Political Knowledge: Measurement, Elitism, and Dogmatism

Political knowledge is a resource: having a lot of it means being in a position to navigate the political world, and stand a better chance of connecting your fundamental political goals with successful means. The present piece argues that standard political knowledge tests measure political knowledge, so understood, and uses counterfactual modeling to demonstrate the difference having such knowledge can make to political choice. It then takes up two of the most forceful objections to political knowledge and its measurement, by (a) rejecting the idea that knowledge scales encode elitist assumptions, and (b) arguing that, even if political knowledge breeds dogmatism, such dogmatism can be expected to serve a protective function in exactly the type of hostile epistemic environments – filled with lies, falsehoods, and misinformation – that make up the political domain.