A GW researcher published a study this month suggesting that ordinary citizens possess more civic understanding than previously believed, challenging assumptions about their capacity to engage in government and sustain democracy.
Ethan Porter, an associate professor of media and public affairs and political science, and Steven Klein, a senior lecturer in political theory at King’s College London, co-authored the study, which analyzes recent evidence about voters’ ability to discern truth from misinformation and act responsibly in political life. Porter said the study seeks to dispute long-held worries in the research community about a lack of citizen competence — people’s ability to act as a responsible citizen — by proving that more recent evidence demonstrates people are not as affected by phenomena, like echo chambers and political polarization, as previously thought.
“Work I’ve done and work others have done has shown that actually people will respond to factual information by becoming more factually accurate, irrespective of pre-existing divides in beliefs that they may have,” Porter said.
The study synthesizes recent evidence, mainly from the United States, on citizens’ abilities to gather accurate information, discern false claims and hold leaders accountable in democratic governments. This includes data from multiple elections and surveys showing that people’s decisions as a whole tend to reflect informed judgments rather than random or illogical choices.
The study states most data contributing to the negative perception of citizen competence was conducted using small-scale surveys, while more recent evidence has used more causal methods, like experimentation, and yielded more positive results.
The study suggests that citizens generally have enough knowledge and understanding to know how to sustain democracy, but the concept of competence remains difficult to define. The current model of studying citizen competence puts too much emphasis on individual ignorance and not enough on structural factors that may hinder citizens’ participation in democracy, like wealth inequality and collective action problems, according to the study.
“We decided to start to sort of write this paper because we thought that the strain of pessimism that exists about the competence of American citizens and people more broadly for democracy was not reflective of emerging empirical evidence,” Porter said.
According to the study, high citizen competence is crucial to the buildup and upholding of a strong democracy because it allows citizens to make informed choices, keep leaders accountable and build trust in democratic institutions.
Scholars debate whether citizen competence should be measured through knowledge of political facts, the ability to deliberate with others or the capacity to hold leaders accountable. Klein said the study sought to present a new view of what scientists mean when they talk about citizen competence, and the debate about the capacity of citizens to participate in public life dates back to Aristotle and Plato.
“The way we talk about citizen competence is often quite simple and doesn’t really capture the nuances of what we want from citizens in a democracy,” Klein said.
Klein said that there were three main things people needed to be capable of in order to be competent citizens. They must be able to update their beliefs based on new facts. Second, they must learn enough about their leaders to meaningfully participate in elections and third, understand and recognize the motivations and beliefs of other citizens, recognizing that they, too, are committed to democracy.
“People are just much more responsive to new factual information in ways that were kind of unexpected, given that in political science, there’s been this long standing literature that argues that citizens, in many ways, fall short of ideals of democratic citizenship,” Klein said.
Klein said ordinary people tend to get blamed for pitfalls in democracy, but the evidence suggests people are competent enough to hold leaders accountable and meaningfully participate in politics. He said this indicates researchers should look to other institutional causes of democratic backsliding, rather than putting the onus on individuals.
“We should be looking at other explanations, like the rise in inequality, the way that certain political systems might empower small groups to have an outsized voice in democracy, the way that global economic decisions have not helped ordinary people,” Klein said. “So those are much more like plausible explanations for why democratic societies are going through difficulties right now.”
Robert Preuhs, a professor of political science at Metropolitan State University of Denver, said some of citizen competence is derived from respecting other people’s decisions about politics, a skill some evidence says has declined due to increased political polarization.
“We have to remember that rationality isn’t owned by one side or another, at least in terms of that instrumental rationality of voting for someone who’s going to push your preferences,” he said. “We may disagree with people’s preferences, but in that act of voting, most people, most of the time, are pretty good about voting for the person that reflects their preferences.”
Preuhs also said the current polarization of American politics is “not ideal” and that partisan loyalties and low confidence in the government prevent citizens from making competent choices.
“I think where we are failing to some extent is our inability to really recognize one, kind of the need for compromise and thus some grace or forgiveness for our representatives that are willing to engage in those kinds of compromise or talks to realize that for a functioning democracy, we can’t have extensive litmus tests that get rid of a lot of potential candidates for a very small set of those candidates,” Preuhs said.
