The Significance of Political Awareness: a Literature Review with Meta-Analyses

On a normative level, democratic theories assume informed and active citizenry as a crucial condition for democratic processes; were citizens involves in political processes accordingly to their preferences (Dahl 1989). While normative theory suggests that a vibrant democratic society requires civic competence, empirical studies have challenged this assumption by claiming that members of the public exhibit low levels of such competences. Empirical studies have concluded that citizens show great differences in their political orientation. One group acts according to the ideals, but a large share of the citizens deviates from the ideals. These citizens know little about politics and governance (Della Carpini & Keeter 1996; Grönlund & Milner 2006). An increasing ignorance about politics among citizens occurs in most industrial democracies (Clark 2017) at the same time as a significant share of citizens act more according to identities rather than by informed preferences (Bartles & Achen 2016). In this context of discrepancy between ideal and empirical pattern, the concept of political awareness has become critical in the explanation of the variation of political involvement and understanding among citizens (Zaller 1992). However, studies have disputed what theoretical function and empirical significance political awareness has for political orientations. For that reason, this paper presents an extensive literature review that focuses on how studies have theoretically used political awareness and the results about the significance of political awareness. The empirical material consists of 73 articles that examine political awareness in different contexts. As a factor in the analyses, political awareness may serve different analytical functions (e.g., independent variable, dependent variable, interaction variable or mediating variable). The paper presents analyses that identify in what frequency studies have used political awareness in these analytical functions. Furthermore, the paper presents a meta-analysis of the empirical results from the studies, which indicates the significance of political awareness on active citizenship.