Political knowledge: Theoretical formulations and practical implementation

Abstract

Political knowledge is a key concept in the theory of political culture. Political culture reflects the political values in the society, modifies the political system and is modified by the latter. This element of political culture which defines the civic values and behavior and is an object which can be defined is the political knowledge. The democracy needs competent citizens and requires a certain level of knowledge on political matters – theoretical knowledge and knowledge about current political leaders and events. The purpose of this paper is to systematize theoretical formulations concerning political knowledge and the approaches for its empirical study. In this sense the main questions of the current work are: 1/ why the political knowledge is significant?; 2/ what is the definition of “political knowledge”?; 3/ how the political knowledge is studied empirically? The main tasks of the study are as follows: 1/ theoretical examination of sources on political knowledge; 2/ summary of suggested definitions; 3/ comparison of “political knowledge” with similar or related categories; 4/ examination of empirical studies on political knowledge. The main methods used are comparative approach and analysis of the content