Democratic theories of education embrace the assumption that society is constituted by citizens with a great diversity of life plans and that individuals’ efforts to pursue them can lead to conflict or, at a minimum, questions about the relative distribution of opportunities and resources. Thus, democratic theories of education concern themselves both with authority over the way schools function as institutions with great socializing power and with the capacities and dispositions individuals must develop to sustain democratic social relations from one generation to the next. This entry will discuss a number of such theories, but it will also reject the assumption that all democratic theories of education are to be found in the liberal tradition. Nevertheless, an important theme of the entry is highlighted in ...