(and let’s not argue about the details. You know what I mean.)

One of my all time favourite surveys was also conducted in Britain. Something like forty percent of respondents believed that people’s brains could be occupied by aliens. If I remember rightly, a quarter of them thought they were being occupied by aliens at that very moment.

It was done at Waterloo Station, late on a Friday night, in winter.

Real or fictional?

1 Ned Kelly
2 Captain Starlight
3 Captain Moonlight
4 Captain Cook
5 Blinky Bill
6 Billy Snedden
7 Barry MacKenzie
8 Barry Humphries
9 Barry Crocker
10 Crocodile Dundee

In short, aren’t you saying: “I support democracy except for the following ground rules where MY preference is to have priority and be above all others’ preferences.”?

Sure I do. But I accept that I have to obtain my preferred rules through democratic means, which is what I meant by democracy’s preventing civil war.

See also: nomic.

Against the perception, I suggested in my first comment the the political ignorance of our fellow citizens is more likely to come to our attention in 2007 than it was in 1977, giving us a misleading impression of decline.

On the other hand, I found a couple of articles, http://www.usca.edu/polisci/sshjournal/volXVIX/botsch.htm and here, suggesting that College students know and care less about politics than the general population. You might find them interesting.

Interesting you should mention the Flynn effect: it was on my shortlist of post topics.

##36-38 recommend themselves for deletion in my opinion.

The second assumption is more interesting; we assumed measured IQ was/will be stable in each country. The Flynn Effect predicts this is false, and that measured IQ will increase over time. (Historical data provide significant evidence for this.) Many explanations have been offered for this effect, including steady improvement in testing procedures, and there is some evidence that in recent years the Flynn Effect has diminished.

Certainly the graph on the linked page shows US IQ (the only developed western country shown) slowly but steadily increasing over time.

As for changes in average general knowledge levels about politics over time, I haven’t seen anything on it in my patchy reading about this subject. What was the reason that had occurred to you as to why the perception of lower average levels of general knowledge/understanding might be false? The fact that a greater proportion of the population (at least in Australia) complete Year 12 than was the case 20 years ago would be one such factor.

It would be very surprising if people today are getting “dumber”. Advances in nutrition, medicine etc mean that we’re bigger, stronger, faster etc on average than 50 years ago, and it would be surprising if we weren’t also smarter on average.

I didn’t mean that people have become less inherently intelligent in some sense in the last 150 years. But I think there is a widespread, if vague, perception that general knowledge and political awareness have been on the decline in the last few decades. The ‘fragmentation of media generated by the Internet and cable TV’, a development of the last thirty years or so, suggests itself as one explanation. On the other hand, a reason had occurred to me why the perception might be false, and that was the point of my somewhat frivolously expressed comment.

Ken, I concede that the trend in — as opposed to the level of — political knowledge and engagement, may not be the central issue as far as your argument is concerned, but it’s interesting nonetheless.

I don’t think you can logically say that. Do you think that your “system which…” should prevail without the people having power to argue for or against it? If so, you do not support democracy. Alternatively, do you want people to be able to argue over your “system which…” and about all other issues? If yes, then your system is up for debate and it is possible your preference might not prevail.

In short, aren’t you saying: “I support democracy except for the following ground rules where MY preference is to have priority and be above all others’ preferences.”?

Of course, I suspect it’s only some of the Ministers, some of the time, and I happened to see a genuinely decent one.

So what’s the point of knowledge?

It’s less vulnerable to demagoguery.

historically, empirically, the greater the people’s SAY in running things, the better things run. This is so through time, seen over a millennium or the last century, or through place: Europe v. the rest, or within Europe, or whatever.

I don’t think it’s so simple. I support democracy because once settled and entrenched, it helps to prevent civil war. Otherwise I prefer a system which decentralises decision-making and rewards giving others what they want. The market is, broadly speaking, that system.

I suspect that your position and mine are quite close on this point. Indeed, they’re not all that far apart on the G-G issue either. I’ll comment on that on the other thread.

A lot of people have answered Converse but two things stay with me:

- at election time there are many very intelligent, knowledgeable people who vote Liberal. On the same day there are many very clever, learned people who vote for Labor. These people could not only tell you who Churchill and Tom Sawyer were but know heaps about the current political parties’ policies. There are even political science professors (who know practically everything) voting on both sides. So what’s the point of knowledge?

- historically, empirically, the greater the people’s SAY in running things, the better things run. This is so through time, seen over a millennium or the last century, or through place: Europe v. the rest, or within Europe, or whatever.

Every survey shows the same shock horror ignorance yet probably our dullest voters have a greater knowledge than the average Swiss voter of the late nineteenth century - who had (and has) powerful CIR. The Swiss vote on laws and on every foreign treaty. This has not brought catastrophe but quite the opposite.

Giving the people more influence, such as voting directly on laws, is my recommendation for improvement. It’s pretty well guaranteed to deliver a better result.

It’s certainly not the question as far as I’m concerned. As I mentioned in the primary post, JS Mill identified the problem of a disengaged and uninformed voting population 150 years or so ago. It would be very surprising if people today are getting “dumber”. Advances in nutrition, medicine etc mean that we’re bigger, stronger, faster etc on average than 50 years ago, and it would be surprising if we weren’t also smarter on average.

That isn’t the point. Prior and others argue, against Schudson’s monitorial citizen construct, that the proliferation and fragmentation of media have resulted in at least some people’s attention to MSM news being reduced to such an extent that any concept of media as “monitorial citizen” is not credible. The chronically disinterested can avoid news and current affairs completely. It may be true, although I somehow doubt it. However, even if there’s been no reduction in the level of lack of political understanding/knowledge over time, as well may be the case, the consistent level of public ignorance that research has found over 40 years or so is worth considering in terms of its implications for liberal democratic society.

I’m not suggesting that the sky is falling, as should have been apparent from the primary post. Democracy doesn’t work too badly all things considered, especially compared with all other systems tried to date, as Churchill memorably remarked. But that doesn’t mean it couldn’t work better. It’s an especially relevant question given the ongoing expansion in the size, complexity and range of activities of government, and the increasingly sophisticated technologies that allow them to intrude into almost every aspect of our lives. It’s made even more relevant and urgent by the “war against terrorism” and the almost carte blanche permission it seems to have given police and intelligence agencies to attract increase funding, personnel and powers that would not so long ago have been seen as unthinkable. The fear of terrorism appears to have suppressed reactions to these erosions of freedom, which might otherwise have rung a burglar alarm with the public (to use a metaphor coined by yet another political scientist in John Zaller).

What I was hoping to provoke was a discussion about what measures could/should be taken to improve the effectiveness and accountability of democratic government in light of this undeniable high level of civic disengagement. As I suggested, it might suggest voluntary voting. It might militate in favour of federalism and small government. It might suggest a need for universal education of secondary students in basic civics (along with history), so that future generations can detect and analyse spin/bullshit more effectively.

And it might suggest a need for the development and enhancement of other checks and balances (e.g. strengthened FOI and administrative grievance processes; or the sort of TQM-style provisions that Nicholas Gruen often discusses, whereby departments would be required to take on board proposals for improvement of regulation and governance by their employees and clients), given that such a high proportion of the population is so disinterested that they don’t discharge even their most basic democratic duties in any meaningful way. No doubt there are lots of other ideas that could be considered, unless we’re happy to just shrug our shoulders and say “she’ll be right mate, it’s godzone country, so relax and grab a coldie”. This chronic civic disengagement by definition negates the ostensible basis for the system of “responsible government” on which Australia’s Constitution is founded. The US, for instance, has stronger separation of powers and a bill of rights, in part because it isn’t based on “responsible government” in the Westminster sense. Should we move in that direction? I don’t have any firm views, but it’s a reasonable question given that Australia has a system where the executive government isn’t meaningfully responsible to Parliament (because the rigid party system and its control of patronage enables the executive government to completely dominate Parliament), and that neither Parliament nor the executive government is meaningfully responsible in turn to the Australian people because most of us don’t have a clue and don’t give a rat’s arse anyway. Nevertheless, I suppose it’s predictable that most people, even on this forum of political junkies, don’t give a rat’s arse about the fact that everyone else doesn’t give a rat’s arse either!!!

As for the Americentric ‘who am I?’ quiz……I’m an Aussie. I really don’t care who’s a phoney & who’s real.

I am not even remotely persuaded that knowledge of this or that party’s “broad ideological position” matters a hill of beans. I used to be a marxist socialist who ONLY voted accoerding to a party’s “ideology.” But a society like Australia’s is far too open and power far too diffuse for ideological shibboleths of this or that party ever to get a run.

Most (and I am not using that word as a weasel word, I really mean MOST) people’s lives are fuelled by a network of relations, institutional stabilities, etc. that are not all that sensitive to government ideology or theology. This was the great lesson of the twentieth century. Revolution is not possible, and stability is preferred to dynamism.

One legacy from my marxist days is I am still a materialist and believe Marx made one of humanity’s most profound observations that human history is driven by the reality that all have to work to live. This reality is known by my single mother or your bloke down the pub, without any need to vist Leftwrites! They did not need a formal lecture by Labor to know Work Choices stank.

I have found all the Luvvie sneering at the “aspirationals,” “plasma TVs” “McMansions,” “Cronulla rednecks” over the past decade to be a bloody disgrace. Since when are working class people not permitted to work for a higher quality of life?

I think the days of people voting according to the way their parents vote died out in the 1970s. I have fought like cats and dogs with my father over politics since I was 15!