By the demanding standards Bernard Berelson and his colleagues formulated in their classic study of the formation of voter opinion, most voters in most countries, not only in the decade of the 1950s but also today, fall short of their stringent expectations. But the commonsense view of the kinds of intellectual qualities democratic citizens should have, as well as the preeminent opinion among professional observers in particular, is often that citizens in democratic societies should be knowledgeable and well informed. This applies with particular force to political information or knowledge. Political information is the key currency or code that governs democratic politics and citizenship (e.g., Lakoff, 1971:12; Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996:8). Information, ideally objective information, is the source of political preferences. The idea that resilient democracies depend on informed citizens is by no means a new insight; nor is the expectation that the state and the political system have to shoulder the responsibility for providing the foundations for adequate citizenship.

Not only the founding fathers of the American democracy, but also the classical observer of the American revolution, Alexis de Tocqueville (e.g. [1835–40] 2000:291), offer extensive observations regarding the question “how much knowledge do citizens require, and what knowledge do they need?” as well as “can adequate knowledge guarantee the persistence of democratic regimes?” During this period in history, at the dawn of mass democracies, the response to the latter question was mostly in the affirmative. Thomas Jefferson, for example, is explicit in his expectation and demand: In a letter to Colonel Edward Carrington (Koch and Peden, 1944:411–412) written on January 17, 1787, he emphasizes: