Citizen Knowledge Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Political knowledge is the factual information—and the skills for interpreting it—needed to act as an effective member of the polis or political community. From Plato to John Stuart Mill, political theorists have viewed political knowledge as a precondition for exercising citizenship—for taking part in community decision making. Since modern democracies extend citizenship to all adults, there is an expectation that they possess the necessary information and skills. Minimally, for representative democracy to function properly, those entitled to select representatives (i.e., voters in elections) need to have sufficient information and skill to evaluate leaders’ performance, to compare parties’ commitments against their own preferences, and to weigh the credibility of the commitments in light of their record in government.

Traditional Perspectives

Fulfilling the underlying principle of democracy, political equality thus becomes more than the right to vote and take part in politics; political equality requires being able to exercise the right knowledgeably. Traditionally, democratic theory has been concerned mainly with the effects of the distribution of power on political equality: knowledge focused on the manipulation of information by elites. As a result, political institutions and state policies are critically analyzed in terms of whether and how they block or distort—rather than foster— the dissemination of political knowledge. Concern with such dissemination was limited to policies and institutions involved with the political socialization of children and adolescents, through schools in particular, and their role in fostering support for democratic institutions.

The Rational Choice Approach

A different approach can be identified with the rational choice perspective. In his seminal 1957 volume, Anthony Downs pointed to “information asymmetries” resulting from the costs of acquiring needed information being inversely related to a person’s economic resources. But rational choice thinkers have tended to view absence of political knowledge as an expression of “rational ignorance,” rather than a public policy issue. Only recently has the presence or absence of knowledgeable democratic adult citizens been perceived as worthy of significant attention in research and public policy. The last two decades have produced important contributions to the understanding of a phenomenon termed political awareness, political sophistication, political information, and political literacy, as well as political knowledge. The main impetus has come from the accumulation of data showing that, despite rising levels of education, average levels of political knowledge are lower than that needed to meet the minimal expectations of universal adult citizenship—and declining. Already in 1964, Philip Converse observed that the average American citizen exhibited a low level of knowledge, lack of consistency between attitudes, attitude instability, and vacuous answers to open-ended questions. Thirty years later, Larry Bartels concluded that “the political ignorance of the American voter is one of the best documented data in political science.”

There is no consensus, however, on what to make of this state of affairs, and the differences give rise to several different research agendas. The most profound debate centers on whether political ignorance matters. Downs noted that while citizens may act as rational consumers of information in a political market, their ignorance results in a “paradox” since they lose out on the benefits to be gained from an informed electorate. Some observers contest the ill effects of this voters’ paradox, arguing that politically uninformed people follow social cues and rules of thumb to arrive at decisions; these decisions result in outcomes similar to those that would have been attained through the participation of informed people. Arend Lijphart disputes the premise that the views of those nonvoting out of ignorance do not differ substantially from those of voters, arguing that polled nonvoters have given the issues less thought than they would have if they had been mobilized to vote.

Evidence of such differences emerges from deliberative polls. Comparing the results of surveys conducted before and after participants are provided with relevant information in well over twenty deliberative polls conducted in North America, Europe, and Australia, James Fishkin and Robert Luskin report that deliberation almost always produces significant factual information gains and, often, changes in opinions. Underlying this approach is a critique over public opinion polling. On many issues, survey designers assume a level of knowledge that many respondents lack. Hence, the supposed reflection of popular opinion that polls provide is distorted because they are inaccurate, since poorly informed respondents, who are also generally poorer, will give answers they think are expected of them, and unrepresentative, since they are more likely not to answer.

Political Knowledge And Political Participation

A related literature has emerged examining the effects of political knowledge and how it serves as intermediary between opinions and voting. In particular, researchers have investigated differences between well-informed and poorly informed voters in the stability of their preferences when confronted with new information about candidates. As a rule, the more people are knowledgeable about politics, the more their expressed policy preferences will be consistent with their political values, and the more those who identify with a party, the more they will articulate policy preferences in line with those of the party.

A question addressed in the literature concerns how political knowledge is operationalized. One popular classification identifies three types of questions: Factual questions survey the processes of government, surveillance questions cover current office holders, and textbook questions get at historical and constitutional aspects. But some question this kind of typology. A school of thought has emerged taking a more subjective perspective on the “political.” From this perspective, the widespread portrait of a politically uninformed and inattentive youth miss the “good news,” namely attitudes about human relations and the environment which young people define as political. But there are problems with using attitudinal—as opposed to knowledge based—indicators, since they costless invite respondents to place themselves in a positive light.

Underlying this debate is an intensifying interest in the relationship between political knowledge and political participation. A great deal of empirical data link low levels of political knowledge to declining voter turnout, lack of party membership and identification, and distrust of politicians. Numerous studies show that more informed people are more likely to vote and engage in various forms of conventional, and even unconventional, political activity.

Such findings buttress calls for improved civic education, but tell us little about the effects of specific institutions. Electoral institutions, in particular, influence the accessibility, intelligibility, and usefulness of political information, and countries higher in civic literacy (the proportion of those with the knowledge to be effective citizens) tend to be high in electoral participation. Missing is the aggregate data to link specific institutional arrangements and levels of political knowledge. Cross-national survey questionnaires generally limit political knowledge questions to international events and processes. The contemporary challenge is to devise a battery of questions about government processes, office holders, and issues to be used in cross-national research.

Bibliography:

Althaus, Scott. Collective Preferences in Democratic Politics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
Bartels, Larry. “Uninformed Votes: Information Effects in Presidential Elections.” American Journal of Political Science 40, no. 1 (February 1996): 194–230.
Converse, Philip. The nature of belief systems in mass publics. In David Apter ed., Ideology and Discontent. New York: Free Press, 1964.
Delli Carpini, Michael, and Scott Keeter. What Americans Know about Politics and Why It Matters. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996.
Downs, Anthony J. An Economic Theory of Democracy. New York: Harper, 1957.
Fishkin, James. The Voice of the People: Public Opinion and Democracy. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.
Lijphart, Arend. “Unequal Participation: Democracy‘s Unresolved Dilemma.” American Political Science Review 91, no. 1 (1997): 1–14.
Mill, John Stuart. Representative Government. London: Dent and Sons, 1910.
Milner, Henry. Civic Literacy: How Informed Citizens Make Democracy Work. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 2002.
Sniderman, Paul M., Richard A. Brody, and Philip E. Tetlock. Reasoning and Choice. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Zaller, John. The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion. New York: Cambridge, 1992.