The Impact of Institutional Design on the Democratization of School Governance

Abstract

Nicaragua presents an interesting case study of a society pursuing reform of the democratization of its school governance through citizen participation. A radical transformation with a complex institutional arrangement was put in place within a context of major political change and endemic poverty. In order to achieve our objective of empirically evaluating the actual democratization of school governance that took place in Nicaraguan schools, we offer a detailed description of Nicaragua's Autonomous School Program's (ASP) institutional arrangements, which ran for almost 20 years nationwide. Our conclusion is that the implementation of collegiate governance with ample participation requires much planning and a great deal of caution, since misguided efforts may become the norm generating greater levels of exclusion and autocracy in defiance of democracy and participation. Unfortunately in Nicaragua this was the case.