of Citizenship Education? A Theoretical Framework for Researching the Democratic Quality of Citizenship Education in Transformation Countries and Elsewhere

In the last 30 years, the process of institutional democratization prevailing in Western Europe since at least the end of World War II has spread to Southwestern, Southeastern and Eastern European countries. To what extent has this democratic transformation of polities been followed by a genuinely democratic transformation of citizenship education in these countries? Unfortunately, recent research on citizenship education does not provide a satisfactory answer, because it has mainly focused on institutional and organizational issues. Nothing was said about the question how well-sounding, but quite general – and therefore ambiguous – officially proclaimed goals and contents of citizenship education in transformation countries are educationally construed in textbooks and the teaching practice. However, there are quite a few empirical examples and indications which clearly show that citizenship education in transformation countries (and elsewhere) shows a number of facets which are hardly in line with core democratic values. Therefore, this article proposes a theoretical framework for systematically researching the democratic quality of citizenship education in transformation countrie