Completed project

The Origins, Nature and Impact of Political Knowledge

Project duration: 
2012 - 2014

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

Principal investigator: 
Topics: 
politics (and political attitudes)
Grant agency: 
Czech science foundation (GACR)
Department: 

Project publications (total 4, displaying 1 - 4)

Linek, L.

Tato studie je zaměřena na to, zda generační výměna přispěla k poklesu volební účasti v Česku. Hlavní pozornost autor zaměřuje na odlišení vlivu generační výměny a individuální změny na volební účast.

Topic:
politics (and political attitudes)
Department:
Political Sociology
Type of publication:
Peer-reviewed journal article
Linek, Lukáš

The text is a regular contribution into the publication called Data Yearbook. It describes political changes in the Czech republic during the year 2005. The article focuses on such problems as changes in the government, party politics, and on the main issues of the Czech politics.

 

Topic:
politics (and political attitudes)
Department:
Political Sociology
Type of publication:
Article with impact factor
Vráblíková Kateřina

Scholars have long argued that political participation is determined by institutional context.Within the voter turnout literature the impact of various institutional structures has beendemonstrated in numerous studies.

Topic:
civil society, politics (and political attitudes)
Department:
Political Sociology
Type of publication:
Article with impact factor
Linek, L.

The aim of the paper is to analyze electoral volatility in the Czech Republic during the years
1990-2013; and to evaluate whether during that period electoral volatility decreased, increased
or was stable. The paper distinguishes between net and overall/gross volatility. The
first one uses aggregate level data from the electoral results and measures the changes in
the support of the political parties in consecutive elections. The second one uses individual

Topic:
politics (and political attitudes)
Department:
Political Sociology
Type of publication:
Peer-reviewed journal article