Increasingly, policymakers and scholars are interested in the role of schools in fostering students’ democratic competencies. At the same time, the expansion of private schooling through market-oriented reforms has intensified debates about whether private schools support or undermine democratic development. Although a substantial body of research has examined associations between private schooling and democratic competencies and civic participation, existing evidence is limited by three recurring features: a reliance on research designs that do not allow for causal inference, an absence of evidence on knowledge and skills, and a concentration on the United States (Shakeel et al., 2024). As a result, there remains limited robust evidence on the extent to which private schools shape students’ democratic competencies, particularly in European contexts. This paper addresses these gaps by examining the effects of private school attendance on students’ democratic competencies in Sweden. These democratic competencies include civic knowledge/skills, political interest, civic self-efficacy, and students’ beliefs about threats to democracy. The Swedish context offers a particularly informative setting, which allows publicly funded private schools to operate nationally alongside public schools within a common regulatory and curricular framework. We draw on a novel linked dataset that combines data from the 2022 International Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) with Swedish register data. First, to understand potential mechanisms, we present descriptive differences in civic learning opportunities and relevant school and classroom characteristics between private and public schools, drawing on student, teacher, and principal questionnaire data from ICCS. Next, to estimate treatment effects, we address non-random selection into private schools by employing entropy balancing (Hainmueller, 2012) and leveraging pre-treatment course grades in several subjects, as well as detailed demographic characteristics, which aligns with existing standards for quasi-experimental design (What Works Clearinghouse, 2022). We test the robustness of our estimates using an approach to sensitivity analysis (Frank et al., 2013). Preliminary results suggest positive effects of private schools on some democratic competencies and not others. Additional analyses, including tests of heterogeneity and sensitivity, are ongoing. By providing credibly causal evidence from a non-U.S. context using linked international assessment and register data, this study contributes to ongoing debates about the democratic implications of private schooling. That said, any efforts toward potential reforms that promote the expansion of private school access through policies such as vouchers should very carefully consider the implications and any potential for unintended consequences (see Baker et al., 2025).

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