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This year's election is sure to bring more lamentations about voter apathy.No

less striking is the appalling political ignorance of the American electorate.

by Michael Schudson

to be much higher. While 58 percent of the Germans sur-veyed, 32 percent of the French, and 22 percent of theBritish were able to identify Boutros Boutros-Ghali assecretary general of the United Nations in 1994, only 13percent of Americans could do so. Nearly all Germanspolled could name Boris Yeltsin as Russia's leader, ascould 63 percent of the British, 61 percent of the French,but only 50 percent of the Americans.

E very week, the Tonight Show's Jay Leno takes to thestreets of Los Angeles to quiz innoc~nt passersby

with some simple questions: On what bay is San Fran-cisco located? Who was president of the United Statesduring World War ll? The audience roars as Leno's hap-less victims fumble for answers. Was it IJincoln? Carter?

No pollster, let alone a college or high school historyteacher, would be surprised by the poor showing ofLeno's sample citizens. In a national assessment test inthe late 1980s, only a third of American 17-year-oldscould correctly locate the Civil War in the period 1850-1900; more than a quarter placed it in the 18th century.Two-thirds knew that Abraham Lincoln wrote the Eman-cipation Proclamation, which seems a respectable show-ing, but what about the 14 percent who said that Lincolnwrote the Bill of Rights, the 10 percent who checked theMissouri Compromise, and the nine percent whoawarded Lincoln royalties for Uncle Tom's Cabin?

Asking questions about contemporary affairs doesn'tyield any more encouraging results. In a 1996 nationalpublic opinion poll, only 10 percent of American adultscould identify William Rehnquist as the chief justice ofthe Supreme Court. In the same survey, conducted at theheight of Newt Gingrich's celebrity as Speaker of theHouse, only 59 percent could identify the job he held.Americans sometimes demonstrate deeper knowledgeabout a major issue before the nation, such as the Viet-Mm War, but most could not describe the thrust of theClinton health care plan or tell whether the Reagan ad-ministration supported the Sandinistas or the contrasduring the conflict in Nicaragua (and only a third couldplace that country in Central America).

It can be misleading to make direct comparisons withother countries, but the general level of political aware-ness in leading liberal democracies overseas does seem

IJ ow can the United States claim to be a model de-.cI.mocracy if its citizens know so little about politicallife? That question has aroused political reformers andpreoccupied many political scientists since the early 20thcentury. It can't be answered without some historical per-spective. .

Today's mantra that the "informed citizen" is thefoundation of effective democracy was not a central partof the nation's founding vision. It is largely the creationof late-19th-century Mugwump and Progressive reform-ers, who recoiled from the spectacle of powerful politicalparties using government as a job bank for their friendsand a cornucopia of contracts for their relatives. (In thosedays before the National Endowment for the Arts,Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville, and Walt Whit-man all subsidized their writing by holding down fed-eral patronage appointments.) Voter turnout in the late19th century was extraordinarily high by today's stand-ards, routinely over 70 percent in presidential elections,and there is no doubt that parades, free whiskey, free-floating money, patronage jobs, and the pleasures of fra-ternity all played a big part in the political enthusiasmof ordinary Americans.

The reformers saw this kind of politics as a betrayalof democratic ideals. A democratic public, they believed,

"he Wilson Quarterly, Spring 2000, pp. 16-22. () 2000 by Michael Schudson. Reprinted by permi

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1 .:. FOUNDATIONS OF AMERI<;:AN POLITICS: Contemporary Views and Values

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little more than organs of the political parties, began todeclare their independence and to portray themselves asnonpartisan commercial institutions of public enlighten-ment and public-minded criticism. Public secondaryeducation began to spread.

These and other reforms enshrined the informed citi-zen as the foundation of democracy, but at a tremendouscost: Voter turnout plummeted. In the presidential elec-tion of 1920, it dropped to 49 percent, its lowest pointin the 20th century-until it was matched in 1996. Eversince, political scientists and others have been plumbingthe mystery created by the new model of an informedcitizenry: How can so many, knowing so little, and vot-ing in such small numbers, build a democracy that ap-pears to be (relatively) successful?

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A tradition of ignorance? Making sober political choices wasn't the toppriority of these Kansas Territory voters in 1857.

must reason together. That ideal was threatened bymindless enthusiasm, the wily maneuvers of politicalmachines, and the vulnerability of the new immigrantmasses in the nation's big cities, woefully ignorant ofAnglo-Saxon traditions, to manipulation by party hacks.E. L. Godkin, founding editor of the Nation and a leadingreformer, argued that "there is no corner of our systemin which the hastily made and ignorant foreign votermay not be found eating away the political structure,like a white ant, with a group of natives standing overhim and encouraging him."

This was in 1893, by which point a whole set of re-.I. forms had been put in place. Civil service reformreduced patronage. Ballot reform irrevocably altered theact of voting itself. For most of the 19th century, partiesdistributed at the polls their own "tickets," listing onlytheir own candidates for office. A voter simply took aticket from a party worker and deposited it in the ballotbox, without needing to read it or mark it in any way;Voting was thus a public act of party affiliation. Begin-ning in 1888, however, and spreading across the countryby 1896, this system was replaced with government-printed ballots that listed all the candidates from eacheligible party. The voter marked the ballot in secret, aswe do today, in an act that affirmed voting as an indi-vidual choice rather than a social act of party loyalty.Political parades and other public spectacles increasinglygave way to pamphlets in what reformers dubbed "edu-cational" political campaigns. Leading newspapers, once

"Tfhere are several responses to that question. The first.I. is that a certain amount of political ignorance is an

inevitable byproduct of America's unique political envi-ronment. One reason Americans have so much difficultygrasping the political facts of life is that their politicalsystem is the world's most complex. Ask the next politi-cal science Ph.D. you meet to explain what governmentagencies at what level-federal, state, county, or city-take responsibility for the homeless. Or whom he or shevoted for in the last election for municipal judge. Theanswers might make Jay Leno's victims seem less ridicu-lous. No European country has as many elections, asmany elected offices, 3$- complex a maze of overlappinggovernmental jurisdictions, as the American system. It issimply harder to 'tread" U.S. politics than the politics ofmost nations.

The hurdle of political comprehension is raised anotch higher by~the ideological inconsistencies of Ameri-can political palties. In Britain, a voter can confidentlycast a vote without knowing a great deal about the par-ticular candidates on the ballot. The Labor candidategenerally can be counted on to follow the Labor line, theConservative to follow the Tory line. An American votercasting a ballot for a Democrat or Republican has nosuch assurance. Citizens in other countries need only dogpaddle to be in the political swim; in the United Statesthey need the skills of a scuba diver.

If the complexity of U.S. political institutions helps ex-plain American ignorance of domestic politics, geopoliti-cal factors help explain American backwardness inforeign affairs. There is a kind of ecology of political ig-norance at work. The United States is far from Europeand borders only two other countries. With a vast do-mestic market, most of its producers have relatively fewdealings with customers in other countries, globalizationnotwithstanding. Americans, lacking the parliamentaryform of government that prevails in most other democ-racies, are also likely to find much of what they read orhear about the wider world politically opaque. And thesimple fact of America's political and cultural super-

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ments. The pessimist asks why so little has improveddespite the vast increase in formal education duringthose years. But the main conclusion remains: no notablechange over as long a period as data are available.

Low as American levels of political knowledge maybe, a generally tolerable, sometimes admirable, politicaldemocracy survives. How? One explanation is providedby a school of political science that goes under the ban-ner of "political heuristics." Public opinion polls and pa-per-and-pencil tests of political knowledge, argueresearchers such as Arthur Lupia, Samuel Popkin, PaulSniderman, and Philip Tetlock, presume that citizens re-quire more knQwledge than they actually need in orderto cast votes that accurately reflect their preferences. Peo-ple can and do get by with relatively little political in-formation. What Popkin calls "low-informationrationality" is sufficient for citizens to vote intelligently.

power status naturally limits citizens' political aw~re-ness. Just as employees gossip more about the boss thanthe boss gossips about them, so Italians and Braziliansknow more about the United States than Americansknow about their countries.

Consider a thought experiment. Imagine what wouldhappen if you transported those relatively well-informedGermans or Britons to the United States with their cul-tural heritage, schools, and news media intact. If youchecked on them again about a generation later, afterlong exposure to the distinctive American political envi-ronment-its geographic isolation, superpower status,complex political system, and weak parties-would theyhave the political knowledge levels of Europeans orAmericans? Most likely, I think, they would have devel-oped typically American levels of political ignorance.

I TUNING OUT THE NEWS?

L ending support to this notion of an ecology of po-litical knowledge is the stability of American political

ignorance over time. Since the 1940s, when social scien-tists began measuring it, political ignorance has re-mained virtually unchanged. It is' hard to gauge theextent of political knowledge before that time, but thereis little to suggest that there is some lost golden age inU.S. history. The storied 1858 debates between SenatorStephen Douglas and Abraham Lincoln, for example,,though undoubtedly a high point in ~e nation's publicdiscourse, were also an anomaly. Public debates wererare in 19th-century political campaigns, and campaignrhetoric was generally overblown and aggressively par-tisan.

Modem measurements of Americans' historical andpolitical knowledge go back at least to 1943, when theNew York Times surveyed college freshmen and found "astriking ignorance of even the most elementary aspectsof United States history." Reviewing nearly a half-cen-tury of data (1945-89) in What Americans Know about Poli-tics and Why It Matters (1996), political scientists MichaelDelli Carpini and Scott Keeter conclude that, on balance,there has been a slight gain in Americans' politicalknowledge, but one so modest that it makes more senseto speak of a remarkable stability; In 1945, for example,43 percent of a national sample could name neither oftheir U.S. senators; in 1989, the figure was essentially un-Changed at 45 percent. In 1952, 67 percent could namethe vice president; in 1989, 74 percent could do so. In1945,

92 percent of Gallup poll respondents knew thatthe term of the president is four years, compared with96 percent in 1989. Whatever the explanations for dwin-dling voter turnout since 1960 may be, rising ignoranceis not one of them."

As Delli Carpini and Keeter suggest, there are twoways to view their findings. The optimist's view is thatpolitical ignorance has grown no worse despite theSpread of television and video games, the decline of po-litical parties, and a variety of other negative develop-

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1 .:. FOUNDATIONS OF AMERICAN POLITICS: Contemporary Views and Values

~s works in two ways. First, people can use cogni-...tive cues, or "heuristics." h'lstead of learning each of

a candidate's issue positions, the voter may simply relyon the candidate's party affiliation as a cue. This worksbetter in Europe than in America, but it still works rea-sonably well. Endorsements are another useful shortcut.A thumbs-up for a candidate from the Christian Coali-tion or Ralph Nader or the National Association for theAdvancement of Colored People or the American Asso-ciation of Retired Persons frequently provides enough in-formation to enable one to cast a reasonable vote.

second, as political scientist Milton Lodge points out,people often process information on the fl~ without re-taining details in memory: If you watch a debate on TV-and 46 million did watch the first presidential debatebetween President Bill Clinton and Robert Dole in 1996-you may learn enough about the candidates' ideas andpersonal styles to come to a judgment about each one.A month later, on election day, you may not be able toanswer a pollster's detailed questions about where theystood on the issues, but you will remember which oneyou liked best-and that is enough information to letyou vote intelligently.

The realism of the political heuristics school is an in-dispensable corrective to unwarranted bashing of thegeneral public. Americans are not the political dolts theysometimes seem to be. Still, the political heuristics ap-proach has a potentially fatal flaw: It subtly substitutesvoting for citizenship. Cognitive shortcuts have theirplace, but what if a citizen wants to persuade someoneelse to vote for his or her chosen candidate? What maybe sufficient in the voting booth is inadequate in thewider world of the democratic process: discussion, de-liberation, and persuasion. It is possible to vote and stillbe disenfranchised.

~ et another response to the riddle of voter ignorance.I. takes its cue from the Founders and other 18th-cen-

tury political thinkers who emphasized the importanceof a morally virtuous citizenry: Effective democracy, inthis view, depends more on the "democratic character"of citizens than on their aptitude for quiz show knowl-edge of political facts. Character, in this sense, is dem-onstrated all the time in everyday life, not in the votingbooth every two years. From Amitai Etzioni, WIlliamGalston, and Michael Sandel on the liberal side of thepolitical spectrum to William J. Bennett and James Q.Wilson on the conservative side, these writers emphasizethe importance of what Alexis de Tocqueville called"habits of the heart." These theorists, along with politi-cians of every stripe, point to the importance of civil so-ciety as a foundation of democracy: They emphasizeinstilling moral virtue through families and civic partici-pation through churches and other voluntary associa-tions; they stress the necessity for civility and democraticbehavior in daily life. They would not deny that it is

important for citizens to be informed, but neither wouldthey put information at the center of their vision of whatmakes democracy tick.

Brown University's Nancy Rosenblum, for example,lists two essential traits of democratic character. "Easyspontaneity" is the disposition to treat others identically,without deference, and with an easy grace. This capacityto act as if many social differences are of no account inpublic settings is one of the things that make democracyhappen on the streets. This is the disposition that foreignvisitors have regularly labeled" American" for 200 years,at least since 1818, when the British reformer and jour-nalist W111iam Cobbett remarked upon Americans' "uni-versal civility." Tocqueville observed in 1840 thatstrangers in America who meet "find neither dangernor advantage in telling each other freely what theythink. Meeting by chance, they neither seek nor avoideach other. Their manner is therefore natural, frank, andopen."

Rosenblum's second trait is "speaking up," which shedescribes as "a willingness to respond at least minimallyto ordinary injustice." This does not involve anything soimpressive as organizing a demonstration, but some-thing more like objecting when an adult cuts ahead of akid in a line at a movie theater, or politely rebuking acoworker who slurs a racial or religious group. It is hardto define "speaking up" precisely, but we all recognizeit, without necessarily giving it the honor it deserves asan element of self-government.

We need not necessarily accept Rosenblum's chosenpair of morat virtues. Indeed a Japanese or Swedishdemocrat mi~ht object that they look suspiciously likedistinctively American traits rather than distinctivelydemocratic ones. They almost evoke Huckleberry Finn.But turning our attention to democratic character re-minds us lliat being well informed is just one of the re-quirements of democratic citizenship.

The Founding Fathers were certainly more concernedabout instilling moral virtues than disseminating infor-mation about candidates and issues. Although they val-ued civic engagement more than their contemporaries inEurope did, and cared enough about promoting the widecirculation of ideas to establish a post office and adoptthe First Amendment, they were ambivalent about, evensuspicious of, a politically savvy populace. They did noturge voters to "know the issues"; at most they hopedthat voters would choose wise and prudent legislatorSto consider issues on their behalf. On the one hand, theyagreed that "the diffusion of knowledge is productive ofvirtue, and the best security for our civil rights," as aNorth Carolina congressman put it in 1792. On the otherhand, as George Washington cautioned, "however nec-essary it may be to keep a watchful eye over public ser-vants and public measures, yet there ought to be limitsto it, for suspicions unfounded and jealousies too livelyare irritating to honest feelings, and oftentimes are pro-ductive of more evil than good."

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If men were angels, well and good-but they werenot, and few of the Founders were as extravagant as Ben-jamin Rush in his rather scary vision of an educationthat would "convert men into republican machines." Intheo~ many shared Rush's emphasis on education; inpractice, the states made little provision for publicschooling in the early years of the Republic. Whereschools did develop, they were defended more as tutorsof obedience and organs of national unity than as meansto create a watchful citizenry. The Founders placed trustless in education than in a political system designed toinsulate decision making in the legislatures from the di-rect influence of the emotional, fractious, and too easilyswayed electorate.

'" II of these arguments-about America's political en-.rI..vironment, the value of political heuristics, and civilsociety-do not add up to a prescription for resignationor complacency about civic education. Nothing I havesaid suggests that the League of Women Voters shouldshut its doors or that newspaper editors should stoppuffing politics on page one. People may qe able to voteintelligently with very little information-4ven well-edu-cated people do. exactly that on most of the ballot issuesthey face-but democratic citizenship means more thanvoting. It means discussing and debati9g the questionsbefore the political community-and spmetimes raisingnew questions. Without a framewQrk of information inwhich to place them, it is hard to Understand even thesimple slogans and catchwords of the day. People withscant political knowledge, as research by political scien-tists Samuel Popkin and Michael Dimock suggests, havemore difficulty than others in perceiving differences be-tween candidates and parties. Ignorance also tends tobreed more ignorance; it inhibits people from venturinginto situations that make them feel uncomfortable or in-adequate, from the voting booth to the community fo-rum to the town hall.

of Americans who could identify the first 10 amend-ments to the Constitution as the Bill of Rights. In 1954,the year the U.S. Supreme Court declared school segre-gation unconstitutional in Brown v. Board of Education,only 31 percent of Americans could do so. In 1989, thenumber had moved up to 46 percent.

Why the change? I think the answer is clear: The civilrights movement, along with the rights-oriented WarrenCourt, helped bring rights to the forefront of the Ameri-can political agenda and thus to public consciousness.Because they dominated the political agenda, rights be-came a familiar topic in the press and on TV dramas,sitcoms, and talk shows, also finding their way intoschool curricula and textbooks. Political change, this ex-perience shows, can influence public knowledge.

This is not to say that only a social revolution canbring about such an improvement. A lot of revolutionsare small, one person at a time, one classroom at a time.But it does mean that there is no magic bullet. Indeed,imparting political knowledge has only become moredifficult as the dimensions of what is considered politicalhave expanded into what were once nonpolitical do-mains (such as gender relations and tobacco use), as onehistorical narrative has become many, each of them con-tentious, and as the relatively simple framework ofworld politics (the Cold War) has disappeared.

In this world, the ability to name the three branchesof government or describe the New Deal does not makea citizen, but it is at least a token of membership in asociety dedicated to the ideal of self-government. Civiceducation is an imperative we must pursue with the fullrecognition that a high level of ignorance is likely to pre-vail--even if that fact does not flatter our faith in ration-alism, our pleasure in moralizing, or our confidence inreform.

"There is no happy explanation for low voter turnout. "Voter fatigue"is not as silly an explanation as it may seem: Americans have morefrequent elections for more offices than any other democracy. It is alsotrue that the more-or-less steady drop in turnout starting in about 1960coincided with the beginning of a broad expansion of nonelectoral poli-tics that may have drained political energies away from the pollingplaces: the civil rights movement, the antiwar demonstrations of theVietnam years, the women's movement, and the emergence of the re-ligious Right. The decline in turnout may signify in part that Americansare disengaged from public life, but it may also suggest that they judgeelectoral politics to be disengaged from public issues that deeply con-cern them.

MICHAEL ScHUDSON, a professor of communication and ad-junct professor of sodology at the University of California,San Diego, is the author of several books on the media and,most recently, The Good Citizen: A History of AmericanCivic Life (1998).

'Vll1at is to be done? First, it is important to put theW problem in perspective. American political igno-

rance is not growing worse. There is even an "up" sideto Americans' relative indifference to political and his-torical facts: their characteristic openness to experiment,their pragmatic willingness to judge ideas and practicesby their results rather than their pedigree.

Second, it pays to examine more closely the ways inwhich people do get measurably more knowledgeable.One of the greatest changes Delli Carpini and Keeterfound in their study, for example, was in the percentage

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