Improving the political judgement of citizens: Why the task environment matters
Improving the political judgement of citizens: Why the task environment matters
Internal political efficacy (that is, beliefs about one's ability to process and participate effectively in politics) is known to be shaped by factors such as levels of interest in politics, trust in institutions and awareness of political developments and debates. In this article, we show that the task environment also has an impact on internal political efficacy, and that little research has been done on this issue. We draw on data from focus groups in Australia, where citizens were asked to make political judgements in contrasting task environments: state elections and the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite. We examine four features of task environments: framing choice; issue content; the nature of available cues; and whether the task environment stimulates cognitive effort. We conclude that concerns about the internal political efficacy of voters should be addressed by exploring how the task environment created for political choice might be made more amenable in order to improve the political judgement of citizens.
Citizenship, Elections, Internal political efficacy, Political judgement, Political participation, Referendums, Voting behaviour
381-396
Stoker, Gerard
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
Leruth, Benjamin
58d2cf18-e93d-4f39-ab8c-0d9cf7ff0caf
July 2020
Stoker, Gerard
209ba619-6a65-4bc1-9235-cba0d826bfd9
Leruth, Benjamin
58d2cf18-e93d-4f39-ab8c-0d9cf7ff0caf
Stoker, Gerard and Leruth, Benjamin
(2020)
Improving the political judgement of citizens: Why the task environment matters.
Policy and Politics, 48 (3), , [8157].
(doi:10.1332/030557320X15837138808157).
Abstract
Internal political efficacy (that is, beliefs about one's ability to process and participate effectively in politics) is known to be shaped by factors such as levels of interest in politics, trust in institutions and awareness of political developments and debates. In this article, we show that the task environment also has an impact on internal political efficacy, and that little research has been done on this issue. We draw on data from focus groups in Australia, where citizens were asked to make political judgements in contrasting task environments: state elections and the 2017 same-sex marriage plebiscite. We examine four features of task environments: framing choice; issue content; the nature of available cues; and whether the task environment stimulates cognitive effort. We conclude that concerns about the internal political efficacy of voters should be addressed by exploring how the task environment created for political choice might be made more amenable in order to improve the political judgement of citizens.
Text
Pol judgement revised FINAL clean (1)
- Accepted Manuscript
More information
Accepted/In Press date: 7 March 2020
e-pub ahead of print date: 3 April 2020
Published date: July 2020
Additional Information:
Funding Information:
We would like to thank the Policy & Politics editorial team as well as three anonymous reviewers for their invaluable comments and suggestions. We are also very grateful to Jane Seaborn for her work on the focus groups, and to the University of Canberra for providing financial support for this project.
Publisher Copyright:
© Policy Press 2020.
Keywords:
Citizenship, Elections, Internal political efficacy, Political judgement, Political participation, Referendums, Voting behaviour
Identifiers
Local EPrints ID: 443055
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/443055
PURE UUID: 9fe9a3b7-85c5-461e-8500-c580daaf3e12
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Date deposited: 07 Aug 2020 16:30
Last modified: 17 Mar 2024 05:47
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Author:
Benjamin Leruth
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