The Politicization of Public Education in Nicaragua: 1967-1994, Regime Type and Regime Strategy Page: 3

                                
Coplin, Janet C., The Politicization of Public Education in Nicaragua. 1967-1994: Regime
Type and Regime Strategy. Doctor of Philosophy, (Political Science), May, 1996, 217 pp.,
18 tables, bibliography, 167 titles.
Understanding how change occurs in lesser developed countries, particularly in Latin
America has been the subject of a prolonged theoretical academic debate. That debate has
emphasized economics more that politics in general and predictability over unpredictability
in the Latin American region. This paper challenges these approaches. Explaining change
requires an examination of the politics of public policy as much as its economic dimensions.
Second, change in the Latin American region may be less predictable than it appears.
Scholars maintain that change in Latin America occurs when contending elites negotiate it.
Their power comes from the various resources they possess. Change, therefore, is not
expected to occur as a function of regime change per se.
This paper considers the treatment of education policy in Nicaragua during the
regimes of the dynastic authoritarianism of Anastasio Somoza Debayle (1967-1979), the
revolutionary governments of the Sandinistas (1979-1990), and the democratic-centrist
government of Violeta Barrios de Chamorro (1990-1996). The central research question is:
When regimes change, do policies change? The methodology defines the independent
variable as the regime and education policy as the dependent variable. It posits three
hypotheses. The right-wing regime of Somoza was expected to restrict both the qualitative
aspects and the financing of education; (2) the left-wing regimes of the Sandinistas were
hypothesized to have expanded both; and (3) the democratic-centrist regime of Chamorro
was expected to have both expanded and restricted certain aspects of education policy.