Suchergebnisse

The political-heuristics school has credited the political environment with providing easily used informational crutches that enable even poorly informed citizens to make competent political judgments. We develop a more general approach to the environment, arguing that it can either enhance or fail to enhance political judgment & that it shapes performance through the interaction of two factors: information & motivation. Using survey experiments that test citizens' ability to make tradeoffs among competing goals for health care reform, we find that performance depends heavily on environmental conditions. A combination of general information with increased motivation to act responsibly improves aggregate performance. An extremely favorable informational environment not only enhances performance, but it even eliminates the effects of individual differences in education & political sophistication. The analysis points toward reforming structures that shape the political environment as the most plausible route to improved democratic governance. 2 Tables, 2 Figures, 57 References. Adapted from the source document.

The criticism that ordinary voters lack the necessary competence to make policy decisions persists despite the growth, popularity and implementation of direct democratic instruments throughout the democratic world. This article presents a novel measure of voters' levels of justification as a possible, policy-specific, conceptualization of citizen competence in direct democracy. Using a unique dataset based on thirty-four ballot decisions in Switzerland, the study analyses the levels and correlates of citizen competence. The main findings are, first, that most voters do understand arguments about policies. Secondly, the political contextas well asindividual resources are important in determining voters' competence. Finally, with regard to individual resources, motivation is strongly associated with justification levels, while the effect of ability is smaller than expected.