Policy knowledge among ‘elite citizens’

Jensen, Carsten; Zohlnhöfer, Reimut

doi:10.1002/epa2.1076

Cited by 10 publications

(3 citation statements)

References 26 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…The crux is detecting information necessary or sufficient to be competent at political tasks (Lupia, 2016). The few studies on welfare-state related knowledge show poor performance, even among political science students (Jensen and Zohlnhöfer, 2020). Although people can be correct, they are often wrong irrespective of being asked about welfare state input, output or outcomes.…”

Section: Welfare-state Related (Mis-)information: What Information Ma...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind the gap: Young people and welfare-state related knowledge in deservingness and welfare attitude research

Sowula

2023

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Welfare deservingness opinions help explain welfare attitudes and hence are crucial for understanding the social legitimacy of the welfare state. However, even when considering deservingness alongside other explanatory frameworks, many open questions remain in the welfare attitude framework. This article argues that a novel research agenda focusing on welfare-state related knowledge and young people could considerably enrich current debates in deservingness and welfare attitude research. Deservingness assessments are made heuristically and could greatly depend on what people know (especially when they are misinformed). Studying this with young people is highly relevant, as the formative years are crucial for welfare attitude formation and change, even later in life. Research with young people provides unique opportunities for disentangling causal mechanisms between welfare-state related knowledge, deservingness and welfare attitudes. Moreover, it could help challenge welfare-state related misinformation and build resilience against disinformation. This thematic review outlines benefits, blind spots, and research trajectories when focusing on knowledge and young people in deservingness and welfare attitude research.

show abstract

Section: Welfare-state Related (Mis-)information: What Information Ma...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mind the gap: Young people and welfare-state related knowledge in deservingness and welfare attitude research

Sowula

2023

Journal of European Social Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Beyond the advisory roles traditionally assigned to them in citizen participation settings, however, citizens and the respective target groups or stakeholders directly test a policy, or ideally different variants of a policy (Fuller and Lochard 2016). This is even more relevant as citizens normally possess low policy knowledge, apart from when the topic is salient in the public (Jensen and Zohlnhöfer 2020). Doing this, political decisions profit from an improved justification and traceability, since policies are no longer theoretically conceived and later evaluated, but have already proven their effectiveness in advance.…”

Section: The Interaction Between Science and Politics In Policy Labsmentioning

confidence: 99%

From political motivation to scientific knowledge: classifying policy labs in the science-policy nexus

Trei

Hornung

Rychlik

et al. 2021

European Planning Studies

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past two decades, Urban Living Labs (ULL) emerged as a special derivate of policy labs. These are a relatively young phenomenon that is characterized by a strong orientation towards design thinking and the generation of evidence for policy-making processes. Research on this topic is rising, yet there is need for more empirical evidence that informs explanations of how policy labs in general and ULLs in particular are successfully depoliticizing and objectifying debates in the science-policy nexus, for example in wicked areas such as sustainable transport policy. Drawing on two ULLs in local policy communities in Germany, the central research question asked is how different types of policy labs with diverging salience levels of science and politics effectively contribute to an evidence-based debate on policy solutions. Answering this question for a topic characterized by high levels of complexity, emotions, and uncertainty potentially provides generalizable insights for different types of policy labs:The results indicate that policy labs may effectively move the debate from political motivation to scientific knowledge, but only if science is given a real role within the policy lab.

show abstract

“…Elites and professionals are subject to the analyses presented in the first three contributions of this issue. Jensen and Zohlnhöfer (2020) investigate the citizen's knowledge of social policies to contribute to the research on the connection between welfare state policy and electoral consequences. Even among “elite” citizens—social science students at universities—they find a low level of policy knowledge which is higher only for topics that have been saliently discussed in public.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%