Suchergebnisse

Knižní recenze / Book review.

Recent findings related to the controversy over proximity and directional spatial models of voting suggest that the relevance of the models can change under different conditions. The political sophistication of voters and the issue factor are discussed in this article. In line with other authors, we believe that it is necessary to focus also on the question whether the examined issue is salient for the voter-party relationship. Contrary to what was expected, when voters' preferences for parties emphasizing a particular issue are predicted by increasing sophistication of voters, it does not mean that these preferences are predicted by the proximity theory at the same time. Moreover, the directional theory is a better predictor of voters' preferences for most of the issues, regardless of the sophistication influence. Yet voters' proximity utilities from their preferences are increased by their increasing sophistication across all of the issues under examination.

The aim of this article is to clarify connections between citizens' knowledge and their positions in a political space in the Czech Republic. Rather than a political space as a whole, previous studies examined particular issues, values, participation or accuracy of citizens' positions compared to positions of their preferred candidates in association with the knowledge variable. Thus, this study provides a new piece of the puzzle. The election study 2017 of Centrum pro výzkum veřejného mínění (Public Opinion Research Centre) is a source of the data for this analysis. The results suggest, in contrary to our presumptions, that the knowledge does not significantly influence if a person advocates rather central or clear-cut positions. On the other hand, more knowledgeable citizens are slightly more liberal in the conservative – liberal dimension. The interesting contradiction is seen in the left – right dimension in the Czech specific context. Compared to people with less knowledge, more knowledgeable people tend to be positioned in more right positions in the left-right dimension related to the economy and in more left positions in the dimension related to the transition.