Explaining Political Knowledge: The Role of Procedural Quality in an Informed Citizenry
| Published date | 01 March 2017 |
| Date | 01 March 2017 |
| DOI | 10.1177/0032321716632258 |
| Author | Nicholas Clark |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
632258PSX0010.1177/0032321716632258Political StudiesClark
research-article2016
Article
Political Studies
2017, Vol. 65(1) 61 –80
Explaining Political Knowledge:
© The Author(s) 2016
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in an Informed Citizenry
Nicholas Clark
Abstract
While much is known about the micro-level predictors of political knowledge, there have been
relatively few efforts to study the potential macro-level causes of knowledge. Seeking to improve
our understanding of country-based variation in knowledge, this article demonstrates that
individuals have an easier time finding and interpreting information in political environments that
provide the public with greater opportunities to engage, observe, and learn about the political
process. To investigate that possibility, the article analyzes how the procedural quality of the
political process affects political knowledge. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral
Systems and the Worldwide Governance Indicators Project, survey analyses show that the
transparency and responsiveness of a political system indeed influence the public’s information
about political parties and, to a lesser extent, the amount of factual knowledge retained by survey
respondents. In other words, the quality of democratic governance affects how much individuals
know about the political process.
Keywords
political knowledge, political sophistication, procedural quality, transparency, comparative
political behavior
Accepted: 9 January 2016
The research on political knowledge consistently finds that most individuals know very
little about their political system (Converse, 1964; Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Luskin,
1987). Such ignorance may create difficulties for representative democracy because if
individuals are unable to accurately evaluate the performance of their elected officials,
there is less to hinder leaders who would act without considering the public interest.
Additionally, if there are systematic biases in political knowledge, then groups that largely
comprise ill-informed individuals may not be able to identify or capitalize on opportuni-
ties to articulate their preferences to elected leaders and/or may advocate positions that
Department of Political Science, Susquehanna University, Selinsgrove, PA, USA
Corresponding author:
Nicholas Clark, Department of Political Science, Susquehanna University, 514 University Avenue,
Selinsgrove, PA 17870, USA.
Email: clarkn@susqu.edu
62
Political Studies 65 (1)
are counter-productive to their own interests (Althaus, 2003). This problem extends
beyond the United States. Systematic information biases occur in many advanced indus-
trial democracies (Bennett, 1988), although the magnitude of such biases varies across
countries (Arnold, 2012). While recent comparative studies have examined the institu-
tional predictors of such variation (Berggren, 2001; Hellwig, 2011), we still know very
little about the political conditions that influence political knowledge.
The comparative behavioral literature largely focuses on the role of electoral and party-
based institutions in explaining political knowledge. Such institutions affect knowledge by
enhancing or diminishing the public’s incentives for seeking out information (Gordon and
Segura, 1997; Gronlund and Milner, 2006). While providing some evidence as to the poten-
tial sources of political knowledge, these studies have thus far overlooked an important
component of democratic society: the procedural quality of the political process. The term
procedural quality is here defined as the transparency, openness, and responsiveness of the
governing structures of a political system, all of which determine whether individuals have
opportunities to articulate their preferences and to feel involved in the political process. The
availability of such opportunities have been found to affect how individuals understand
democratic norms (Peffley and Rohrschneider, 2003) and conceive of their own rights and
responsibilities as democratic citizens (Rohrschneider and Loveless, 2010; Sánchez-
Cuenca, 2000). The central argument of this article is that procedural quality also influences
the public’s knowledge about the political process; that is, individuals are more likely to
learn about politics when they can observe and engage with the structures of power in their
political system. The prior research focuses on institutions that affect knowledge by moder-
ating the effects of individual-level characteristics such as political interest or income. This
article contributes to that work by examining political conditions, such as transparency and
responsiveness, which likely have a more direct effect on knowledge. Additionally, this
article examines a seemingly intuitive relationship that has not yet been considered within
the literature: the extent to which structures of power include individuals in the decision-
making process and the ability of individuals to act as informed citizens.
To analyze the effects of procedural quality on political knowledge, data are used from
the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems Module 3 (CSES, n.d.). Two measures of
political knowledge are modeled: the first an estimate of the accuracy of respondents’ party
placements on the left/right ideological spectrum, the second a cumulative index of correct
answers to factual questions about the political process. As the CSES includes 40 demo-
cratic countries, these data permit a robust examination of the conditions facilitating a
more knowledgeable electorate. To measure procedural quality, I use expert assessments
provided by the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) Project (Kaufmann et al., 2010).
The article proceeds as follows. I first review the literature on both the individual-level and
contextual predictors of political knowledge and then develop a theoretical model elabo-
rating the relationship between procedural quality and political knowledge. Next, the theo-
retical expectations are tested with the CSES and WGI data. Results of these analyses
demonstrate that living under more transparent and responsive political institutions is
indeed associated with higher levels of political knowledge. This finding persists even
when accounting for the macro-level conditions already identified in the literature.
Explaining Political Knowledge
This article adopts the definition of political knowledge used in prior work: facts about a
political system that an individual can recall from their memory to interpret and understand
Clark
63
political events (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Price and Zaller, 1993). The long-standing
consensus within the American behavioral research is that most people know very little
about politics and governance. Many individuals, for instance, are unable to recall basic
facts about the American political system (Bennett, 1988; Neuman, 1986). While some
research suggests that Europeans generally know more about current policies than
Americans (Bennett et al., 1996), the problem of mass political ignorance extends beyond
the United States to Europe and most other advanced industrial democracies (Arnold,
2012; Gronlund and Milner, 2006).
Members of the public also exhibit low levels of political sophistication, here defined
as the ability to coherently organize political ideas by consistently applying an ideological
constraint to a system of political beliefs. In public opinion surveys, the same respond-
ents articulate inconsistent, seemingly random ideological positions when queried at
different points in time (Converse, 1964; Luskin, 1987). An individual’s sophistication
does appear to be connected with their level of factual knowledge. More knowledgeable
survey respondents are more likely to convey issue positions that are consistent with
their stated ideological preferences (Bennett, 1995; Campbell et al., 1960; Lodge et al.,
1989; Smith, 1989).
Until recently, efforts to explain political knowledge and sophistication have focused
on individual-level predictors within the context of the United States. The strongest and
most consistent predictor of knowledge is an individual’s level of education (Converse,
1964; Lewis-Beck et al., 2008; Zaller, 1992), which serves to enhance cognitive capabili-
ties for processing information (thus reducing the costs involved in political learning) and
to increase interest in political affairs (Gordon and Segura, 1997). The other individual-
level correlates of knowledge (such as income, age, sex and race) are related to an indi-
vidual’s socio-economic status (Althaus, 1998; Bennett, 1988; Neuman, 1986). As Delli
Carpini and Keeter (1996: 156) theorize, “many of the ways citizens become politically
informed involve social and economic circumstances that are still less accessible to mem-
bers of (disadvantaged) groups.”
The largest obstacle to comparative studies has been the absence of reliable and
consistent measures of political knowledge. For example, the CSES, which pools cross-
country survey data, did not offer factual knowledge questions until relatively recently.
One approach to overcoming this hurdle is to rely on factual questions about the European
Union (EU) from the Eurobarometer and European Election Study, both of which use the
same format and type of question in each EU member state (Clark and Hellwig, 2012; de
Vries et al.,...
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