Political Ignorance and Collective Policy Preferences

Abstract

I n contrast with the expectations of many analysts, I find that raw policy-specific facts, such as the direction of change in the crime rate or the amount of the federal budget devoted to foreign aid, have a significant influence on the public's political judgments. Using both traditional survey methods and survey-based randomized experiments, I show that ignorance of policy-specific information leads many Americans to hold political views different from those they would hold otherwise. I also show that the effect of policy-specific information is not adequately captured by the measures of general political knowledge used in previous research. Finally, I show that the effect of policy-specific ignorance is greatest for Americans with the highest levels of political knowledge. Rather than serve to dilute the influence of new information, general knowledge (and the cognitive capacities it reflects) appears to facilitate the incorporation of new policy-specific information into political judgments.T he American public's ignorance of political matters is well documented, but the consequences for democracy are far less clear. For some, a disengaged and ill-informed citizenry signifies a failure of democracy. But for others, the practical question is whether political judgments would be any different if citizens were better informed. If a "rationally ignorant" public can nevertheless manage to approximate the "enlightened preferences" that a fully educated and engaged citizenry would hold, then perhaps democratic government and political ignorance can coexist.A growing body of research assesses the extent to which Americans' political judgments would differ if the public were well informed about politics. The most straightforward way to address this issue is to inform a representative group of citizens about some set of political matters and see whether their judgments change as a result. This is the approach taken by James Fishkin and his colleagues in a series of "deliberative polls" that bring together a large number of randomly selected individuals and provide them with a wealth of information about specific political issues (Fishkin 1997;Luskin and Fishkin 1998). This strategy has many advantages but is limited by its great expense and by the unusual circumstances in which information is acquired. In addition, deliberative polls are explicitly designed to assess the effects of both information and deliberation on citizens' policy preferences. We cannot judge how much of the change revealed by a deliberative poll should be attributed to new information of the sort that might be acquired through the media and how much is due to the process of collective deliberation.A second approach uses statistical models rather than experimental interventions to compare the political preferences of more and less informed Americans.

Attitudes to biotechnology: Estimating the opinions of a better-informed public

“…This technique was developed in political science to investigate the impact of political knowledge on issue and vote preferences (Bartels, 1996;DelliCarpini and Keeter, 1996;Althaus, 1998;Gilens 2001;Sturgis, 2003). It provides statistical estimates of how public opinion might look if everyone shared a higher (or lower) level of relevant formal knowledge.…”

“…It provides statistical estimates of how public opinion might look if everyone shared a higher (or lower) level of relevant formal knowledge. In accordance with Althaus (1998;, Gilens (2001) and Sturgis (2003) The following socio-demographic covariates were included in the models fitted to both data-sets: age (years); gender; educational qualifications; social class; parental status; reported genetic illness in the family; self-reported long-term disability or illness; religion and current employment status. These covariates cover many of the characteristics found to be associated with the distribution of scientific and genetic knowledge Miller, 1998;Midden et al 2002;Gaskell et al 2003a).…”

“…In this paper we use a regression-based modelling technique which provides estimates of what opinion might look like if the public were better informed about the issues in question (Bartels, 1996;Delli-Carpini and Keeter, 1996;Althaus, 1998;Gilens 2001;Sturgis, 2003). Using nationally representative British survey data, and taking into account the influence of a wide range of socio-demographic characteristics, we show the magnitude and direction of "information effects" at both the aggregate and individual level on a range of general and specific attitudes towards biotechnology.…”

“…If we accept the general critique of the deficit model of public understanding of science then we would not expect general scientific knowledge to have a positive effect on public attitudes towards biotechnology, net of other factors. Second, we examine the possibility that the specificity of information that people possess may additionally shape how they reach an opinion (Gilens, 2001). Someone who scores highly on general science knowledge questions is likely to draw on an amalgam of information that is wide-ranging and diffuse.…”

Desigualdad de Información: Una Exploración de los Antecedentes del Conocimiento Político en Chile

“…Para evaluar las consecuencias de mayor o menor nivel de conocimiento, por lo tanto, es importante avanzar en una agenda de investigación que permita evaluar y contrastar estas consecuencias en distintos campos de las actitudes y conductas ciudadanas. Por ejemplo, si bien en general la literatura muestra que ciudadanos mejores informados toman mejores decisiones (Bartels, 1996), tienen preferencias más firmes y consistentes entre sí (Gilens, 2001) y participan más de la actividad pública (Galston, 2001;Mondak et al, 2007), también hay un conjunto de investigación que señala que las personas pueden solucionar -al menos en parte-sus problemas de falta de información y actuar como si estuvieran informados (Lupia, 1994). Lupia (1994), por ejemplo, señala que los ciudadanos son capaces de adquirir información contextual que les permite tomar decisiones, aun cuando no conozcan los detalles o posean lo que él llama conocimiento enciclopédico.…”