: the government desperately wants accurate data to be able to manage it, but when it punishes bad results, it creates a reason for lower levels to send it beautified figures. The system can thus produce more and more data, while at the same time corrupting the very information that is most needed to know what is real.
review more research
Paglayan, A. S. (2026), „Education as a Political Institution“, Annual Review of Political Science 29: 525–546.
- Contribution to this answer
- Paglayan shows why it is not enough to see the school as a neutral public service: the education system shapes political values, national identity and social order, creates jobs that can serve the patronage, and can even be used for political supervision. What society teaches is therefore also a political issue.
research that checks more closely what the cause is
Cantoni, D. i dr. (2017), „Curriculum and Ideology“, Journal of Political Economy 125(2): 338–392.
- Contribution to this answer
- Cantons and co-authors give very strong causal evidence that changing what is taught can change political attitudes: after the reform of Chinese textbooks, students had more positive attitudes towards Chinese governance, different attitudes towards democracy and greater skepticism towards the free market. The effects on real behavior were less clear.
data from a large number of countries
Neundorf, A., Nazrullaeva, E., Northmore-Ball, K., Tertytchnaya, K. i Kim, W. (2024), „Varieties of Indoctrination: The Politicization of Education and the Media around the World“, Perspectives on Politics 22(3): 771–798.
- Contribution to this answer
- Neundorf and co-authors create a global map of the political design of schools and media in 160 countries and show that “indoctrination” is not one technique: regimes differ in how they centralize education, change curricula, control teachers, and use the media for political messages.
long-term direct monitoring of political life
Wedeen, L. (1999), Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria, University of Chicago Press.
- Contribution to this answer
- Wedeen shows perhaps the most important line between believing and acting like you do. The Syrian cult of Assad did not have to convince citizens that his apparently exaggerated claims were true; it was enough to teach them what words and rituals they had to repeat publicly. Such “like” behavior discipline people and make it difficult for them to know what others really think.
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