Levels Of Political Knowledge Research Articles

Political Knowledge in the Context of Changing Institutions

Citizen political knowledge is conventionally measured with survey questions developed for use in the industrialized wealthy democracies. In this paper, we argue that certain characteristics of political institutions and party systems that are relatively common in unconsolidated democracies and mixed regimes are likely to constrain the acquisition of political knowledge as traditionally measured. Using data from Latin America, Africa, and the countries included in the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, we examine the relationship between contextual factors and average levels of political knowledge across countries, measured both through civics knowledge and the ideological placement of political parties. We provide evidence consistent with the idea that citizens have fewer opportunities and are less motivated to acquire political knowledge in contexts where political institutions and actors frequently change and where young and nonprogrammatic parties are the norm.

Understanding Gender Inequality in Political Self-Efficacy in Early Adolescents: Different Measures, Different Gender Gaps

Research has shown a persistent gender gap in political self-efficacy across most Western countries. Nevertheless, the regularity in these findings masks the diversity in the measures used to capture this construct and little reflection has been undertaken on the extent that changing the measures has on the size and the direction of the gender gap. This article tests on students aged 14 in 38 countries using the IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study, the extent that self-efficacy in the domain of politics is a unidimensional measure and if different gender gaps can be found between self-efficacy measures capturing partisan politics compared to broader citizenship self-efficacy measures. The findings show that it is only partisan political self-efficacy measures where there is a significant gender gap and where girls are disadvantaged. This is the case for 37 out of 38 countries and robust when controlling for different levels of political knowledge. When a broader measure of citizenship self-efficacy is used, there are much less gender differences, and when there is a significant difference, girls outperform boys in 14 out of 38 countries. These contrary findings are similar in the same study when comparing the measures on interest in politics and interest in social issues.

Political competence of Croatian secondary school students 2010–2021

Political knowledge and democratic attitudes are recognized in contemporary studies as important dimensions of democratic political culture. Furthermore, knowledge and attitudes can be seen as integral parts of political competence. Unlike other dimensions of political culture such as, for example, political participation, political interest, etc., research on political knowledge and democratic attitudes are more an exception than a rule. This assessment is especially true for Croatia. In this paper, we attempt to address some of these gaps by focusing on the exploration of political competences of Croatian final-year secondary school students. The paper is divided into two major sections. In the first part, we discuss the meaning and importance of political competence for the functioning of democratic political systems. The second part consists of a presentation and discussion of the research results on political knowledge and democratic attitudes of Croatian final-year secondary school students conducted in three time points - 2010, 2015 and 2021. By doing so, we want to detect the levels of political knowledge and democratic attitudes, as well as the possible changes that occurred in these levels during the research period. Finally, we are also interested in the relationship between these two dimensions of political competence.

DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL CULTURE AND IDEOLOGY IS AN IMPORTANT BASIS OF SOCIAL AND POLITICAL LIFE OF SOCIETY

This article explores the importance of developing political culture in society, strengthening its foundations, considering ideological factors, and recognizing the societal demand for political culture in socio-political life. The analysis emphasizes the social, moral, and political significance of enhancing the level of political knowledge and political culture among members of society. Additionally, the article analyzes that the ideology of society and the national ideological foundations are among the most crucial factors in socio-political life.

Does Private School Choice Threaten Democracy? Evidence from Private and Public Schools in New York City and Dallas/Fort Worth

A major concern in the ongoing debate over school choice is whether private schools help to increase their students’ levels of tolerance necessary for a functioning democracy in the United States. Over 40 years ago, scholars at the University of Minnesota created a survey which measured political knowledge, political tolerance, perceived threats from opposing groups, and support for democratic norms anchored in each respondent’s view of the political group they find most distasteful. In 1997, researchers at various universities used a similar survey instrument to derive responses from students in eighth-grade social studies classes who were enrolled in seven public and twenty-four private schools in New York City and Dallas/Fort Worth, Texas. Those original data remained archived and unexamined for decades. We analyze those data using Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) and rigorous Nearest Neighbor Matching (NNM) methods based on propensity scores. We find that students who attended private schools demonstrate higher levels of political knowledge and stronger support for democratic norms when compared to observationally similar students who attended public schools.

Who cooperates with whom? The role of day-to-day partisan cooperation on affective polarization

Recent research has shown that partisan cooperation in the form of coalitional government in parliamentary democracies can mitigate partisans’ negative feelings toward opposing parties. However, little is known regarding the influence of informal cooperation beyond coalition arrangements on citizens’ affection towards the out-parties. To address this, I combine survey data from 11 Western Democracies with a measure of parties’ public relationships as reported by the media to examine the extent to which partisans’ affection towards opposing parties aligns with the changing portrayal of interactions between the parties as reported in the news. The findings demonstrate that voters’ affection towards opposing parties do indeed correspond with the actual pattern of interactions as depicted by the media. However, the reduction in the levels of affective polarization varies across individuals with different levels of political knowledge. This finding shows that affective polarization is also influenced by the short-term nature of cooperative or conflictual events beyond its policy-based or institutional underpinnings.

Political knowledge of youth and their proneness to prejudice: Empirical test of direct and indirect effect via right-wing authoritarianism

In this paper, we explored how political knowledge related to generalised prejudice, defined as the common variance of three highly correlated specific prejudice concerning ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation. We aligned our hypotheses with the Cognitive Ability and Style to Evaluation (CASE) model, which postulates the mechanism underlying the relationship between individual-level cognitive variables and intergroup outcomes. As knowledge in its many forms correlates with and serves as a proxy of cognitive abilities, we hypothesised that political knowledge, when considered a precursor of prejudice, can be expected to act similarly to cognitive variables within the CASE model. We performed an empirical test of the hypothesised relationships on a nationally representative sample of Croatian students in their final year of secondary education (aged 17–19). As expected, there was a significant negative association between political knowledge and generalised prejudice, both direct and indirect via right-wing authoritarianism. Youth with higher political knowledge had significantly lower levels of generalised prejudice. In addition, while there were differences in the overall levels of political knowledge, right-wing authoritarianism and generalised prejudice between students attending different secondary education programmes, the pattern of relationships between these concepts was found to be stable across educational settings.

What Americans Know About Statehouse Democracy

AbstractPolitical scientists have largely come to a consensus that “most citizens are politically uninformed” (Delli Carpini and Keeter 1997), but even with increased attention to state-level representation and electoral behavior, political scientists know surprisingly little themselves regarding what Americans know about state politics. Past studies of state political knowledge examine narrow domains of knowledge and make few comparisons between individuals’ understanding of national and state politics. To provide a more comprehensive account of Americans’ state political knowledge, I conducted a novel national survey that included over 30 political knowledge questions. In a descriptive and exploratory analysis, I show Americans demonstrated more knowledge about who their Governor is but less knowledge about who represents them in the state legislature, state government institutions, and the state economy, particularly compared to their knowledge of federal politics. The different levels of political knowledge across different domains and levels of government raise concerns for statehouse democracy and should be considered before testing theories at the state level. To guide future research and surveys, I identify political knowledge questions that discriminate well between those who know little, some, and a lot about state politics across different domains of political knowledge.

Online Activism and Political Knowledge among Nigerian Youth during the 2023 Elections: Analyzing the Role of Online Information Sources

This study appraises the nexus between online activism, political knowledge, and the mediating influence of diverse online information sources among Nigerian youth during the 2023 elections. Through an analysis of these relationships, this study contributes to a nuanced understanding of digital spaces' role in shaping young individuals' political awareness. Specifically, this study examines whether engagement in online activism during the 2023 Nigerian elections positively correlates with increased levels of political knowledge among Nigerian youth and whether the extent of exposure to diverse online information sources mediates the influence of engagement in online activism on political knowledge. This study employs a quantitative approach incorporating techniques such as Pearson’s correlation and mediation analysis. Data were collected through an online survey of 409 Nigerian youth aged 18–35. The findings reveal a significant positive correlation between online activism and political knowledge, substantiating the hypothesis that active participation in digital advocacy enhances political awareness among Nigerian youths. Furthermore, mediation analysis showed that exposure to diverse online information sources mediates the relationship between engagement in online activism and political knowledge, emphasizing the role of online platforms as conduits for political information and awareness. These findings underscore the pivotal role of online platforms in shaping the political knowledge landscape of Nigerian youth during the 2023 elections.

Objective conditions, political knowledge, and perceptions of electoral competition in U.S. mayoral elections

AbstractObjectiveThis article investigates the extent to which perceptions of the competitive context of mayoral elections reflect actual levels of competition and how that relationship is shaped by political expertise.MethodsWe use a unique survey data set of more than 6000 respondents interviewed in 40 separate mayoral elections.ResultsIn broad strokes, people living in competitive cities are more likely than others to predict competitive outcomes. However, in keeping with the knowledge gap hypothesis, the relationship between objective levels of competition and perceived levels of competition is much stronger among those with relatively high levels of political knowledge than those with low levels of political knowledge.ConclusionsThe connection between actual and perceived conditions does not hold evenly for all segments of society—the information‐rich respond to their political environment, while the information‐poor are relatively unmoved by that environment. This pattern of asymmetric information acquisition is a familiar one in American politics and provides further evidence of an important source of political inequality.

What do voters know, and why does it matter? Investigating issue‐specific knowledge and candidate choice in the 2020 U.S. primaries

AbstractAre differences in issue‐specific knowledge associated with different candidate preferences, as would be expected if voters are judging candidates and their policy commitments on the basis of essential contextual knowledge they receive from the media? By utilizing a bias‐sensitive method of measuring politically relevant knowledge—on economic, foreign policy, and environmental issues—we were able to identify candidate‐selection effects of policy‐specific information. The study also offers new evidence on how psychological traits affect political thinking within a partisan group, whereas most research has focused on psychological asymmetries across ideological and partisan groups. Based on previous research, we expected Sanders supporters and supporters of other “anti‐establishment” candidates to have less accurate knowledge on these issues than Biden (and other establishment candidate) supporters, as the demographic groups that differentially supported Sanders tend to have lower levels of political knowledge. Instead, Sanders and anti‐establishment candidate supporters were found to be more knowledgeable on these issues. We also found psychological asymmetries among Democrats and Democrat‐leaning Independents, which were associated with candidate preference. Overall, issue‐specific political knowledge was found to be an important predictor of vote choice.

The partisan heuristic and the voters’ knowledge: The essential role of the information environment

The low-information rationality theory expects voters with low political knowledge to make more use of the partisan heuristic than those with high knowledge. However, empirical studies on decision making in direct democracy observe a positive correlation between political knowledge and the use of party cues. We resolve this tension between theory and empirical evidence by demonstrating that the relationship between political knowledge and the use of party cues is conditional on the information environment. We provide evidence for this hypothesis by exploiting a natural experiment in Switzerland and analyze a large variety of direct democratic votes. The results show that voters with lower levels of political knowledge tend to align less with their preferred party because they often have a wrong perception of their preferred party’s vote recommendation. However, if information on parties’ position is easily available, their vote choice is at least as much in line with their preferred party as among those with high knowledge. This suggests that in such an information environment voters with low political knowledge strongly rely on the partisan heuristic. Our research note supports the low-information rationality theory and this way contributes to the literature on the quality of political opinion formation and the political psychology of reasoning and decision making.

The Association between ideology and resistance to governmental apology depends on political knowledge

AbstractThis study examines the relationship between ideology and resistance to the government's apology to Asian victims of Japan's colonial rule policy, which varies according to political knowledge. Based on existing research, because only a limited percentage of voters consider politics to be ideology based, it is expected that the association between ideology and resistance to intergroup apologies by one's own government differs according to their level of political knowledge. We selected three issues of political apologies: colonial rule in Asian countries, comfort women, and the massacre of Korean people based on false rumors at the time of the 1923 Kanto Earthquake; thereafter, we conducted an online survey of a panel selected by Nikkei Research Inc. The results suggest that the relationship between ideology and resistance among voters to political apologies varies with the level of political knowledge, as expected. On the contrary, social dominance orientations (SDO) were associated with resistance to apology, regardless of their level of political knowledge. We then tested the reproducibility of this finding by conducting a follow-up test on registered users of a crowdsourcing service after conducting a preregistration. In addition, we also measured general attitudes toward personal apologies and neighboring countries victimized by Japan's colonialist policies as factors that might predict resistance to apologies even among the politically uninformed. The association between ideology, SDO, and resistance to governmental apologies was generally replicated in this study.

Close to politics and to policies: subjective knowledge about referendum topics in Eastern Europe

Citizens with political knowledge can contribute to the quality of democracy in their country. Previous research has established the existence of differences between the actual (objective) and perceived (subjective) level of political knowledge, but the factors driving citizens’ subjective political knowledge in a specific setting in which they can take direct decisions remain unclear. To explain what determines subjective knowledge about referendum topics among voters, the present analysis focuses on seven referendums held in Eastern Europe between 2015 and 2019 in Bulgaria, Hungary, Moldova, Poland, Romania (twice), and Slovakia. We use individual-level data from surveys conducted in the aftermath of each referendum with a total number of 1825 actual voters. The results indicate that more politically engaged citizens, those who trust parties and are satisfied with democracy, and those who are critical towards the government consider themselves more informed about the referendum topics.

Candidate visibility, voter knowledge, and the incumbency advantage in preferential-list PR

Our knowledge about how voters decide which candidate(s) to vote for under preferential-list proportional representation (PLPR) systems remains limited. In particular, it is debated whether incumbent MPs enjoy an electoral advantage over outsiders also under PLPR. We argue that such an incumbency advantage critically depends on candidate visibility (in the media) and differs across voters with varying levels of political knowledge. Our empirical analysis combines candidate information with rich individual-level voting data collected via “mock ballots” in the 2014 Belgian PartiRep election study. We show that the vote premium linked to incumbency increases with increasing media visibility, and while high-visibility incumbents outperform incumbents among the entire electorate, low-visibility incumbents enjoy an advantage only among knowledgeable voters. The results contribute to a better understanding of candidate voting and the incumbency advantage in PLPR. They also have implications for campaign strategies and the regulation of media access.

Latino-Targeted Misinformation and the Power of Factual Corrections

Do individual, interpersonal, or institutional factors condition the effects of misinformation on beliefs? Can interventions such as fact checks stem the tide of the “infodemic” within marginalized communities? We explore the sudden flood of misinformation and disinformation targeting Latinos during the 2020 election and global COVID-19 pandemic to answer these questions. In a preregistered experiment, we find that exposure to misinformation can decrease factual accuracy, and neither trust in nor consumption of media, including ethnic media, serves as a buffer against these misinformation effects. However, fact checks eliminate the effects of misinformation on false beliefs without “backfiring” and reducing accuracy. Fact checks improve factual accuracy among subgroups varying in levels of political knowledge, trust, and acculturation. These findings provide crucial support for recent investments into fact checking by Latino-oriented media outlets and address gaps within the literature over whether such interventions are also effective within marginalized groups.

Is Online Textual Political Expression Associated With Political Knowledge?

Prior research has reliably shown a positive relationship between political talk and political knowledge. This study sought to build upon this research by assessing the association between internet-based textual political expression and political knowledge. Notably, while online textual political expression is closely linked to traditional conceptualizations of political talk, it is also different in several key ways. Accordingly, this study drew upon research and theorization in the areas of political talk, online expression, and communication self-effects to explore the association between political commentary frequency on Facebook and performance on a political knowledge quiz. Moreover, we investigated the degree to which expression-apparent elaborative thinking levels were differentially associated with political knowledge. The results indicated that Facebook-based textual political expression was, as predicted, positively associated with political knowledge. Therein, we found that textual political expression indicative of high levels of elaboration was much more strongly associated with political knowledge levels than textual political expression that was indicative of comparatively lower levels of elaboration. Finally, exploratory analyses suggested that highly elaborative textual political expression was at least as strongly related to political knowledge as traditional media consumption variables.

Smartphone use and knowledge gap hypothesis: the relationship between mobile news consumption, discussion network heterogeneity, and political knowledge

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to examine the knowledge gap hypothesis in the context of smartphone use for news to understand whether mobile news consumption could bridge or widen the knowledge gap between people of higher and lower socioeconomic status (SES).Design/methodology/approachThe authors examine how smartphone news consumption is associated with the knowledge gap hypothesis by analyzing a survey dataset from Hong Kong. This study focuses specifically on a moderated mediation model in which the indirect effect of mobile news consumption on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity is contingent on level of education.FindingsSmartphone use for news/information was positively associated with level of discussion network heterogeneity. The indirect effect of smartphone news use on political knowledge via discussion network heterogeneity was stronger for those with lower levels of education.Originality/valueThis study advances the understanding of the role of smartphone use in contributing to the functioning of deliberative democracy as this use enhances discussion network heterogeneity and general levels of political knowledge. Moreover, our study contributes to the literature on the knowledge gap by not only examining the relationship between smartphone use, discussion heterogeneity, and political knowledge but also taking into consideration individual levels of education.

Metaphors, political knowledge and the basic income debate in Belgium

Abstract The framing impact of political discourses has long been attested for. Metaphors in particular are known to ease the understanding of complex concepts and processes. Yet, the question remains to what extent metaphors do work the same on different recipients? Based on an experimental design, we test a potentially key moderating variable in the study of political metaphors: political knowledge. Our experiment aims at determining the extent to which the confrontation of individuals to arguments and metaphors impacts their preferences regarding the implementation of a basic income in Belgium. In particular, we hypothesize that the marginal effect of metaphors as cognitive shortcuts decreases when political knowledge increases. Our findings suggest that some metaphorical frames are more successful than others, hereby supporting the idea that the aptness of the metaphorical frame is a key factor when conducting experiments. We conclude that political knowledge is an important variable when analyzing the framing effect of metaphors, especially when it goes about very low or very high levels of political knowledge. The insertion of metaphors in political discourses may easily succeed in rallying individuals behind a given cause, but this would only work if participants have a lower knowledge of politics.

How the Chinese people understand democracy: a multi-method study based on four waves of nationwide representative surveys

ABSTRACT Different methods of measurement for survey research have been developed to explore how the public understands democracy. In the existing research on the democratic understanding of the Chinese people, closed-ended questions are often used to measure this understanding. However, the results obtained can only prove whether the democratic understanding of the Chinese people deviates from or is close to liberal democracy. This article applied grounded theory to classify respondents’ answers to an open-ended question. Unlike previous research findings, this article’s findings showed that even Chinese people’s democratic understanding has certain procedural or substantive elements. However, this understanding consists of only emphasizing their rights and interests under the Communist Party of China-led system rather than being more inclined toward liberal democracy. Additionally, the higher effective response rates for closed-ended questions suggested that Chinese people need a higher level of political knowledge and engagement in public affairs to form their own understanding of democracy when answering an open-ended question. We argue that although closed-ended questions are more convenient for statistical analysis, open-ended questions with the classification method developed in this study can paint a more accurate picture of respondents’ understanding of democracy in China.