Читать реферат по английскому: "Citizen Competence In A Democracy Essay Research" Страница 2


назад (Назад)скачать (Cкачать работу)

Функция "чтения" служит для ознакомления с работой. Разметка, таблицы и картинки документа могут отображаться неверно или не в полном объёме!

and role playing, people will wonder whether a candidate’s support for a cause was strategic or reflected a true commitment. Because of uncertainty, they will wonder whether the candidate is sincere about his or her concerns, whether there is congruence between avowed and actual feelings. Did the representative do his or her best and what will he or she do next time? Voters with institutional knowledge of politics can better sort through the pretentiousness of candidates and use supporters and issue cues to evaluate incumbents. Voters less able to use these cues rely on estimates of personal character instead of on attitudes about parties and issues. In other words, reliance on personal character as a proxy for political character is related to uncertainty and uncertainty is related to a lack of understanding about politics. The persons for whom the scandal mattered most should be those with the least information about government and therefore needed most to rely on personal cues about the candidates. The House Banking Scandal contributed to the largest turnover of representatives since 1948. After a six-year period in which 90% of all representatives had been reelected, over 25% in 1992 either retired, was defeated in primaries or lost to an opponent in November.

While cognitively engaged persons are more aware of the scandal than those with low levels of cognitive knowledge about government, they are far less likely to think that the scandal mattered enough to warrant punishing bouncers. Among all persons who knew about the banking scandal, 45.1% took a hard-line position that check-bouncing incumbents “should be voted out of office.” The banking scandal is a classic example of an information shortcut, using estimates of personal character to assess public character. That persons with less information about government took the hardest line on check-bouncers demonstrating how levels of engagement affect the types thinking that citizens adopt. Candidate-centered politics, and a focus on the personal character as opposed to the political character of candidates, is in part a function of low information about the structure of government. Less-engaged people used evaluations of personal character — evidence of the arrogance and privilege referred to by Rush Limbaugh — as a substitute for information about the political character of incumbents. The persons most concerned about personal character and integrity, who were the most outraged about the privilege and arrogance reflected in the scandal, were precisely those who were least able to infer the candidate’s true commitments from his or her past votes. The political and theoretical implication of this analysis also suggests why Watergate, or the confrontation between Anita Hill and Clarence Thomas at his Supreme Court confirmation hearings turned off so many voters. For persons with low levels of cognitive knowledge of institutions, in particular, there are no white knights once the dirt hits the fan. That is, when two groups engage in a long series of charges and countercharges, most people lose track of the issues or principles behind the skirmishes; what might have started as good guys versus bad guys soon becomes nothing more than a mudslinging free-for-all in which everyone looks bad. To persons who understand the institutions of politics, a long set of exchanges between, say, Bill Clinton and Robert Dole, can be as clear as a sustained volley in tennis; to persons without any knowledge of institutions their exchange is hard to follow and becomes indistinguishable from a food fight or mud slinging.

In summation, citizen competence (citizen engagement) is vital to the life and survival of political knowledge and involvement. The two are interchangeable, and reliant upon each other. The more the people know of political details, the higher the involvement will be.



Интересная статья: Быстрое написание курсовой работы