Linking Together Theory and Practice: A Framework for Evaluating Political Knowledge

Abstract

Chapter 4 extends the book beyond reviewing existing literature by providing an analytical framework for the empirical measurement of political knowledge. The framework is based on the argument that different conceptions of democracy assign different roles to the citizen in terms of their participation in politics. Consequently they expect different things in terms of what the citizen is expected to know about politics. The measurement of knowledge should therefore depend on what type of democracy is being studied.

The framework offers a five-step method for arriving at an empirical indicator of knowledge, which is based on an explicit connection between conception of democracy, citizen involvement and knowledge.