Searching for a democratic equalizer: Citizenship education's moderating effect on the relationship between a political home and internal political efficacy

Internal political efficacy (IPE) is an important yet unequally distributed driver of political action. Following cultural sociological explanations for political disengagement, we study how students' political home environment reproduces inequalities in IPE and how citizenship education moderates this. We test whether citizenship education compensates, reproduces, or accelerates inequalities in IPE due to differences in one's political home environment. These moderating effects are tested for three components of citizenship education; the number of civic learning experiences, open classroom climate for discussion, and active student participation at school. We consider the school a potential equalizer and a segregated breeding ground for democracy. Based on multilevel analyses employing cross-sectional data (3838 students across 147 schools) gathered to test the attainment targets in citizenship education among Flemish senior high school students (Belgium), we show that privileged students receive more citizenship education. However, each citizenship education component increases IPE and has a small yet significant compensation effect. This paper makes theoretical and empirical contributions to the literature on inequalities in political socialization processes while critically investigating the school's functioning as a democratic equalizer.