Citizen competence and the institutional environment

Abstract

It examines a cross-national difference in the extent to which electorates think ideologically. The analysis shows that the ability of voters to place themselves in the ideological space and place themselves "correctly" varies greatly by country. More importantly, some institutional arrangements contribute to voters' ability to do so. Next, it examines the direction of the distortion induced by low-levels of political information and ask: why are some populations placing themselves more to the left or to the right than their full-information placement. The findings also indicate a role for institutional arrangements in explaining the direction of the distortion in ideological thinking attributed to political knowledge.