This a study on lessons learned from a multi-part research investigation into USAID’s civic education programming. The study looked at adult and school-based civic education programs in the Dominican Republic, Poland and South Africa, and shows that civic education programmes for adults can have a significant, positive impact on certain key aspects of democratic behaviors and attitudes. Civic education appears to contribute to significantly greater rates of political participation among program participants, especially at the local level. It also leads to moderate differences in participants’ knowledge about their political system and about democratic structures and institutions in general and tends to contribute to a greater sense of political efficacy. However, civic education programs appear to have little effect on changing democratic values, such as political tolerance and, in fact, appear to have a negative impact on some values, such as trust in political institutions. The study also found that men tended to receive greater benefit from civic education than women.
