The Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 30 (2019)
Copyright © 2019 Takeshi Iida. All rights reserved. This work may be used, with this noticeincluded, for noncommercial purposes. No copies of this work may be distributed,
electronically or otherwise, in whole or in part, without permission from the author.

Citizens’ Constitutional Knowledge andAmerican Representative Democracy

Takeshi IIDA*

INTRODUCTION
Since publication of the seminal empirical work on citizens’ political
attitudes by Philip E. Converse (1964), scholars have found that US citizens
are not as politically sophisticated as the theory of representative democracy
assumes. Citizens generally lack a basic knowledge of political institutions
and processes (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996), which can prevent themfrom ensuring that democratic control of government works throughelections.
A comprehension of the US Constitution is considered one of the mostfundamental bodies of civic knowledge in the United States, as it is tested on
the naturalization exam. Nevertheless, there is little previous research that
empirically examines how citizens’ constitutional knowledge matters in theway they think and act within American democracy. To fill the gap, in thisarticle I use a quantitative approach to explore what category of people are
more knowledgeable about the Constitution; how citizens’ constitutional
knowledge shapes their views about the government’s role regarding
controversial issues; and what are the implications of these findings for
American representative democracy.
The US Constitution is known to be classical liberal in the sense that it
protects the liberty and rights of individuals by strictly limiting*Professor, Doshisha University

53

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TAKESHI IIDA

government’s role in the lives of individual citizens. If we literally interpret
the Constitution, it is hard to derive modern liberal or progressive ideas,such as welfare provision, wealth redistribution through taxation, andmarket regulation from the text, because these can be considered as thetrespassing on individual liberty and property rights guaranteed in theConstitution. Therefore, knowledge of the actual Constitution can provide
citizens with a rigorous theoretical basis for opposing government
intervention in various areas, such as health insurance, wealth redistribution,and immigration.
To test this hypothesis, I analyze the original survey data of eligible US
voters collected from the internet in 2017. The key findings are that, all otherthings being equal, respondents who are knowledgeable about theConstitution tend to be against not only national health insurance and wealthredistribution through taxation but also a stricter immigration policy. Thissuggests that constitutional knowledge exerts a unique influence on citizens’
attitudes, independent of party identification and ideology, by making themcautious about the abuse of government power.
I.

POLITICAL KNOWLEDGE AND REPRESENTATION

The theory of representative democracy assumes that citizens are wellinformed about political affairs. They are “supposed to know what the issues
are, what their history is, what the relevant facts are, what alternatives areproposed, what the party stands for, what the likely consequences are”
(Berelson, Lazarsfeld and McPhee, 1954, p. 308). Otherwise, it is
impossible for citizens to fulfill their civic duty to elect representatives
based on rationally considered policy preferences and to control themthrough electoral processes.
First, without knowledge about politics, citizens are not able to form
policy preferences that reflect their self-interest or the common good.
Understanding what policy options serve them or the society better involvesa cognitively demanding process; this is because citizens must collect andinterpret information about how each policy option would work in the given
political environment and institutions. Political knowledge helps them knowor, at least, have some idea about whether a policy option is feasible andmaximizes their own well-being or that of the public at large. Citizens will
rely on nothing but their whims or emotions while casting a ballot inelections if they do not know which policy they would like to pursue. This
would result in a failure of representation because electoral candidates

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55

would have no idea what opinions they should adopt to win votes.
Second, even if citizens have rationally considered policy preferences,
they are not able to relate them to their vote choice in elections when they
do not know enough about political parties and candidates. Political parties
and candidates are supposed to compete for votes in elections by appealing
to citizens with their policy platforms. Citizens compare these policy
platforms and vote for the candidate whose policy positions best match theirown. A lack of political knowledge about the policy positions of parties andcandidates will prevent them from doing so, which, in turn, will lead to
failure in representation, as they may elect candidates who go against theirinterests.
Finally, and most important, the lack of political knowledge can reduce
the accountability of elected officials to their constituents; this is because
citizens without enough knowledge are not able to punish them for poor
performance or betrayal of electoral promises. Elected officials are supposed
to work for their constituents by implementing promised policies during
their tenure in office and possibly to seek reelection after it ends. Citizens
will vote for their representatives again only if they think that theirrepresentatives performed well in their initial term by sticking to theirelection promises. This assumed mechanism gives elected officials an
incentive to listen to citizens’ voices to avoid future electoral loss, and thus
it keeps them accountable to the public. Without knowledge about what
elected officials really did or did not do, however, citizens are not able topunish incumbents by voting for nonincumbents in subsequent elections;this ignorance allows representatives to ignore public opinion and to do
whatever they want.
Although political knowledge has great theoretical relevance torepresentative democracy, scholars have maintained a pessimistic view of
the average American’s level of political knowledge ever since Converse(1964) held, based on his empirical analysis, that “large portions of anelectorate do not have meaningful beliefs, even on issues that have formed
the basis for intense political controversy among elites for substantial
periods of time” (p. 254). The accumulated evidence strongly suggests thatthe average citizen is poorly informed about political institutions, processes,
and substantive policies (e.g., Luskin, 1987; Bennett, 1988, 1995; Delli
Carpini & Keeter, 1996), which has even led to the following conclusion:“The political ignorance of the American voter is one of the bestdocumented features of contemporary politics” (Bartels, 1996, p. 194).
The discrepancy between the theory of representative democracy and the

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political reality has aroused scholars’ interest in exploring the determinants
and consequences of political knowledge.1 Some previous authors haveexamined sociodemographic determinants of political knowledge and findthat white, male, older, well-educated, financially secure citizens aresubstantially more knowledgeable about politics (Bennett, 1988, 1995; Delli
Carpini & Keeter, 1996). Others attribute the acquisition of politicalknowledge to cognitive ability (Luskin, 1990), partisan motivation (Jerit &Barabas, 2012), and the supply of information (Nicholson, 2003; Jerit,
Barabas, & Bolsen, 2006; Clark, 2017).
Scholars have also shown that political knowledge, described as a“cornerstone construct in research on political behavior” (Mondak, 2001,
p. 238), has a substantial impact on citizens’ attitudes and behaviors in theway it activates their political awareness and engagement. Citizens with ahigher level of political knowledge are more likely to agree with democraticvalues, be politically tolerant, have consistent opinions on a broad range ofpolitical topics, and engage in various forms of political participation,
including voting (e.g., Delli Carpini & Keeter, 1996). Political knowledge
also helps increase the probability of having a preferred party or candidate(Jacoby, 1995) and correctly apportioning blame for poor economic
performance (Gomez & Wilson, 2001).
Although past research has revealed that citizens’ political knowledge is
the key to improving the overall quality of representative democracy, little
attention has been paid to how different types of political knowledge exert
different effects on citizens’ attitudes and behavior. Delli Carpini and Keeter(1993) argue that there are theoretically multiple dimensions in politicalknowledge, such as “people,” “party,” and “civics,” but empirically they
conclude that “a one-dimensional model adequately represented thestructure in the sample data” (p. 1184). This claim has been widely acceptedamong scholars, and it has required them use the five-item knowledge
battery recommended by Delli Carpini and Keeter (1993) to construct a
general measurement of political knowledge. Although Barabas, Jerit,
Pollock, and Rainey (2014) showed the multidimensionality of politicalknowledge in a rigorous manner, the research still lacks a theoretical andempirical investigation of the causal relationship between types of politicalknowledge and corresponding political attitudes or behaviors.
To fill the gap, I focus here on one of the most important types of politicalknowledge―knowledge about the US Constitution. As stated,comprehension of the Constitution is a fundamental body of civic
knowledge that is tested on the naturalization exam. Most naturalization

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57

applicants are required to take a test assessing their knowledge of English
and civics.2 On the civics test, they are asked 10 out of the 100 questions
available on the official list in a multiple-choice format;3 the questions aremostly about the Constitution because the test is designed to meet therequirement set by law that all applicants demonstrate their understanding of
the principles of the Constitution.4 Although there has been a cloud of
suspicion over the validity of a mere memory test as a measurement of civic
competence (Schneider, 2010; Lupia, 2016), it is little known whether
citizens’ constitutional knowledge actually matters. Therefore, I havedeveloped a hypothesis about the effects of constitutional knowledge on
political attitudes and examine it by means of a survey data analysis.
II. THE CLASSICAL LIBERAL CONSTITUTIONAs stated earlier, the US Constitution is known to be classical liberal in
the sense that it emphasizes strong protection of individual rights andlimited government. According to Epstein (2014), the framers’ conception ofrights held dear “the liberty of action, the ownership of private property, andfreedom from arbitrary arrest and prosecution” (p. 4). The protection ofprivate property rights is an especially important antecedent to the use ofgovernment power in the Lockean tradition of political philosophy, in which
the government is believed to be established by a social contract amongindividuals for the better protection of their property. Therefore, instigating a
revolution against the government is considered legitimate if thegovernment acts against the property rights of citizens. Such a politicalphilosophy underlay the foundation of the United States, as seen in the wellknown preamble of the Declaration of Independence, which includes thesewords: “Whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of theseends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
Government.”5
Skepticism about governmental power is also found in the Federalist
Papers, a collection of articles written by the Founding Fathers to promoteratification of the Constitution. For example, James Madison claimed inFederalist, no. 51 that checks and balances preserve individual liberty andrights against government power: “It may be a reflection on human nature,that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government.”6
Therefore, it followed as a natural consequence that the Constitution was
designed to establish “a system of distinct powers to prevent an
accumulation of power in one branch of government, and to ensure that each

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branch can stop the others from growing too powerful,”7 which in turn
deters the government from trespassing on individual rights.
The framers’ strong belief in private rights and limited government makes
it difficult for us to derive a modern liberal, progressive right to, forexample, “housing, health care, or a decent income―or indeed any positive
entitlement against government” (Epstein, 2014, p. 4) from the text of theConstitution, if we follow the plain meaning. Big government ideas,
including welfare provision, wealth redistribution, and market regulation,
are considered constitutional only under the peculiar theory of constitutional
interpretation called the living-Constitution theory that “gives the politicalsystem extreme flexibility when adapting law to situations alien to theframers” (Fiorina, Peterson, Johnson, Voss & Mayer, 2008, p. 354).
Therefore, in terms of the effects of constitutional knowledge, theclassical liberal nature of the Constitution implies that the acquisition ofknowledge nurtures caution about the abuse of government power andstrengthens the belief in limited government, because it provides citizens
with a rigorous theoretical basis for opposing government intervention in
individual rights and liberties. This leads to the hypothesis that citizens witha higher level of constitutional knowledge are less likely to support the
expanded role of government on various issues, including national healthinsurance, wealth redistribution, and immigration.
One thing to note, however, is that self-identified conservatives or
Republicans may tend to be more knowledgeable about the Constitution
than others because of their affinity for classical liberalism.8 For instance,
the agenda of people known as constitutional conservatives, such as Sarah
Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Rand Paul, has included limiting
government, lowering taxes, balancing the federal budget, and abolishingwealth redistribution through government programs; further, their efforts toappeal to conservatives bore fruit in the surging of the Tea Party movementin the midterm election of 2010.9 If this is the case, there is a possibility that
constitutional knowledge is a mere surrogate for conservative ideology or
Republican Party identification, which also necessitates the consideration ofthese variables and distinguishing them from each other in the following
empirical analysis.
III.

CONSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND PUBLIC ATTITUDES

To test the hypothesis that citizens with greater knowledge of theConstitution are less supportive of the expanded role of government in

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59

various policy areas, we analyze original data from an internet survey
conducted from August 16 to 18, 2017.10 The quota sample of 631
respondents was drawn from a panel of people registered with an online
survey company, Qualtrics, and stratified by age, gender, and region torepresent the population of US citizens aged eighteen or above.
The Measurement of Constitutional Knowledge
In the survey, respondents were asked to answer three quizzes on the US
Constitution, with the purpose of assessing respondents’ knowledge about
congressional power to coin money, citizens’ rights to bear arms, andcongressional power to declare war. All these questions are based on a basic
knowledge that would be covered in an introductory US college politics
course and a mandatory high school civics course. The wording of the threequestions and the answer choices are shown below, along with thepercentages of respondents who picked each answer choice in parentheses.
The first quiz is about the congressional power to coin money:
According to the US Constitution, who can coin money?
• The President (5.2%)• The Congress (16.5%)• The Supreme Court (0.6%)• The Federal Reserve Board (59.6%)• Don’t know (18.1%)
As specified in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution, the correct answer is“The Congress,” but the majority of the respondents (59.6%) were wrong inchoosing “The Federal Reserve Board,” which finds no mention in theConstitution and was not established until 1935.
The second quiz assesses literal knowledge about the Second
Amendment:
Which right of the people does the Second Amendment to the US
Constitution protect?
• The right to peaceably assemble (9.8%)• The right to keep and bear arms (78.9%)• The right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures(2.2%)• The right to alter or abolish a government (0.5%)

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• Don’t know (8.6%)
Probably because the Second Amendment is often mentioned in the media interms of gun control, most of the respondents (78.9%) were successful inpicking the correct answer choice, “The right to keep and bear arms.”
The third quiz concerns the military role of the Congress:
According to the US Constitution, who holds the power to declare war?
• The President (39.3%)• The Congress (47.9%)• The Supreme Court (1.4%)• The Secretary of Defense (5.4%)• Don’t know (6.0%)

0.3
0.2
0.0

0.1

Proportion

0.4

0.5

As also specified in Article I, Section 8, the correct answer choice is “TheCongress,” but a substantial proportion of the respondents (39.3%) were
wrong in choosing “The President”; however, the plurality (47.9%) picked
the correct answer choice. This is probably because the president has had defacto power to initiate military action as the commander-in-chief, especiallysince the Cold War era.
The distribution of the number of correct answers looks quite normal(fig. 1), with a mean value of 1.43; this is because the level of difficulty
varies much among the questions, as described above. Of interest is what
explains the variation in constitutional knowledge in this measurement andhow it is associated with public attitudes toward the government role in

0

1

2

3

Number of correct answers

Figure 1. The distribution of constitutional knowledge

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61

policy areas.
The Determinants of Constitutional Knowledge

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

Mean c orrec t ans wers

2.0

To discover the determinants of constitutional knowledge, I ran
multivariate regression to isolate the impacts of various individual-levelfactors, including ideology, party identification, gender, race, education, age,and household income, on constitutional knowledge. The results and thecoding of the variables are reported in the appendix.11 The most notable
thing is that neither conservative ideology nor Republican Party
identification is positively associated with constitutional knowledge. Thismeans that conservatives and Republicans, who are supposed to hold dear
the Constitution, are not necessarily knowledgeable about it.
To illustrate the bivariate relationship between ideology and constitutional
knowledge, we can observe how the mean values of the number of correct
answers on the questions vary according to the range of ideologies from
“Very liberal” to “Very conservative” (fig. 2). If conservatism is positively
associated with constitutional knowledge, then the mean value will behigher among the more conservative respondents. What we see in figure 2,
however, is that there is no such between-groups variation in the mean valueof correct answers.
The bivariate relationship between party identification and constitutional
knowledge is also illustrated in figure 3. If Republican Party identification ispositively associated with constitutional knowledge, the mean value should
be highest among Republicans; however, there is no such tendency. In fact,

VeryliberalVeryconservative

Ideology

Figure 2. Ideology and constitutional knowledge

TAKESHI IIDA

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

Mean c orrec t ans wers

2.0

62

Democrat

Independent/
Other party Republican
Party identification

Figure 3. Party identification and constitutional knowledge

Republicans are less knowledgeable about the Constitution than politicalindependents who identify themselves with minor parties or no party.
Although conservatives and Republicans are supposed to be familiar withclassical liberalism as embedded in the Constitution, ideology and party
identification do not make any difference in constitutional knowledge; thisindicates that constitutional knowledge does not serve as a surrogate forconservative ideology or Republican Party identification.
What does explain the variation in constitutional knowledge is level of
education, age, and gender, all of which are commonly found to besignificant in the literature on political knowledge (e.g., Delli Carpini &Keeter, 1996). A higher level of education, older age, and being male areassociated with a higher level of constitutional knowledge.
The bivariate relationship between education and constitutional
knowledge can be visualized in figure 4. The mean value of correct answers
on the Constitution quiz tends to be higher among respondents with a higher
level of education; for example, the value is 1.18 for the group that is “Highschool/GED/Less than high school” and 1.64 for the “Postgraduate degree”
group. This suggests that formal education helps citizens acquire knowledge
about the Constitution.
Older respondents are also more likely to be knowledgeable about theConstitution (fig. 5). The lowest and highest mean values of correct answers
are found among respondents aged 30–39 (1.28) and those aged 70 or over
(1.73), respectively. This implies that not only formal education but also
political socialization matters in the acquisition of constitutional knowledge.
Finally, we see that male respondents tend to have a higher level of

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1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

Mean c orrec t ans wers

2.0

CITIZENS’ CONSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACYHigh school/GED/
Less than high schoolSomecollege2-yearcollege degree

4-yearcollege degree

Postgraduate
degreeEducation

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

Mean c orrec t ans wers

2.0

Figure 4. Education and constitutional knowledge

18-29

30-39

40-49

50-59

60-69

70-

Age

Figure 5. Age and constitutional knowledge

knowledge about the Constitution than female respondents (fig. 6). Although
the difference of 0.19 in the mean values of correct answers given by thetwo gender groups is substantially smaller than that among the education orage groups, it is statistically significant even when all other covariates aretaken into consideration. Of course, this cannot be accounted for by genetic
factors, but gender role expectations in the socialization process may explain
the difference in constitutional knowledge between the two groups.
The Impact of Constitutional Knowledge
For the question on how constitutional knowledge shapes citizens’ views

TAKESHI IIDA

1.5
1.0
0.5
0.0

Mean c orrec t ans wers

2.0

64

Male

FemaleGenderFigure 6. Gender and constitutional knowledgeof the government’s role, I ran a multivariate regression to assess the impact
of constitutional knowledge on public support for government intervention
in various areas, controlling for ideology, party identification, gender, race,
education, age, and household income.
Policy areas in which the federal government may play a role include
national health insurance, redistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor,
and immigration policies. The respondents were asked the following
question:
Do you strongly agree, somewhat agree, neither agree nor disagree,somewhat disagree, or strongly disagree with the following statements?
The Federal Government should guarantee health insurance to every
American.
The Federal Government should tax the rich to help the poor.
The Federal Government should enact a stricter immigration policy.
• Strongly agree• Somewhat agree• Neither agree nor disagree• Somewhat disagree• Strongly disagree
All the statements begin with the subject “The Federal Government” and arefollowed by verbs corresponding to a governmental action about which the
respondents provide their opinion on a 5-point scale ranging from “Strongly
agree” to “Strongly disagree.” (The results for the multivariate regression

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65

model that explains the respondents’ attitudes toward each issue areprovided in the appendix.)
The first statement concerns the federal government’s role in providing
universal coverage of health care services to all US citizens. Universal
health care has been a divisive issue among the public in terms of
constitutionality. In particular, the introduction of President Obama’s
Affordable Care Act, which had the purpose of making health insurance
more accessible to people with a lower income, was challenged byconservatives who questioned its constitutionality. For example, Republican
congressman Todd Akin held, “I don’t find in the Constitution that it is thejob of the government to provide health care.”12 Although the Supreme
Court ruled in NFIB v. Sebelius in 2012 that Congress had the authority toenact most provisions of the ACA, it is still true that the Constitution in its
classical liberal text makes no mention of a right to health care. Therefore,
constitutional knowledge should be expected to make people less supportiveof health insurance provision by the federal government.
The multivariate regression results show that constitutional knowledge isnegatively associated with support for national health insurance, all otherthings being equal. To be more specific, the distribution of the answers fortwo groups of respondents can be distinguished by the level of constitutional
knowledge (fig. 7). Among the respondents with below-average
constitutional knowledge, 71.5 percent strongly agreed or somewhat agreed
that the federal government should guarantee health insurance to every

0.5

0.5

“The Federal Government should guarantee health insurance to every American.”Agreement rate: 0.631

0.3Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge<Average(n=333)

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3
0.2
0.0

0.1

Proportion

0.4

0.4

Agreement rate: 0.715

Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge>Average(n=298)

Figure 7. Constitutional knowledge and attitudes toward national health insurance

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American, while 63.1 percent of those with the above-average constitutional
knowledge had a similar opinion. This suggests that citizens with a higher
level of constitutional knowledge are less likely to support the idea of thefederal government providing health care services to Americans, althoughmore than half of the more knowledgeable ones supported it. The regression
results also show the tendencies of conservatives, Republicans, whites, thebetter educated, and the higher-household income earners to be lesssupportive of universal health care provision by the federal government.
The second statement is about the federal government’s role inredistributing wealth from the rich to the poor through taxation. Wealthredistribution is another issue that has been hotly debated by liberals andconservatives in terms of constitutionality, at least at a philosophical level.
Liberals’ calls for raising taxes on wealthy individuals and corporations arealways criticized by conservatives, who consider redistribution of wealth as
violating the property rights of individuals (Huemer, 2017). Although thistype of abstract argument against redistribution through taxation rarely
attracts public attention in daily life, it may sound persuasive to those who
study the Constitution. Therefore, it is predicted that constitutional
knowledge will make people less likely to support redistribution by thefederal government.
The multivariate regression results show that constitutional knowledge isnegatively associated with support for redistribution of wealth throughtaxation, all other things being equal. The illustration (fig. 8) of the bivariate

0.5

0.5

“The Federal Government should tax the rich to help the poor.”
Agreement rate: 0.564
0.4
0.3

0.3

0.2

0.2

0.1

Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge<Average(n=333)

0.0

0.0

0.1

Proportion

0.4

Agreement rate: 0.628

Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge>Average(n=298)

Figure 8. Constitutional knowledge and attitudes toward redistribution

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67

relationship between constitutional knowledge and the respondents’attitudes, demonstrates how the distribution of answers differs between thetwo groups of respondents distinguished by level of constitutional
knowledge. Among the respondents with below-average constitutional
knowledge, 62.8 percent strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that thefederal government should tax the rich to help the poor, while 56.4 percentof those with above-average constitutional knowledge thought similarly.
This indicates that citizens with a higher level of constitutional knowledge
are less likely to support the active role of the federal government inredistribution through taxation. Moreover, according to the multivariate
regression analysis results, conservatives, Republicans, and the higherhousehold income earners are less likely to be supportive of redistribution.
Finally, the third statement concerns the role that the federal government
plays in controlling immigration. Under Article I, Section 8 of theConstitution, Congress is entrusted with the power to “establish an uniform
Rule of Naturalization.” Therefore, there is no doubt that the federal
government, especially the legislative branch, is responsible for enacting
laws about immigration. The extent to which the federal government should
wield control over immigration is still a matter of discussion, however,particularly at a time when President Trump, the head of the executive
branch, is remarkably active in issuing executive orders that circumvent thelegislative branch. This might have made constitutionally knowledgeable
people, who embrace individual rights and limited government, concerned
about the federal government’s power over immigration, which, in turn,leads to the prediction that constitutional knowledge makes people lesslikely to support stricter immigration policies.
The multivariate regression results indicate that constitutional knowledge
is negatively associated with support for stricter immigration policies, allother things being equal. The distribution of answers for the immigration
policy question differ significantly for the two groups of respondents
distinguished by level of constitutional knowledge (fig. 9). Among the
respondents with below-average constitutional knowledge, 66.1 percent
strongly agreed or somewhat agreed that the federal government should tax
the rich to help the poor, while 58.7 percent of those with above-average
constitutional knowledge thought along similar lines. This makes us inferthat citizens with a higher level of constitutional knowledge are more likely
to oppose stricter immigration policies by the federal government.
One notable thing is that constitutional knowledge affects attitudes toward
immigration policies that is opposed to that of conservative ideology and68

TAKESHI IIDA

0.5

0.5

“The Federal Government should enact a stricter immigration policy.”
Agreement rate: 0.587

0.3Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge<Average(n=333)

0.0

0.1

0.2

0.3
0.2
0.0

0.1

Proportion

0.4

0.4

Agreement rate: 0.661

Strongly
disagreeStrongly
agree

Constitutional knowledge>Average(n=298)

Figure 9. Constitutional knowledge and attitudes toward immigration

Republican party identification. The multivariate regression analysis results
suggest that conservatives and Republicans are more likely to support
stricter immigration policies, while the Democrats and the better educatedare more likely to oppose them. Constitutional knowledge, thus, has effects
like those by the latter group of respondents; people with a high level ofconstitutional knowledge tend to go with the Democrats and liberals, rather
than the Republicans and conservatives in immigration policy. This provides
further evidence that constitutional knowledge exerts a unique influence on
public attitudes and is not a mere surrogate for conservative ideology andRepublican Party identification.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In this article I have examined the effects of constitutional knowledge on
public attitudes, showing that knowledge about the classical liberal US
Constitution leads to the development of a cautious attitude concerning theabuse of government power and strengthens belief in limited government.
Consistent with this theory, empirical analysis found that respondents with ahigher level of constitutional knowledge were less likely to support the
expanded role of government in the provision of health insurance, theredistribution of wealth from the rich to the poor through taxation, and thecontrol of immigration. This implies that citizens’ constitutional knowledge
influences the way Americans think and act about democracy.
First, constitutional knowledge can help in making the government more

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69

accountable to the public. The theory of representative democracy requires
citizens to watch government action closely so that they can mete out
adequate punishment or reward to incumbent representatives during
elections. Skepticism of the federal government’s use of power, fostered byknowledge of the Constitution, gives US citizens a strong incentive to
examine the policies, performances, and even morality of government
actors, which, in turn, will promote representatives listening to public
opinion in order to avoid losing elections.
Second, constitutional knowledge can moderate ideological and partisan
opposition. As the empirical analysis shows, constitutional knowledge exerts
a unique influence, independent of party identification and ideology. It
shapes public attitudes toward the provision of health insurance andredistribution through taxation in the same way as conservative ideology andRepublican Party identification do, while it has an effect like to that ofliberal ideology and Democratic Party identification in influencing attitudes
on immigration policies. This suggests that constitutional knowledge offersa reasoned basis to consider politics and may help overcome the party andideological polarization that has prevailed since the early 2000s.
Finally, the argument presented in this article can be elaborated by some
additional analyses. Because this article deals only with US data, it is notclear whether the findings are unique to the citizens of the United States.
Although I have constructed the theory from the US context, the core valuesof constitutionalism developed in the Western world and spread to othercountries consist of the protection of individual rights and limited
government, featured by a system of checks and balances among threebranches of government. Indeed, the hypothesis regarding the effect ofconstitutional knowledge on public attitudes toward government has a scopethat extends well beyond the American context. If this is the case,constitutional knowledge may work in other countries in the same way as it
does in the United States. Therefore, it is important to examine thehypotheses using data for other countries to test the uniqueness of theUnited States.

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Appendix
Table A1. Multivariate linear regression results
Dependent
variable

Constitutional
knowledge

National healthinsurance

Wealthredistribution

Stricterimmigration
policyConstant

0.783**(0.174)

Householdincome0.034(0.022)–0.137(0.088)–0.219*(0.089)0.174*(0.067)–0.042(0.086)
0.063**(0.022)0.102**(0.027)0.068(0.087)5.860**(0.238)–0.193**(0.054)–0.225**(0.030)0.191(0.119)–0.399**(0.121)–0.050(0.092)–0.336**(0.116)–0.040(0.030)–0.083*(0.037)–0.232*(0.117)4.861**(0.236)–0.150**(0.054)–0.225**(0.029)0.274**(0.117)–0.247**(0.120)0.076(0.091)–0.069(0.115)0.007(0.030)–0.012(0.036)–0.253*(0.116)

3.257**(0.226)–0.128*(0.052)0.154**(0.028)–0.230*(0.113)0.452**(0.115)0.096(0.087)0.060(0.110)0.024(0.029)–0.082*(0.035)0.053(0.111)n
Adj-R2

628
0.055

628
0.272

628
0.227

628
0.204

Constitutional
knowledge
Ideology
Democrat
Republican
Male
White
Age
Education

Note: ** p < 0.01, * p < 0.05

The variables are coded as follows: Constitutional knowledge (0–3);
Ideology (1: Very liberal–7: Very conservative), Democrat (1 if Democrat, 0
if otherwise), Republican (1 if Republican, 0 if otherwise); Male (1 if Male,
0 if Female); White (1 if White, 0 if otherwise); Age (1: 18–29–6: 70 orover); Education (1: High school/GED/Less than high school–5:
Postgraduate degree); Household income (1 if $80,000 or more, 0 if
otherwise); National health insurance (1: “Strongly disagree”–5: “Strongly
agree”); Wealth redistribution (1: “Strongly disagree”–5: “Strongly agree”);
and Stricter immigration policy (1: “Strongly disagree”–5: “Strongly
agree”).

CITIZENS’ CONSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND AMERICAN REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY

71

Table A2. Descriptive statistics

Constitutional knowledge
Ideology
Democrat
Republican
Male
White
Age
Education
Household income
National health insurance
Wealth redistribution
Stricter immigration policy

n

Min.

Max

Mean

Std. dev.

631
631
631
631
631
631
631
628
631
631
631
631

0
1
0
0
0
0
1
1
1
1
1
1

3
7
1
1
1
1
6
5
9
5
5
5

1.43
4.25
0.34
0.32
0.48
0.79
4.16
2.87
0.22
3.82
3.63
3.76

0.87
1.96
0.47
0.47
0.50
0.41
1.55
1.35
0.41
1.33
1.28
1.21

NOTES
According to Lau and Redlawsk (1997, p. 585), the wide divergence between the theory
and reality has led to two widely divergent responses. On the one hand, there are “those who
accept both the normative theory and the empirical data and who conclude as a consequencethat governments calling themselves ‘democracies’ are not truly democratic.” On the other
hand, there are “those who accept the empirical evidence but revise downward therequirements of normative theory so that modern governments can still be considered mostly‘democratic.’”
2
US Citizenship. (n.d.). US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved September 5,2018 from https://www.uscis.gov/us-citizenship.
3
Civics (History and Government) Questions for the Naturalization Test. (n.d.). US
Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved September 5, 2018 from https://www.uscis.
gov/citizenship/learners/study-test/study-materials-civics-test.
4
For the purpose and background of the naturalization examination, see Policy Manual,
vol. 12, part B, chap. 1. (n.d.). US Citizenship and Immigration Services. Retrieved
September 6, 2018 from https://www.uscis.gov/policymanual/HTML/PolicyManualVolume12-PartB-Chapter1.html.
5
The Declaration of Independence. National Archives. Retrieved September 7, 2018 fromhttps://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript.
6
Federalist No. 51. CONGRESS.GOV. Retrieved September 7, 2018 from https://www.
congress.gov/resources/display/content/The+Federalist+Papers#TheFederalistPapers-51.
7Founding Principles. (n.d.). The Bill of Rights Institute. Retrieved September 7, 2018from https://billofrightsinstitute.org/founding-documents/founding-principles/.
8
According to the Gallup Poll, 35% of US adults identified as conservative and 26%
percent as liberal in 2017. Retrieved January 18, 2019 from https://news.gallup.com/
poll/225074/conservative-lead-ideology-down-single-digits.aspx.
9
It should be noted that the constitutional conservatives in the Tea Party movement do notnecessarily preserve the core value of constitutional conservatism that focuses on political
1

72

TAKESHI IIDA

moderation rather than extremism, as found in the Federalist Papers and the Constitution(Berkowitz, 2013).
10This survey was funded by the International Institute of American Studies at Doshisha
University. The dataset is publicly available for download at https://tiida.doshisha.ac.jp/
datadl.html.
11
All the empirical arguments of this article are based on the multivariate regression resultsthat are found, for the convenience of readers, in the appendix, even if it is not explicitly
stated.
12
GOP Congressman Questions Medicare’s Constitutionality. (n.d.). Nancy Pelosi.
Retrieved September 7, 2018 from https://www.democraticleader.gov/newsroom/gopcongressman-questions-medicares-constitutionality/.

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