Many attempts to increase civic competence are based on premises about communication and belief change that are directly contradicted by important insights from microeconomic theory and social psychology. At least two economic literatures are relevant to my effort to improve matters. One is the...

In a recent edition of Perspectives on Politics, Larry Bartels examines the high levels of support for tax cuts signed into law by President Bush in 2001. In so doing, he characterizes the opinions of “ordinary people” as being based on “simple-minded and sometimes misguided considerations...

Surveys provide widely cited measures of political knowledge. Do unusual aspects of survey interviews affect these measures? An experiment on a nationally representative sample of over 1200 Americans provides an answer. Respondents are randomly assigned to one of four groups. A control group...