Populism and Political Knowledge: The United States in Comparative Perspective

• In Event: Truth, Post-Truth, and Popular Truth

Abstract

The first part of this paper will offer insights into what we know of the political knowledge of Americans compared to that of people in comparable countries, based on responses to political knowledge questions. I use primarily CSES data, especially from wave 4 (2011-2016) when the same four political knowledge questions were posed. I find a cross-national trend whereby political knowledge is becoming more strongly associated with education, one that this is especially true of the United States.
In the second part of the paper I go from these findings to what we know of the possible link between political knowledge and populist attitudes in the United States and comparable countries. For the purposes of this paper, populism is defined as a worldview which takes the side of the people against an elite that places the interests of outsiders before those of the people. In doing so, it calls into question the legitimacy of elections and of political institutions more widely, rejecting nuanced political arguments and informed policy debate in favor of resentment and moral outrage.
Using secondary data from a number of related studies, I go from what we know of the link between support for populist parties and political knowledge, to an exploration of data that suggests a negative relationship between support for Donald Trump and populist attitudes on the one hand, and political knowledge on the other, controlling for education, age and other relevant factors.
In the concluding section, I begin to bring together what we know of the factors underlying the political informational deficits of populist voters. These, I suggest, make such voters especially susceptible to emotional appeals relying on “false news” that exploit their distrust of elites and anxieties vis-a-vis newcomers and minorities. I end by posing the question of how such citizens could be “informationally empowered.”

Author

• Henry Milner, University of Montreal