Teaching world citizenship: The cross-national adoption of human rights education in formal schooling

This dissertation investigates the emergence and global diffusion of human rights education (HRE) in formal schooling. Modernization theories predict that countries that are economically, politically, and culturally more advanced in their developmental stage are more likely to adopt HRE. Realist perspectives and functionalist accounts view HRE adoption as resulting from reputational calculations and strategic action by states to advance their national power and gain competitive advantage. This study employs a neo-institutional perspective and proposes instead a top-down causal imagery that involves world-cultural assumptions validating the sanctity and transformative capacities of individuals and a global redefinition of the "nation-state" to include human rights education as a basic state responsibility. Using longitudinal data on human rights instruments as a measure of institutionalized global consensus, descriptive trends show that global human rights discourse has increasingly incorporated an educational component that is becoming more and more rationalized. Findings from event-history analyses provide support for both world-cultural and domestic explanations regarding HRE adoption rates. Political development, the behavior of neighboring countries, a world more saturated with international organizations and human rights instruments articulating HRE standards, and dense ties to the human rights movement drive national decisions to adopt HRE. Finally, a qualitative case study of the Republic of Korea demonstrates that, despite unfavorable political and cultural domestic circumstances, HRE penetrate to the level of the intended curriculum in South Korean civics textbooks and curricular standards. Over time, discussions of transnational elements of identity and more expansive conceptions of rights increasingly challenge traditional themes of incorporation. Interviews with academics, human rights activists, and government officials also confirm that world mechanisms---international advocacy networks, international workshops, and international bureaucrats---played a substantial role in shaping local developments in HRE.