The Origins, Nature and Impact of Political Knowledge

This project will examine political knowledge among citizens of the advanced democracies in terms of origins, nature and impact.

1. Origins: The question of why there are differences in level of political knowledge across citizens will be examined using an Opportunity-Ability-Motivation model.
2. Nature: Is political knowledge a general attribute of citizens, or is it domain specific? The dimensionality of political knowledge has fundamental implications for understanding the nature of political knowledge and its measurement.
3. Impact: The consequences of differences in political knowledge will be explored in terms of (1.) policy preferences, (2.) electoral choice, and (3.) evaluations of government responsiveness. If all citizens had uniformly high levels of knowledge how would the electorates preferences for public policy making and government composition change from that observed? This research will test the assumption that greater knowledge leads to more enlightened political choices.

political knowledge, political attitudes, electoral behavior, political representation