Flickinger, Richard S. and Bennett, Linda L.M. and Bennett, Stephen E. (1995) "Citizen Support for the European Parliament: Knowledge and the Democratic Deficit". In: UNSPECIFIED, Charleston, South Carolina. (Unpublished)
Abstract
Our paper is concerned with citizens' knowledge of European institutions and decision processes, and how that knowledge is related to expressed levels of citizen support for the European Parliament (EP). Prior research on the causes of political information and sophistication suggests that basically three factors affect political awareness: cognitive ability, opportunity, and motivation. Those with more "cognitive ability," whether measured in terms of formal schooling or "intelligence," are better informed about politics than those with less. People with greater opportunity to acquire political information, usually because they are better situated within the social structure and/or because they are exposed to more information flowing through media channels, typically know more about politics than those less favorably located. Finally, the more people are motivated to learn, the more they know. Working from this base of understanding we have developed two models. The first attempts to predict citizen knowledge of the European Union. The second attempts to predict citizen support for the European Parliament.
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