Decades of survey research document a long list of political questions that the common citizen cannot answer. Less well documented is what this lack of information implies about citizen competence. A common conclusion is that citizens who cannot answer political questions (i.e., those who score low on typical survey-based measures of political sophistication or knowledge) are not competent participants in the political process. We reject this conclusion.

We argue that for many of the most common political tasks – such as voting in a presidential election or for or against a piece of legislation – competence requires very little information. Moreover, we contend that what little information competent performance requires in these contexts can be learned from others (e.g., political parties, elite endorsements, friends, and family).

In drawing such a conclusion, we join others (e.g., Downs 1957, Popkin 1991, and Sniderman, et al. 1991), who argue that people can use heuristics or information shortcuts to make competent decisions with limited information. However, we depart from these arguments by focusing on the conditions under which these cognitive shortcuts have such beneficial effects. Specifically, we examine how political institutions help people sort through the many heuristics or shortcuts often available to them.

We find that political institutions make it easier for citizens to learn what they need to know by affecting citizens' beliefs about who can and cannot be trusted.