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Political Sophistication (political + sophistication)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences100%

Selected Abstracts

Political Sophistication Among the Mass Publics of Confucian Asia

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009
Ting Yan
The concept of "Confucian Asia" is often used without a validity check. But are Asian societies homogeneous in Confucian orientations as the term suggests? If not, how can one explain the variation? By examining the East Asia Barometer survey data, this article challenges the homogeneity of Confucian Asia and finds that Confucian orientations are unevenly distributed even among commonly accepted Confucian societies. In exploring the possible explanations for this Confucian orientation variation, this article argues that political sophistication is the direct mechanism to explain the variation of mass commitment toward Confucianism. By comparing other alternative explanations such as modernization theory, the article finds that the effects of political sophistication are independent and potent. [source]

Ideology,Driven opinion formation in Europe: The case of attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 4 2001
STAFFAN KUMLIN
This paper uses attitudes towards the third sector in Sweden to test general assumptions about how citizens in West European political systems apply ideological schemas as shortcuts to political preferences. Attitudes towards the third sector are found to be affected by all ideological schemas reflected in the Swedish party system (state,market, Christian traditionalism, and growth,ecology). Contrary to what is implied by findings from America, these effects are very stable across socio,economic groups (especially those of the dominant statemarket schema). Similarly, no interaction effects of political sophistication could be traced, and the relative impact of the schemas remains the same regardless of whether or not the third sector is presented as an alternative to the welfare state. The implications of these findings for the nature of public opinion formation in ideologically clear and structured political systems are discussed. [source]

Alternative models of issue voting: The case of the 1991 and 1995 elections in Belgium

EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL RESEARCH, Issue 3 2001
BART MADDENS
Previous research has indicated that the success of the directional model of issue voting depends on levels of political sophistication and how party position is measured. Using 1991 and 1995 Belgian Election Surveys, the predictive power of proximity and directional measures are compared controlling for both variables. It is shown that when one uses overall mean placements, instead of mean placements by level of political sophistication, the proximity effect declines most among the highly sophisticated voters. The article also compares the performance of the proximity and directional measures across party systems. Contrary to theoretical expectations, party,system differences between Flanders and Wallonia do not affect the explanatory power of either of these measures. It is only in the cases of the liberal, socialist and extreme right parties that the directional measure is clearly superior. A closer analysis of this result indicates that the relative success of the directional measure is due to the limited number of issues from which those parties draw support. [source]

Value Choices and American Public Opinion

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 3 2006
William G. Jacoby
Individual preferences among core values are widely believed to be an important determinant of political attitudes. However, several theoretical perspectives suggest that people experience difficulties making choices among values. This article uses data from the 1994 Multi-Investigator Study to test for hierarchical structure in citizens' value preferences. The empirical results show that most people make transitive choices among values and that their value preferences have an impact on subsequent issue attitudes. To the extent that citizens exhibit intransitive value choices and/or apparent difficulties in the "translation process" from value preferences to issue attitudes, it is due more to low levels of political sophistication than to the existence of value conflict. [source]

Political Sophistication Among the Mass Publics of Confucian Asia

ASIAN POLITICS AND POLICY, Issue 1 2009
Ting Yan
The concept of "Confucian Asia" is often used without a validity check. But are Asian societies homogeneous in Confucian orientations as the term suggests? If not, how can one explain the variation? By examining the East Asia Barometer survey data, this article challenges the homogeneity of Confucian Asia and finds that Confucian orientations are unevenly distributed even among commonly accepted Confucian societies. In exploring the possible explanations for this Confucian orientation variation, this article argues that political sophistication is the direct mechanism to explain the variation of mass commitment toward Confucianism. By comparing other alternative explanations such as modernization theory, the article finds that the effects of political sophistication are independent and potent. [source]