Since the early 1970s the political science literature has signaled an increasing knowledge gap between people with high and low socio-economic status. It has been predicted that this knowledge gap will increase with the various patterns of media usage. The existing literature has focused so far on the increasing difference in the levels of political knowledge between citizens with high and low levels of education. However, little attention has been given to the knowledge gap with which two important social groups have been faced: women and national/ethnic minorities. Empirical studies have shown that women and national/ethnic minorities are characterized by lower levels of political information as they have been mostly excluded from participation in the political arena. Thus, a normative problem related to a low level of information with which these groups are faced becomes stringent in contemporary democracies. Our paper analyzes the knowledge gap which exists between on the one side and men and the members of the national/ethnic majority on the other. It will investigate if the knowledge gap faced by these group holds in a large number of countries and not only in a single country environment, as it was mainly tested before. The novelty of this paper lies in the fact that it focuses on which institutional conditions reduce the knowledge gap. It looks into institutional characteristics which have been put in place in order to address the low levels of participation of women and national/ethnic minorities in the political life. In other words, we examine whether (and which) institutions that encourage women and national/ethnic minorities to get involved in the political arena (such as institutional settings offering special representation to women) reduce the knowledge gap that face these groups. In order to explore these effects, we take recourse to the PIREDEU 2009 study. It is a representative study of the population in 27 countries of the European Union. We use multilevel modeling which enables us to test whether the knowledge gap with which women are faced holds in a wide cross-national environment. Multilevel modeling also allows us to investigate whether a certain institutional setting has an effect on the level of political information of women and national/ethnic minorities but also whether the presence of certain institutions can cancel out the knowledge gap.
