Abstract

MILLAN VALENZUELA, Henio  and  PEREZ ARCHUNDIA, Eduardo. Institutions and Education in Mexico: Merit Goods, Social Mobility and Pre-modernity. Rev. mex. cienc. polít. soc [online]. 2019, vol.64, n.237, pp.19-42.  Epub Nov 07, 2019. ISSN 0185-1918.  https://doi.org/10.22201/fcpys.2448492xe.2019.237.67625.

Education is a merit good and, at the same time, a meritocratic good. The aim of any educational system is to lead the transition between these two dimensions. The purpose this article is to show that when society is very heterogeneous, this task fails. To prove it, Mexico’s case is examined, because its political system has exhibited the need to maintain an equilibrium among modern, premodern, and postmodern actors to guarantee the success on facing the governability-democracy dilemma. The solution has been the permanent divorce between formal and informal institutions. The main conclusion is that this divorce has encouraged the shutting down of any modern attempt to encourage knowledge through education, because it allows the use of informal mechanisms that enjoy a high degree of legitimacy, due to the pre- and post-modern components of the social equilibrium.

Keywords : Institutions; Education; Merit Goods; Modernity; Academic Achievement.

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