An Experimental Study of Expertise, Political Engagement, and Social Knowledge

• In Event: Participation in Politics

Abstract

The ideal democracy requires its citizens to be knowledgeable and willing to engage. However, if a voter, upon gaining expertise regarding political issues, learns that there are many other similarly minded and knowledgeable voters, will she necessarily have an increased incentive to participate? Or instead, will such knowledge sharpen free-ridership and undermine the quality of democratic choice? We present a novel experimental design that isolates the effect of (1) moving from a theoretical democratic ideal in which all expert voters are engaged to the case of real voters who may, for a variety of reasons, fail to achieve that ideal; (2) the conventional free-ridership dilemma whereby increasing the (expected) level of expertise reduces expert voters' willingness to vote; (3) a social-knowledge induced free-ridership dilemma, in which informing voters of the level of expertise sharpens incentives to free ride, thus reducing the probability voters achieve their best alternative through democracy.

Authors

• Kai Ou, Florida State University

• Scott Tyson, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor