Political participation is fundamental for a functioning democracy. Citizens seem to fall short on the normative relevance of political involvement postulated by democratic theory. Generally research on individual factors influencing political participation focuses on either individual resources, or political socialization. I state that political knowledge can mediate the effect of each of the underlying factors. Political knowledge is not seen as a simple additional individual resource, as it also constitutes as a part of political socialization in the form of the manifestation of political learning and education. Research on political knowledge states that high level of factual information always increase political participation. These findings can be contested if controlled for levels of political trust. I use data from Allbus 2008 to review the effects of political knowledge on political participation under the precondition that political trust is controlled for in standard models explaining participation.
