The IEA International Civic and Citizenship Education Study studied the ways in which young people in lower secondary schools are prepared to undertake their roles as citizens in a wide range of countries including Europe, Latin America, and the Asian-Pacific region. ICCS was the third IEA study designed to measure contexts and outcomes of civic and citizenship education and was linked to the 1999 IEA Civic Education Study (CIVED) (Amadeo, Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Husfeldt & Nikolova, 2002; Schulz & Sibberns, 2004; Torney-Purta, Lehmann, Oswald & Schulz, 2001). A central aspect of the study was the assessment of student knowledge about a wide range of civic-related issues (Schulz, Ainley, Fraillon, Kerr & Losito, 2010). This paper makes use of the data of the IEA Civic and Citizenship Education Study (ICCS) to analyse which factors explain variation in student knowledge about civic and citizenship-related issues in 38 countries at the lower secondary level. The analyses are based on multi-level analyses of sample survey data and make use of contextual data from students, schools and systems.