Political Knowledge

Political knowledge is considered to be among the most important determinants of citizens' competence to govern in a representative democracy. The concept is used to indicate anything in the broad spectrum from information awareness to confident understanding of politics that may enable citizens to vote, cast a vote that accurately reflects their views on important public issues, and engage in other activities that affect government. Classically, knowledge has been defined as a belief that can be justified as true. There are deep philosophical debates about whether only what is evident is true, as René Descartes (1596–1650) proposed, or true is any idea that is successfully used in action to solve problems, as John Dewey (1859–1952) suggested. Generally, the meaning of the concept emerges only from ...