Citizen Participation and Coproduction Across Countries: The Case of Parent Participation in Education

For 47 countries, a cross-country comparison is made with respect to parent participation in the production of education. The availability of national resources is used to explain in a multi-level regression analysis the level of participation in three types of parent participation: (1) ‘voluntary tasks’, (2) ‘governance and funding’, and (3) ‘child/parent feedback’. Furthermore, a comparison is made across countries between public and private schools, to better understand how the unique public nature accounts for different participation decisions. Results indicate that the type of school structure (private vs. public) in combination with national available resources have contrasting effects on parent participation: available resources at country-level crowd-out participation in public schools, but crowd-in participation in private schools.