This article aims at exploring the gender gap in levels of political knowledge, with a focus on lower secondary school students in Europe. Using the International Civic and Citizenship Education Study 2009, we find that boys outperform girls when asked about facts; but girls demonstrate greater knowledge if asked to reason about a particular political matter. Part of the gender gap in political knowledge among adolescents appears to be a function of what is defined as knowledge. We argue for the need to include a greater variety of items to measure political knowledge, including both factual and analytical domains of knowledge
Resumen: Este trabajo evalúa la validez de diferentes modelos interpretativos del comportamiento electoral en las elecciones Europeas partiendo del resultado de Junio de 2009. Nos centramos, en primer lugar en modelos que conectan el voto europeo con aspectos políticos basados en el nivel nacional (modelo de Segundo Orden) y en el ciclo electoral doméstico (modelo de Ciclo Electoral); En segundo lugar se evalúa la capacidad explicativa de un modelo reñido con las interpretaciones tradicionales, y basado en el papel de la posición de los partidos políticos y la campaña electoral (modelo de Europa Importa). Finalmente se avanza un modelo sintético, con el objetivo de proporcionar una más sólida explicación de las elecciones de 2009 al Parlamento Europeo.
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