Expanding the Civic Competence Framework: Political knowledge and democratic legitimacy in Latin America

Abstract

Introduction

There is a long debate about the qualities ordinary people must have for democracy to work properly. The focus of the literature has been to investigate voters’ ability to make “good decisions” in elections, with a focus on the role of political knowledge. Based on this debate, we propose in this article an extension of the concept of “political competence” that goes beyond the decision-making proper to the electoral process and which encompasses democratic values. More specifically, we seek to understand what effect political knowledge has on adherence to different democratic principles.

Materials and Methods

To do so, we use data from the Americas Barometer 2008. The measure of factual knowledge was obtained with questions such as “what is the name of the president/leader of the Congress?”, “How long is the term of the president or prime minister?”, Etc. The measure of democratic attitudes was obtained with questions such as “is democracy preferable to any other form of government?” or “under some circumstances, an authoritarian government may be preferable to a democratic regime,” among others.

Results

The results show that political knowledge has a positive and statistically significant effect not only on the preference for democracy but also on the principles underlying the regime, such as support for free and fair elections, political participation, the control and separation of powers, the rule of law and tolerance.

Discussion

We argue that these findings have important implications for research on the relationship between political knowledge and democratic legitimacy.

Keywords:
political knowledge; civic competence; political attitudes; political sophistication; democratic legitimacy