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What Is Youth Political Participation? Literature Review on Youth Political Participation and Political Attitudes

May 2020
Frontiers in Political Science 2

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DOI:10.3389/fpos.2020.00001

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Authors:

Julia Weiß

GESIS - Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences

Looking at political participation behavior of young adults in contemporary Europe, this paper provides the reader with a map of different terminologies and logics that are used to discuss youth political participation. The existing literature is examined through the lens of five guiding questions: what defines youth political participation? How does youth political participation differ from adult political participation? How do young adults develop political attitudes? How does youth political participation differ across Europe? What methods are being used to analyze youth political participation? For those researching youth political participation for the first time, this paper offers a useful overview of the topic. At the same time, it gives researchers who are already well-informed the opportunity to reflect on the current state of research in this field. Finally, this paper indicates where future research is needed.

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REVIEW

published: 15 May 2020

doi: 10.3389/fpos.2020.00001

Frontiers in Political Science | www.frontiersin.org 1May 2020 | Volume 2 | Article 1

Edited by:

Pedro Daniel Ferreira,

University of Porto, Portugal

Reviewed by:

Jasmine Lorenzini,

Université de Genève, Switzerland

Mariano Torcal,

Pompeu Fabra University, Spain

*Correspondence:

Julia Weiss

julia.weiss@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de

Specialty section:

This article was submitted to

Political Participation,

a section of the journal

Frontiers in Political Science

Received: 18 February 2020

Accepted: 20 April 2020

Published: 15 May 2020

Citation:

Weiss J (2020) What Is Youth Political

Participation? Literature Review on

Youth Political Participation and

Political Attitudes.

Front. Polit. Sci. 2:1.

doi: 10.3389/fpos.2020.00001

What Is Youth Political Participation?

Literature Review on Youth Political

Participation and Political Attitudes

Julia Weiss*

Institute of Political Science, University of Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany

Looking at political participation behavior of young adults in contemporary Europe,

this paper provides the reader with a map of different terminologies and logics that

are used to discuss youth political participation. The existing literature is examined

through the lens of ﬁve guiding questions: what deﬁnes youth political participation?

How does youth political participation differ from adult political participation? How do

young adults develop political attitudes? How does youth political participation differ

across Europe? What methods are being used to analyze youth political participation?

For those researching youth political participation for the ﬁrst time, this paper offers a

useful overview of the topic. At the same time, it gives researchers who are already

well-informed the opportunity to reﬂect on the current state of research in this ﬁeld. Finally,

this paper indicates where future research is needed.

Keywords: political participation, political attitudes, youth, overview, literature review

1. INTRODUCTION

Looking at the political participation behavior of young adults in contemporary Europe, one is

faced with a contradiction. Representatives of the disengagement paradigm within the literature

underpin their argument with empirical ﬁndings, such as young adults being the least likely to

vote in national elections, the drop of youth membership in political parties, and generally low

levels of political interest. On the other hand, the literature on an engagement paradigm of youth

participation represents a more optimistic view as it is based on ﬁndings in the context of new

forms of political participation, which are more appealing to and are used more frequently by

young adults.

Both perspectives raise questions about the role of young adults in European democracies. The

two mentioned positions represent the respective end points of a much more nuanced line of

research on this topic. Research in this area can appear confusing, but overall it is clear that a

comprehensive picture of both the degree and the modes of youth political participation is lacking.

This paper tries to take a ﬁrst step in the direction of addressing this problem. The goal is to provide

the reader with a map of the diﬀerent terminologies and logics that are used to discuss youth

political participation. To attain this goal, this paper presents insights from the existing literature

on the following guiding questions:

❖What deﬁnes political participation?

❖How does youth political participation diﬀer from adult political participation?

❖How do young adults develop political attitudes?

❖How does youth political participation diﬀer across Europe?

❖What methods are being used to analyze youth political participation?

Weiss What Is Youth Political Participation?

The ﬁrst step is to provide a structured inventory. On the one

hand, this paper will be helpful for those encountering this

research area for the ﬁrst time as it provides an overview of

the previous research in the ﬁeld of youth political participation

in Europe. On the other, it oﬀers well-informed researchers the

opportunity to reﬂect on the current state of research in this

ﬁeld. In addition, this paper clearly points toward where further

research is needed.

With this in mind, I develop three main arguments within

this paper. First, although existing deﬁnitions of political

participation are adequate to capture youth participation, the

current literature is inconsistent in the inclusion of new modes of

participation that are increasingly common among young adults.

Second, there are both methodological and substantive problems

within the existing literature, which emerge from young adults’

diﬀerent conceptions of politics as well as from their diﬀering

awareness to adults of what constitutes political participation.

Third, and resulting from this, the current state of research

in this area lacks larger cross-national studies that take into

account an adequate conception of how the youth deﬁne political

participation and that conduct comparative research on youth

political participation behavior, which is necessary if we agree

that young people hold the key for the future functioning of our

political systems (Hooghe et al., 2004).

The rest of this paper is structured as follows. The next section

gives an overview of the development of political participation

research. In doing so, it includes a review of the deﬁnitions

of political participation then and now and clariﬁes why it is

important to be familiar with those deﬁnitions when looking at

the political participation behavior of young adults. The following

section deals with the (potential) diﬀerences between the political

participation behavior of young adults and adults. Besides an

overview of the ongoing debate on whether and, if so, what kind

of diﬀerences there are, this chapter clearly indicates which role

the question of measurement plays in this. The fourth section

focuses on the political attitudes of young adults after reviewing

political socialization research, for political socialization plays an

important role in the formation of the political attitudes of young

adults. After this, section 5 gives an overview of youth political

participation across Europe. Section 6 then presents methods

previously used in the context of youth political participation.

As usual, the ﬁnal section summarizes the previous sections and

highlights which questions remain unanswered. It thereby tries to

provide an answer to the question of youth political participation

as it actually is and indicates where future research is needed.

2. THE DEVELOPMENT OF POLITICAL

PARTICIPATION REPERTOIRES AND

RESEARCH

Political Participation research has undergone signiﬁcant

developments over the course of the last few decades. Multiple

disciplines have contributed to broadening our understanding

of the ﬁeld, but because of this multidisciplinary input it has

become less clear what the underlying core assumptions and

deﬁnitions are that make up the term Political Participation (PP).

This section therefore sketches the development of the term and

answers the core question of what deﬁnes political participation.

Signing a petition, joining a party, or casting a vote are the

most commonly accepted actions deemed as PP. But that’s about

as far as agreements go. To answer the question of how PP

can be deﬁned, one has to go back a few decades. In 1973,

Robert Dahl oﬀered a ﬁrst glimpse of what it might mean.

In “Poliarchy: Participation and Opposition” he declares PP

an essential part of modern democracies as it enables citizens

to hold their governments accountable (Dahl, 1973). However,

Dahl didn’t explicitly deﬁne his concept of participation. His

deﬁnition only implicitly covered actions within the given

institutional framework of a nation, meaning that actions such

as consumerism (Stolle et al., 2005) or just hitting a “like”

button wouldn’t be categorized as participation, even though

they could be seen as holding governments accountable. His

works nevertheless contain some fundamental elements of our

modern conception of PP—namely accountability as well as the

dichotomy of private citizens and professional politicians, which

can also be found in the well acknowledged works of Verba and

Nie (1972).

To these researchers, political participation is “those activities

by private citizens that are more or less directly aimed at

inﬂuencing the selection of governmental personnel and/or the

actions they take” (Verba and Nie, 1972, p. 2). According to Verba

and Nie, private citizens have the ability to participate in politics

not just by casting votes or joining parties but through numerous

other activities. Their suggested typology consists of voting,

campaign activity, contacting public oﬃcials, and cooperative or

communal activities.

This deﬁnition has paved the way for the analysis of actions

such as protests, strikes, or petitions as activities that participate

in politics through other means than elections (Verba and Nie,

1972, p. 47). Similar concepts have been presented by Parry et al.

(1992) or Pattie et al. (2004), who, in contrast to Verba and Nie

(1972), stress that political participation does not necessarily have

to address governments but could also target other institutions

or even organizations. PP can therefore aﬀect the policymaking

process as well as services provided by governments, such as

education or health care (Pattie et al., 2004; Fox, 2014). Brady

(1998) adds that, in order to qualify as PP, actions taken by private

citizens must be observable, manifest, and voluntary, but he also

focuses on interactions between citizens and political elites.

Parallel to developments in participation-research, authors

such as Flanagan (2013),Norris (2002),Putnam (2001),Zukin

et al. (2006), or Daskalopoulou (2018) have been working on

the concept of civic engagement, which has several intersections

with PP research. The concept of civic engagement has been

used to analyze all kinds of citizen behavior, including activities

and actions, which can but don’t necessarily have to be

political. Putnam’s “bowling alone,” e.g., also includes going

to a bowling alley as a vital indicator of engagement. The

ever-growing repertoire of indicators has therefore led to

accusations of conceptual stretching (Berger, 2009), meaning

that the conception is too broad and therefore not suitable for

researchers. Most authors’ conceptions of PP from the ﬁrst period

of research have three aspects in common: Actions have to be

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taken by private citizens, not politicians; these actions have to be

voluntary, meaning structural forces that require citizens to take

certain actions wouldn’t count as participation; and their actions

need to target governments, institutions, organizations or NGOs.

These three aspects are at the “hard core” (Lakatos and Musgrave,

1970) of almost every single contemporary deﬁnition of PP.

van Deth (2001) nicely summarizes the evolution of political

participation repertoires between the 1940s and the 1990s

by tracing the publication of landmark studies. In the 1940s

and 1950s, PP was mainly restricted to voting and campaign

activities. In the early 1960s, though, appeared the later so-called

“conventional” modes of PP. At this time, “political participation

was broadly understood as activities concerned with traditional

conceptualizations of politics as campaigning by politicians and

parties, and with well-accepted contacts between citizens and

public oﬃcials” (van Deth, 2001, p. 5). During the 1970s,

these conventional forms were expanded and “unconventional”

forms, which were not in line with the societal norms of the

1970s, appeared. These unconventional forms included, among

others, protest and rejection as well as new social movements,

such as women’s or paciﬁst movements (van Deth, 2001).

Later, in the 1990s, the borderline between the political and

non-political spheres of modern society disappeared as the

political participation repertoire came to include “civil” activities

such as volunteering and social engagement (van Deth, 2001).

Nowadays, further forms of PP have emerged and challenge PP

research. The new forms use non-political behavior to express

political opinions, and what was once deﬁned as unconventional

or elite-challenging is now commonplace. Therefore, these

forms can no longer be captured by a distinction between

conventional and unconventional PP (Teorell et al., 2007).

Furthermore, García-Albacete (2014) has found that citizens’

political involvement has changed recently and argues that these

changes characterize today’s PP repertoire and have led to the

distinction between institutionalized and non-institutionalized

PP. First, “the agencies or structures through which citizens

are mobilized and participate have (...) been transformed, with

the spread of new social movements and advocacy networks”

(García-Albacete, 2014, p. 15). Second, individualized patterns

of participation are growing as ties to political and civic

organizations become weaker (García-Albacete, 2014). The now

widely used distinction between institutionalized and non-

institutionalized PP capture forms of PP which happen within the

institutional framework (e.g., voting or party membership) and

those which happen outside of the institutional framework (e.g.,

protest or boycotting). This distinction between institutionalized

and non-institutionalized PP is particularly important for any

kind of research on youth participation, given the fact that young

adults are disproportionately more likely to participate through

non-institutionalized means.

Adapting to or being challenged by new forms of participation

is a continuous process. One of the more recent developments

in this regard is online participation. The debate about how and

if online participation ﬁts into existing concepts is ongoing and

vibrant (Gibson and Cantijoch, 2013; Dayican, 2014; Halupka,

2014; Kristoﬀerson et al., 2014). Authors such as Morozov (2009)

declare it as an illusion of participation, whereas Rojas and

Puig-i-Abril (2009) see it as “expressive participation” which

constitutes a “subdimension” (Rojas and Puig-i-Abril, 2009, p.

907) of political participation. Because of this heated debate

and the numerous ways of integrating online participation into

existing forms of participation, Theocharis (2015) warns that the

entire concept of PP could face a risk of overstretching.

In order to avoid this fate, van Deth (2014) has oﬀered

a distinct concept of PP, which should enable researchers to

“recognize a mode of participation if [they] see one” (van Deth,

2014, p. 5). In order to “see one,” researchers should look for these

characteristics of participation: it is an activity; it is voluntary

and not ordered by a ruling class or required by law; it refers

to people in their role as non-professionals or amateurs; and

it concerns government, politics, or the state (van Deth, 2014).

This description represents the minimum deﬁnition to which

further variants are added, namely “two additional variants based

on the target (politics/government/state or problems/community),

and two based on circumstantial evidence (contextual and

motivational)” (Theocharis and van Deth, 2018a, p. 81). This

conceptual map results in ﬁve analytically unambiguous modes

of political participation (Theocharis and van Deth, 2018a). Thus,

the ﬁrst form (minimal deﬁnition) focuses on the arena of

participation rather than its outcomes, while the second and third

forms deal with the targets of the activities rather than relying

on the goals or intentions of the people. In the fourth form, the

political nature of the activities is based on contextual evidence,

and only at the very last stage (form ﬁve) are the intentions/aims

of the participants considered in order to identify a form of

political participation. The authors therefore illustrate that “the

advantage of following these decision rules is not only that we

can distinguish between political acts that ﬁt into deﬁnitions with

stricter or loser requirements, but also that we can systematically

exclude those who do not meet the deﬁnitional requirements”

(Theocharis and van Deth, 2018b). Based on this concept, online

PP could be recognized as a form of PP. However, this example

also reveals that PP cannot be deﬁned in a simple way, which

is also reﬂected in the existing literature. Instead, it raises the

question of whether a deﬁnition such as the one by van Deth

does permit the development of means for unifying the existing

discussion. At the same time, such a broad and yet clearly deﬁned

deﬁnition oﬀers the possibility of being able to classify forms

newly emerging in the literature. In the course of ever-changing

social situations and behaviors, this seems to be a key aspect

of developing a deﬁnition of PP, which can be used over the

long term.

3. DIFFERENCES BETWEEN YOUTH AND

ADULT POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

The previous section has already shown that there is no need

for a separate deﬁnition of youth political participation; instead,

the various forms of political participation used by young adults

is of central importance. Following this, the question arises as

to what extent the PP behavior of young adults diﬀers from

that of other groups. A look at the previous research shows a

perceived gap between young adult and adults. Many studies

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show the lowest scores in almost all areas of political participation

for young adults and thus the image emerges that young people

are not suﬃciently engaged in politics. This perception is based

upon trends such as voting in elections, where young adults

have the lowest rates, and these rates continue to decrease

just as the level of youth membership in political parties is

decreasing (Kimberlee, 2002; Hooghe et al., 2004; Fieldhouse

et al., 2007; Cross and Young, 2008). To capture young people’s

disengagement in politics, it can be said that “young people are

less concerned with politics, less politically knowledgeable, do not

participate in social or political activities, are more apathetic, and

have low levels of political interest” (Quintelier, 2007, p. 165). Even

if this representation seems clear, the disengagement of young

adults in politics remains a contested issue in the literature. At

this point, three central questions need to be clariﬁed. First, is

there a real diﬀerence between the political participation behavior

of young adults and adults? Second, which factors lead to a

diﬀerent behavior between young and old? Third, does this really

mean that young adults are politically disengaged?

The ﬁrst, and to some authors most important, reason for

diﬀerences between youth and adult political participation is

lifecycle. Here, one can ﬁnd a curvilinear eﬀect of age, which

means that participation rises from youth until middle age, then

decreases with old age. Scholars have been researching this trend

for decades (Jennings, 1979), and it must be clearly diﬀerentiated

between lifecycle eﬀects and generational eﬀects. In the context

of lifecycle eﬀects, what matters is the increase or decrease of

political participation resulting from diﬀerent stages of life (Nie

et al., 1974).

In this sense, political participation is nobody’s priority as

it competes against more pressing personal concerns, especially

for young people (Highton and Wolﬁnger, 2001). As people

have a ﬁnite amount of time, engagement with politics is more

costly for those who have not yet sorted out their lives (ibid.).

In addition to the fact that young adults gain more experience

with the electoral and political process as they age, some speciﬁc

steps of adulthood have proven to have an eﬀect on political

participation behavior. These include, among others, settling

down, marriage (Stoker and Jennings, 1995), graduating and

getting a job. Some authors state that these results relate purely to

the inﬂuence on voting turnout and that the inﬂuence of lifecycle

eﬀects on other forms of political participation can only explain

minor diﬀerences (Quintelier, 2007). However, not all researchers

share this view. Research in the area of non-institutionalized

participation shows that lifecycle eﬀects are also relevant here.

Speciﬁcally, they concern personal availability and refer to “the

absence of personal constraints that may increase the costs and

risks of movement participation, such as full-time employment,

marriage, and family responsibilities” (McAdam, 1986, p. 70). The

social movement research shows relevant inﬂuences on young

adults, in the sense that the absence of these kinds of constraints

facilitates their participation (Beyerlein and Hipp, 2006; Saunders

et al., 2012; Earl et al., 2017).

The theory of generation eﬀects is based on the assumption

that pre-adult socialization exerts enduring eﬀects on political

socialization. In this sense, the adolescence of each individual

is the period relevant for the development of political thinking.

Building on this argument, some authors assume that as today’s

young adults are less active, they will never reach the level of

political participation of the current elderly (Martikainen et al.,

2005). One explanation for this is that young adults today are

having more diﬃculty in reaching the milestones of adulthood

(Arnett, 2014; Tagliabue et al., 2014) and that this results in

an irreversible delay in political participation. Studies show that

young adults retain these characteristics that distinguish them

from previous generations and that this will lead to a replacement

of the current electorate by a more passive generation of political

participants (Quintelier, 2007).

Another reason for the perceived diﬀerent behavior between

the age groups derives from the varying deﬁnitions of the

political or of political behavior. Every researcher needs to base

his or her research on a clear deﬁnition. At the same time,

this deﬁnition of the political or what is deﬁned as political

participation must also be used and accepted by the survey

population. This is exactly where diﬀerences between young

adults and adults emerge. Do young adults and adults view the

same activities as political? Generally, studies show a diﬀerence

between the deﬁnitions of researchers and survey participants.

For example, Parry et al. (1992) found that only 18% of their

survey participants interpreted a list of activities as political,

which the researchers also deﬁned as political. For this reason,

some researchers call for a broader deﬁnition, which would lead

to higher noted levels of political engagement (e.g., Roker et al.,

1999). The deﬁnition question is also relevant when thinking

of non-institutionalized forms of political participation. Young

adults might not deﬁne their actions as political, even though they

are actually political. Therefore, it is both about the individual’s

conception of politics/the political as well as their awareness of

doing something political. Only a few studies focus on young

adults’ deﬁnition of the political, but they show that young adults

use a narrower deﬁnition than both researchers and adults (e.g.,

Bynner and Ashford, 1994;Andolina et al., 2002). This results in

young adults being less interested than adults in politics, because

they do not view politics, in their narrow deﬁnition, as relevant

to their lives (Andolina et al., 2002). In this sense, “the low

political participation rate among youth is a by-product of their

narrow conception of politics and their impression that politicians

do not truly care about their needs” (Quintelier, 2007, p. 169).

Hence, youth disengagement is a result of the organization of

politics rather than of the youth’s own lack of interest. For this

reason, research is growing on how young adults deﬁne political

participation and what they perceive as political participation

(Henn et al., 2002, 2005; O’Toole, 2003; O’Toole et al., 2003a).

They show that previous studies used a concept of participation

that is too narrow and that, e.g., the topic of non-participation as

an act of political action has so far not been suﬃciently addressed

(O’Toole, 2003).

Finally, a study by Quintelier (2007), which speciﬁcally

examined the diﬀerences between the age groups, revealed that

young adults and adults seem to be similar in their political

attitudes, with the exception that young people have fewer

opportunities to participate politically. Furthermore, they state

that there are diﬀerences with regard to the engagement in

speciﬁc forms of political participation as young adults tend to

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participate more in non-institutionalized forms. This leads to

the conclusion that “it seems as if the problem of youth political

participation is less a matter of whether they participate, and more

a matter of where they participate” (Rainsford, 2017, p. 2).

4. POLITICAL ATTITUDES OF THE YOUTH

Just like the research on political participation, contributions

to the ﬁeld of political attitudes have also broadened our

understanding of how political attitudes develop and how the

political attitudes of young adults diﬀer from those of adults.

This section takes the diﬀerent approaches to socialization and

the debated inputs from other ﬁelds and focuses on development,

maturation, and the stability of attitudes in order to answer how

young adults develop political attitudes.

Hyman (1959, p. 25) thought of political socialization as

an individual’s “(...) learning of social patterns corresponding

to his societal positions as mediated through various agencies

of society.” Considering that it is one of the most commonly

used deﬁnitions of political socialization, it is surprising that

researchers had mostly analyzed family inﬂuence ﬁrst and

foremost and neglected various agencies of society. Furthermore,

Sapiro (2004) points out that, in its early days, dedicated research

on political socialization (Easton et al., 1969; Searing et al.,

1973; Jennings and Niemi, 1974) mostly focused on shared

party aﬃliations, participation in voluntary organizations, or the

genuine political interest of children and their parents’ possible

inﬂuence on it. However, scholars have repeatedly faced the

same methodological challenge, since young children do not

possess many issue beliefs at all (Searing et al., 1973). This

makes it hard to identify inferences valuable to political science.

Hess and Torney-Purta (1967), on the other hand, claim that

children are able to express political opinions and partisanship.

This uncertainty caused researchers (Hanks, 1981; Percheron

and Jennings, 1981; Nieuwbeerta and Wittebrood, 1995) to

shift their focal point toward adolescents and young adults

instead of children, because their issue beliefs could be accessed

more easily due to the wider scope of methods available for

gathering data. The driving force behind socialization research

until now has been a biologically sound core assumption:

The neurological structure, senso-motoric skills, as well as

temperament, reactivity, semantic networks and behavior of

infants and adolescents diﬀers from adults (Kagan, 2003, p.

6–8). Dollard and Miller (1950) argue that this diﬀerence

slowly deteriorates through learning because “human behavior is

learned” (Dollard and Miller, 1950, p. 25).

In the “heyday” (Niemi and Hepburn, 2010, p. 10; van

Deth et al., 2011, p. 48) of political socialization research the

Columbia school (Berelson et al., 1954; Butler and Stokes, 1974)

and Michigan School (Campbell et al., 1960; Easton et al.,

1969) dominated the discourse. Both schools found that political

aﬃliation and attitudes toward institutions and the authorities

strongly correlate with whatever interests one’s parents had and

that these interests didn’t change much over the span of a lifetime.

Socialization research was equal to research on preference or

opinion inheritance; almost all research focused exclusively on

the United States and also suﬀered from selection biases as

they mostly included white middle-class Americans. Niemi and

Sobieszek (1977) note that this bias was compensated for mainly

by Abramson (1977) and García (1973), who tried to answer why

people of color feel less politically eﬃcacious throughout multiple

generations. Researchers posed interesting questions but couldn’t

identify any causal mechanisms. Clarke (1978) and Percheron

and Jennings (1981) dissected diﬀerences between American

and French families, concluding that “(...) the object of partisan

socialization within the family is country speciﬁc” (Percheron and

Jennings, 1981, p. 434), which remains true today.

However, political socialization is not only country speciﬁc;

it also depends on the respective political context. This raises

the question of generational dependency, i.e., if it makes a

diﬀerence whether young adults themselves or their parents

have been socialized in a speciﬁc political context. The various

studies on this question reveal that political socialization is

inﬂuenced by the broader context both during one’s own political

socialization (Grasso et al., 2019) and during the transmission

from parents to children. In this way, researchers have shown that

“if parents are politically engaged and frequently discuss politics

with the child, transmission rates rise substantially, particularly

on topics of general political signiﬁcance and salience” (Jennings

et al., 2009). Here, regular political events, as well as more

episodic events, oﬀer socialization opportunities for parents

(Valentino and Sears, 1998).

Furthermore, Jennings (1984) demonstrated that socialization

can also be observed through social class and not just the

direct transmission from parents to their children. This made

a multitude of arguments part of the socialization process.

According to Niemi and Hepburn (1995), up until the

1990s research had been suﬀering from two ﬂawed implicit

assumptions: Political attitudes, opinions and assumptions of

today remain mostly the same tomorrow, and early learning is

more important than learning in later life. Instead, they argue

that adolescents’ attitudes do change, often substantially, and do

not necessarily settle just because they turned 18 and/or moved

out. Only emerging longitudinal studies (Hanks, 1981; Alwin

and Krosnick, 1991; Smith, 1999) made such ﬁndings possible.

Niemi and Hepburn (1995) therefore demanded a revitalization

of political socialization theory and research that would abandon

these ﬂawed assumptions. As if they had heard the call,

Nieuwbeerta and Wittebrood (1995) challenged one of the

cornerstones of socialization research: the idea of fathers being

dominant in the transmission of party preferences. They found

that there was a gender speciﬁc diﬀerence in the transmissions

of these preferences, challenging decades of previous research.

Their Dutch case showed that daughters were more likely to

share their mother’s party preference and sons were more likely

to share their father’s. With the focus on women, this inﬂuence of

a mother on her daughter was also conﬁrmed 15 years later in a

Canadian context (Gidengil et al., 2010). Family settings change

over time and diﬀerent kinds of settings—such as stay-at-home

parents, patchwork or single parenting—grow in numbers, which

could lead to individualization and growing issue heterogeneity

(Du Bois-Reymond et al., 2001; Inglehart and Welzel, 2005).

The realization that “(...) socialization nowadays clearly occurs

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under diﬀerent circumstances” (van Deth et al., 2011, p. 148) has

cast doubt on most previous ﬁndings regarding the inﬂuence

of parents. Many of core assumptions of socialization theories

could not be reproduced with more sophisticated methods (Sears,

1990; Jennings, 2007), and research therefore still suﬀers from

signiﬁcant blind spots. “The questions, methods, and assumptions

have been changed by 40 years of scholarship, political experience

including regime change into and out of democracy, and altered

political sensibilities” (Sapiro, 2004, p. 19). Political socialization

theory struggles to deliver on its promises:

“correlations between parents and their (mostly) biological children,

with no way of separating the eﬀects of the environment the parents

provide from the eﬀects of the genes they provide, and no way of

separating the eﬀects of the home environment from the eﬀects of

the environment outside the home. The evidence, in other words, is

ambiguous.” (Harris, 2000, p. 626).

Thus, it cannot only be parents who exert inﬂuence. While most

researchers still assume that family has some inﬂuence, they still

do not know how much of an inﬂuence that is. Other places of

socialization that receive a lot of attention are the school, peers,

and the media (Blais and Carty, 1990). Research on the inﬂuence

of school has existed for a long time, and from the beginning

its results have been in the area of conﬂict between those who

see an inﬂuence (Himmelweit and Swift, 1969; Palonsky, 1987)

and those who do not (Hyman, 1959; Easton et al., 1969). A

central problem here is the diﬃculty of isolating the school eﬀect

from other eﬀects (Banks and Roker, 1994). For this reason,

researchers especially in more recent studies, try to keep the

framework conditions constant, e.g., by looking at samples that

vary only in one characteristic, such as the type of school. This

should facilitate the isolation of the inﬂuence of the various

factors from each other. Examples for Finland (Koskimaa and

Rapeli, 2015) and Belgium (Quintelier, 2015) show that school

has an inﬂuence, without being the most central one. Instead,

in addition to family inﬂuence, the inﬂuence of peers is in

the foreground. It has even been shown that “peers, through

discussion and diversity, are even more inﬂuential and successful

in creating greater political participation” (Quintelier, 2015, p.

65) than the family. Nevertheless, the media are also assigned a

relevant role here. While earlier studies dealt with the inﬂuence

of diﬀerent forms of media, such as television news or newspapers

(Atkin and Gantz, 1978; Garramore and Atkin, 1986), researchers

have only recently begun to assess the inﬂuence of social media

on the process of political socialization. The argument in relation

to social media would be that they are characterized by less

distinct boundaries between non-political and political activities,

thereby lowering the thresholds of political engagement (Ekström

and Shehata, 2018). However, previous studies can only partially

conﬁrm this (ibid.). This research strand therefore requires

supplementary studies.

In addition to studies on parental and other social as well

as structural transmission, a branch of interdisciplinary research

is steadily growing which focuses on the genetic inheritance of

attitudes and norms (Martin et al., 1986; Bouchard et al., 1990;

Bouchard and McGue, 2003; Alford et al., 2005; Bell et al., 2009;

Hatemi et al., 2011; Kudrnac and Lyons, 2017). These studies look

at the development of attitudes, norms and values amongst twins

or parents and their oﬀspring either in a setting of continuous

exposure to the parent/sibling or in a setting with deliberate

discontinuities in their biographies. Moreover, the results appear

promising: “If father and mother both hold a highly intensive just-

world belief, the probability that their child will also hold a strong

belief in a just world is very high” (Schönpﬂug and Bilz, 2009, p.

229). It is important to stress that researchers also warn that most

genetic association studies greatly overinterpret their ﬁndings

(Benjamin et al., 2012).

Beside these studies, and in the context of a more

interdisciplinary view of the topic, psychologists like to refer to

attitudes as “a person’s general evaluation of an object (where

‘object’ is understood in a broad sense encompassing persons,

events, products, policies, institutions and so on)” (O’Keefe, 2015,

p. 13). However, social scientists struggle with this deﬁnition as it

is far too broad to operate with. Batista Foguet and Saris (1997)

would argue that the outcome of the aforementioned evaluation

would have to be stable over time and that it would have to

be consistent with previous evaluation in order to constitute

an attitude. Researchers seem to agree on the fact that the

backbone of an attitude is stability (Alwin and Krosnick, 1991;

Wilson and Hodges, 1992; Zaller et al., 1992), even though critics

argue that stability is not necessary for attitudes (Kahneman

et al., 1999). But what happens to evaluation during maturation?

Hooghe and Wilkenfeld (2008) argue that attitude development

during maturation is not the same thing as changing an attitude:

“Attitude development requires change in the quality of thinking,

rather than merely change in thinking” (Hooghe and Wilkenfeld,

2008, p. 156). Previous authors had denied the existence of

attitudes in young adults (Marsh, 1971; Searing et al., 1973).

Because of this maturation process, the attitudes of young

adults diﬀer from those of adults in many policy ﬁelds. But

what attitudes are we talking about here? “Civic culture” by

Almond and Verba (1963) is often (Galston, 2001; Sapiro, 2004;

Dalton, 2008; Kam and Palmer, 2008; Quintelier and Hooghe,

2011; Hoskins et al., 2015) cited as encompassing a vital set

of attitudes, including political interest and political trust, and,

depending on the research design, researchers often measure

civic culture by surveying interest and/or trust in politics.

The stereotypical picture would be that young adults are less

interested, more negative and that they don’t trust political

elites as such (Quintelier, 2007). As Rekker et al. (2015) has

shown, multiple longitudinal studies reproduce the same result:

Younger cohorts are less conservative on cultural issues but not

on economic issues. Two speciﬁc ﬁelds of this are ethnocentrism

and egalitarianism. Furlong and Cartmel (2012) conﬁrmed these

ﬁndings as well. Young adults also appear to be less materialistic

(Rudig and Bennie, 1993). Alwin and Krosnick (1991) argue that

the maturation process interfered with the core characteristic of

attitude, namely stability. In their setting, the youngest group,

whose members were aged between 18 and 25, was the least

stable as far as their attitudes were concerned. Quintelier and

Hooghe (2011), on the other hand, argue that attitudes among

adolescents develop early and are likely to remain stable until

adulthood. Eckstein et al. (2012) found common ground between

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both realms and argue that most young adults agree on aspects of

good citizenship such as voting, helping others or taking part in

organizations. But Henn et al. (2005) point toward a diﬀerence

between attitude and action in the UK as young people are less

likely to vote and less likely to even register for it in the ﬁrst place.

Eckstein et al. (2012) also mention a key issue of the entire ﬁeld:

“(...) there is still a lack of studies explicitly investigating young

people’s orientations toward political behaviors over a longer period

of time in order to depict development. Furthermore, longitudinal

studies that did account for changes revealed no coherent pattern of

results” (Eckstein et al., 2012, p. 491).

The scarce research shows that young people’s attitudes appear

to be somewhat diﬀerent from those of adults. In particular, the

relationship between development, maturation and the stability

of one’s attitudes seems to be one of the most researched topics,

yet it oﬀers only a few insights. Eckstein et al. (2012) can only

be supported in their demand for more longitudinal studies in

this ﬁeld.

5. DIFFERENCES IN YOUTH POLITICAL

PARTICIPATION ACROSS EUROPE

Having discussed the possible diﬀerences that exist between

young adults and adults and the role that political socialization

plays, the next step is to look at how young adults and their

participation diﬀer across Europe. This section aims to illustrate

the diversity of participation of young adults, which has already

been covered by existing research. Of course, this cannot be

an exhaustive view of all existing studies. Instead, it oﬀers a

nuanced view into diﬀerent regions of Europe and, together

with the following section on methods, provides the basis for

identifying the research gaps in this area. Generally, each of the

EU-member states’ polities oﬀers distinct institutionalized ways

of participating. In 26 of the 27 member states, citizens need to

be at least 18 years old in order to be eligible to vote; Austria,

with its active voting-age of 16, is the exception. Keeping in mind

these structural diﬀerences, this overview will nevertheless look at

both the institutionalized and non-institutionalized participation

of young adults in diﬀerent regions of Europe.

Research on Northern European countries has had a great

impact on questions of association membership and its eﬀects

on political participation. Torpe (2003) indicates that, among

Danish youth, membership in associations is becoming looser

and that this membership don’t necessarily inﬂuence the

likelihood of political participation. Coe et al. (2016) took a

diﬀerent approach and directly surveyed 10 political activists

aged between 17 and 19 in Northern Sweden. On the basis of

this study, Coe et al. conceived the concept of “Youth Politics

as Multiple Processes” (Coe et al., 2016, p. 6), which indicates

that youth political participation is characterized by very distinct

restrictions such as age limits, adults’ disinterest in youth-

demands, and state-centered deﬁnitions of politics. Nygard et al.

(2016) focused on variables deriving from “resource models”

to explain diﬀerent forms of political participation amongst

Finnish 9th graders and found higher rates for alternative

forms of political participation among this age group, given the

right socio-economic resources. Wass (2007) emphasizes this

by pointing out that the concepts of family socialization alone

lack explanatory power, a point which was already discussed in

section 4.

Youth political Participation in Eastern European countries

has so far mostly been analyzed comparatively and with a focus

on the anticipated eﬀects of previous communist regimes in those

countries. Slomczynski and Shabad (1998) argued for the polish

case that democratic principles can be successfully taught in

school in order to avoid extreme left or right tendencies which

could result from a lack of democratic experience. Roberts (2003)

partly contradicts these ﬁndings, arguing that, amongst other

actions, political participation amongst young adults is deeply

connected to the social environment as well as structural eﬀects.

Research on 10 eastern European countries conducted by Letki

(2004) has shown that, in many cases, political participation in

eastern European, post-communist countries is very similar to

established western democracies. Association membership and

established institutions also increase the chances of political

participation in post-communist countries. In addition to this,

Ådnanes (2004) found that young Bulgarians with a high

degree of formal education consider migrating partly because

they perceive their ways of participation as restricted and are

unsatisﬁed with their political system, thereby conﬁrming the

importance of an established institutional framework. Burean

and Badescu (2014) show that similar triggers of participation

can be seen at the core of the protest movements against the

Romanian government in 2012, where thousands of students

took to the streets to protest against their government.

Apart from these countries, some EU-Member states, namely

Greece, Spain, and Portugal, have been severely hit by the

ﬁnancial crisis and have also been suﬀering from a high degree

of youth unemployment (Tosun et al., 2019), which appears to

go hand in hand with decreasing institutionalized and increasing

non-institutionalized forms of political participation among

young adults. As a result of this crisis and its severe eﬀects

on young adults, the research on southern European countries

has, e.g., and beside other forms of political participation

(Sloam, 2014), provided valuable insights into youth political

participation online. Online participation is genuinely perceived

as less costly and therefore more easily accessible even during

times of crisis, which is when Pacheco and Plutzer (2008) expect

decreasing levels of participation. Espinar-Ruiz and Gonzalez-

Rio (2015) as well as Calenda and Meijer (2009) have shown

through large-N surveys that there is a signiﬁcant relation

between multiple forms of political participation and time spent

on the internet. Theocharis (2011) research on Greece partly

contradicts these ﬁndings. He argues that while the online realm

is more likely to cultivate a post materialist mindset, it is also the

case that this mindset seems to go hand in hand with a genuine

disinterest in political participation. In addition to research on

online participation, the ﬁnancial crisis has granted remarkable

insights into the relation of neoliberal policies and informal

youth political participation (Sotiris, 2010; Sakellaropoulos, 2012;

Zamponi and Gonzalez, 2017). This also applies to extremist

positions (Koronaiou et al., 2015), showing that neoliberal

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policies often serve as the initial spark of protest or extremism,

even though they do not represent the actual underlying cause.

Much like the research on northern European cases, research

in central and Western Europe has signiﬁcantly contributed

to our knowledge of similarities between European nations

in the forms of participation and political attitudes. These

comparative studies (Timmerman, 2009; Cammaerts et al., 2014)

show similarities in the participation of Europe’s adolescents.

Cammaerts et al. (2014) found that insuﬃcient participation

in the United Kingdom, France, Spain, Austria, Finland, and

Hungary is due to the existing structural nature of the political

systems and its discourse as adolescents mainly feel excluded

from it. Within her research on municipalities in the UK and

the Netherlands, Timmerman (2009) found that neither country

oﬀers enough entry points for young adults to contribute or

participate in debates or the democratic process in general.

Hooghe and Stolle (2003) found that adolescents in Germany,

France and the UK are less likely to vote or participate

through institutionalized means than adults, though their

willingness to participate through non-institutionalized means is

proportionally higher. Hooghe et al. (2004) and Quintelier and

Hooghe (2011) also ﬁnd this to be true for the Belgian case.

Previous research thus reveals a wealth of diﬀerent forms

of participation among young adults in Europe. The studies

focused on very diﬀerent areas, from membership in associations

or voting behavior to political activism, e.g., in the form of

protest. Here, young adults are exposed to diﬀerent contexts,

as, e.g., the case of Eastern Europe with many post-communist

countries shows. The results of the studies also show which new

spaces young adults use for participation and that participating

in “older” spaces or institutionalized forms of participation can

be problematic for them.

6. PREVIOUSLY USED METHODS TO

STUDY YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION

In this ﬁnal step, the focus is on how and with which

methods youth political participation has been investigated so

far. In the past, some authors addressed one of the central

questions—namely how young adults perceive and deﬁne politics

and political participation—and developed tools for assessing

youth deﬁnitions of politics. These consisted, e.g., of a three-

year qualitative longitudinal study (Lister et al., 2003) and

a quantitative survey (Vromen, 2003) of young adults and

their perceptions of citizenship or of qualitative focus group

studies that examined young adults’ understanding of political

engagement (Pontes et al., 2018). Researchers also tried to get

closer to the “vocabulary” of young adults with regard to political

participation (O’Toole, 2003; O’Toole et al., 2003a,b).

Furthermore, a number of recent research projects have

analyzed youth political participation. They mostly used a

cross-national comparative design combined with a mixed

methods approach to emphasize diﬀerent focal points. Within

the YOUNEX (Youth unemployment and exclusion in Europe,

Lorenzini and Giugni, 2012) project, e.g., researchers shed

light on the consequences of long-term unemployment for

youth political participation by both conducting in-depth

interviews and original survey data. The EURYKA (Reinventing

democracy in Europe: Youth doing politics in times of increasing

inequalities, Kousis and Giugni, 2019) project, meanwhile,

conducted both panel survey analysis and biographical analysis to

investigate how inequalities are experienced by young adults and

how these conditions can stimulate youth political participation.

A third project worth mentioning here is EUYOUPART (Political

Participation of Young People in Europe, Spannring et al.,

2008), which was speciﬁcally concerned with the development

of comparatively usable indicators that would facilitate the study

of youth political participation. Here, three key points were

identiﬁed that may limit the comparative usability of indicators.

These limitations can stem from “failed or inaccurate translations

of central terms used in a question, diﬀerent opportunity structures

in the countries that facilitate or hamper a form of activity

or diﬀerent political cultures that embed an activity in a

diﬀerent institutional context” (Ogris and Westphal, 2005). The

importance of such an approach was also shown by later

investigations using existing survey datasets. García-Albacete

(2014), e.g., used data from the European Social Survey to show

that indicators need to be tested for their usability both across

countries and age groups.

When looking at the development of research on the political

participation of young adults, the ﬁrst thing that emerges

is a clearly positive trend. Older studies mostly focused on

establishing how adolescents are diﬀerent from their adult

counterparts in a descriptive manner. These studies therefore

described youth participation behavior ex negativo in almost

all designs. This begs the question of whether there is more to

adolescents than just being non-adult. More recent studies have

shown this to be the case and now hardly use this exclusive

approach of comparison between young and old. Nevertheless,

three points arise from this and the previous section that

have so far received insuﬃcient attention. First, recent studies

do not always take into account our existing knowledge on

the ’vocabulary’ of young adults. At this point, it would also

be worth discussing whether the existing knowledge is even

suﬃcient or whether newer and updated studies are needed, since

the possible ﬁelds of participation are constantly developing.

Secondly, there is a lack of large cross-national studies that take

several diﬀerent contexts into account and thus explore how

young adults resemble each other in their participation behavior

or do not. Third, with few exceptions, the use of existing survey

data sets not designed for young adults has so far paid insuﬃcient

attention to the suitability of the items used/developed for the

study of young adult participation behavior.

7. CONCLUSION—WHAT IS YOUTH

POLITICAL PARTICIPATION?

This review article pursued several goals, among which were

to give an overview of the landscape of deﬁnitions of the term

political participation and to work out the speciﬁc features of

youth political participation. Furthermore, it aimed to shed light

on the state of youth political participation in the European

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Weiss What Is Youth Political Participation?

context and the methods previously used to investigate this, in

order to be able to identify gaps in the literature and to suggest

avenues for further research.

In the ﬁrst step, it became clear that the decades-long

debate on the deﬁnition of political participation has produced

many small-scale deﬁnitions. The (few) broader deﬁnitions seem

to be more helpful, even when considering that there is no

independent deﬁnition of youth political participation. Although

these recent deﬁnitions of political participation are adequate

for capturing youth political participation, the current literature

is inconsistent in the inclusion of new modes of participation

that are increasingly common among younger generations.

Resulting from this one major shortcoming is the fact that

non-participation has not yet been problematized adequately.

Although this issue was addressed a long time ago (O’Toole,

2003), it is still the case that research so far has paid little careful

attention to this (Theocharis and van Deth, 2018b). This results in

the danger of more frequent support of the disengagement thesis,

which does not necessarily correspond to the actual participation

situation of young adults.

In the second step, this paper sought to answer the question

of how youth political participation diﬀers from adult political

participation. In general, it was shown that existing diﬀerences

are interpreted diﬀerently by researchers (engagement vs.

disengagement thesis). In addition, it also became apparent that

the classic research design of comparing young and old, which

was mainly used in older studies, is used less frequently in more

recent studies. This is due to the existence of diﬀerences between

what young adults deﬁne as “political” and what researchers

deﬁne and interrogate as such. These deﬁnitions can diﬀer not

only between young adults and researchers, but also between

young adults and adults. Inconsequently, problems can emerge

from young adults’ varying conceptions of politics and the

“political” as well as from their diﬀering awareness to adults

of what constitutes a political act. Although some researchers

tried to solve this problem by conducting research to get

closer to the “vocabulary” used by young adults (O’Toole, 2003;

O’Toole et al., 2003a,b), youth-speciﬁc explanations of what

being politically engaged really means remain insuﬃcient (Pontes

et al., 2018). This results in a clear call for future research: It

is necessary to develop further youth-speciﬁc explanations and

deﬁnitions of what political participation means, which new

studies should then employ accordingly. This aspect of youth-

adequate deﬁnitions and measurements must also be considered

when using existing datasets.

Another, third major shortcoming is the lack of larger

cross-national studies that take into account a youth-adequate

deﬁnition of political participation and conduct research on

the political participation behavior of youths. This certainly

results from the absence of a uniﬁed theoretical foundation

for studying “European” youth political participation. This is

unfortunate considering the enormous amount of data available,

especially from the EU. In addition, implications for European

policy research can only be made on the basis of cross-country

consistent studies.

In conclusion, it can be said that the deﬁnition of youth

political participation is currently nothing more than general

political participation. However, the question remains regarding

the use of forms of political participation by young adults.

Hopefully, this article will trigger other researchers to spend more

time on this topic and both to resolve the mismatch between

the deﬁnition of political participation and the perception

of young adults regarding what is “political” and to review

existing and upcoming datasets so that they can scrutinize

this concept.

AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS

JW conceived and designed the article, wrote the manuscript,

revised the manuscript, reread it, and ﬁnally approved the

submitted version.

FUNDING

This article beneﬁted from ﬁnancial support by the project

Change through Crisis? Solidarity and Desolidarization

in Germany and Europe (Solikris; Federal Ministry

of Education and Research of Germany), the Baden-

Württemberg Ministry of Science, Research and Arts and

Heidelberg University.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to thank the reviewers for their helpful

suggestions and comments. The author gratefully acknowledges

the comments from Jale Tosun and all other members of the

project team in Heidelberg. Marcel Katzlinger deserves credit

for his research assistance and comments on previous versions

of the paper. Finally, the author thanks Laurence Crumbie for

language editing.

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potential conﬂict of interest.

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A fiatalok politikai részvételének különböző makro- és mezoszintű elméletei elsősorban azzal foglalkoznak, hogy ki és miért vesz részt politikai akciókban. Keveset tudunk azonban arról, hogy a fiatalok egyébként hogyan értelmezik ezeket a részvételi formákat, és hogy a tényleges részvételük ezen értelmezések mentén strukturálódik-e. Tanulmányunk célja, hogy bemutassuk, milyen diskurzusai azonosíthatók a politikai részvételnek Magyarországon, és melyek ezek közül a fiatalokra jellemzők. A kérdésnek különös jelentőséget ad, hogy a Covid-19 következtében kialakuló pandémia, amely majd két évre az online térre korlátozta a fiatalok mindennapi interakcióit és politikai aktivizmusát. Aszteroidahatás-hipotézisünk szerint a politikai részvétel új formái jelenhettek meg, amelyek átértelmezhették az online és offline részvétel közötti korábbi dinamikát. A világjárvány harmadik hulláma után és a negyedik hulláma során hat fókuszcsoportos beszélgetést és 8 félig strukturált online interjút folytattunk, amelyeket diskurzuselemzéssel elemeztünk. Eredményeink szerint az aszteroidahatás következtében a fiatalok legalább részben újraértelmezték a politikai részvételt, és beemelték az arról való kommunikációt is a politikai részvétel jelentés mezejébe.

El (nem) kötelezettek? A fiatalság politikai részvétele a nemzetközi politikatudományi irodalom szemszögéből

Article

Jan 2023

Viktor Papházi

Az ifjúság politikai viselkedésének, aktivitásának kérdésköre rendkívül kurrens témája a nemzetközi politikatudományi szakirodalomnak, ugyanakkor a kérdéskör megítélése rendkívül ellentmondásos is, főként az ezredforduló időszakát követően született munkákban. Jelen tanulmány arra tesz kísérletet, hogy összefoglalóan áttekintse a nemzetközi, elsősorban angolszász (nyugat-európai és észak-amerikai) vonatkozó szakirodalmat, literature review-jelleggel. A munkákat áttekintve, valamint Rys Farthing felosztása nyomán alapvetően három főbb csoportba sorolhatóak a legjelentősebb megközelítések: a politikailag passzív és el nem kötelezett ifjúságot vizionáló, az ezzel szemben a fiatalságot aktív és elkötelezett csoportként leíró, illetve az alternatív, harmadikutas megközelítések kategóriájába. A fokozott tudományos érdeklődés ellenére ugyanakkor a vita továbbra sem tekinthető lezártnak.

“Through the Looking Glass”: The Transformative Power of Reading for Youth Activists

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2024

Cases of historical and contemporary social movements suggest that among activists, reading texts together is a valuable learning experience. However, less research exists on the specific texts youth activists seek out in their work and the role these texts play in shaping their understanding of themselves as activists. Drawing on Rudine Sims Bishop’s classic formulation of books as mirrors, windows, and sliding glass doors, this study explores the under-appreciated role texts may play in drawing young people to activism and shaping their identities as activists. Coupled with interview data from six youth activists engaged in the climate justice movement, survey data from 237 self-identifying youth activists suggest that the texts youth activists name as influential serve a “through the looking glass” function: they often reflect problematic aspects of the social world and one’s place within it, while also revealing new and aspirational roles readers might take on to address social problems. The texts the youth identified as influential were diverse; there were few commonalities among titles, underscoring the importance of ongoing access to a broad range of reading materials. Ultimately, findings suggest that texts work to bind together the various internal and external, micro, meso, and macro influences that collectively shape youth activists’ narratives of becoming.

Shaping Political Landscapes: The Role of Civil Society and Educational Institutions in Political Socialization to Achieve SDGs

Article

Full-text available

May 2024

Syed Rizwan Haider Bukhari

Introduction: Political behavior profoundly influences societal dynamics, reflecting individuals' attitudes, sentiments, and judgments towards public issues. Collaboration among government, civil society institutions, and Educational Institutes is pivotal to shaping constructive political attitudes, particularly among youth. Problem Statement: Despite the significance of political behavior, there's a lack of concerted efforts to foster civic education and engagement among students, potentially undermining democratic principles and societal cohesion. Methodology: This study employed a qualitative literature review methodology to explore the role of educational institutions and civil society in shaping political landscapes. A systematic search and analysis of scholarly articles, books, and reports were conducted to identify key insights. Findings: Collaboration between Educational Institutes, governments, and civil society positively impacts students' political awareness and behavior. Integrating civic education into Educational Institute curricula and organizing seminars enhance students' understanding of democratic principles and foster active participation in political discourse. Implication and Future Direction: The findings underscore the importance of inclusive education and collaborative efforts in promoting democratic values among youth. Future research should focus on longitudinal studies to assess the long-term impact of civic education initiatives on students' political engagement and societal development.

From Online Click to Social Shift: Digital Activism of Youth in Kyrgyzstan

Article

Jan 2024

Elida Kydyrova

Typologie junger Menschen im Kontext des Kriegs in der Ukraine: Soziale Merkmale und Einstellungen gegenüber politischen MaßnahmenTypology of Young People in the Context of the Ukraine War: Social Characteristics and Attitudes to Political Measures

Article

Full-text available

Jun 2024

Zusammenfassung Eine starke demokratische Kultur ist entscheidend für den Erhalt einer funktionierenden Demokratie. Die Perspektiven junger Menschen bezüglich politischer Maßnahmen spielen dabei eine bedeutende Rolle, da sie Tendenzen der Bevölkerung erkennen lassen und gerade in Krisenzeiten herausgefordert werden. Die Bewertung politischer Maßnahmen hängt eng mit soziodemografischen Faktoren zusammen. Um die Herausbildung potenziell demokratiegefährdender Meinungen unter Jugendlichen präventiv adressieren zu können, ist es notwendig, ein differenziertes Bild über politische Einstellungen zu erhalten. Basierend auf der sozialen Desintegrationstheorie haben wir vor diesem Hintergrund in einer aktuellen Studie die Einstellungen junger Menschen zu politischen Maßnahmen auf den Krieg in der Ukraine untersucht. Im Mittelpunkt stand die Beantwortung der Fragen: Welche Typen junger Menschen lassen sich hinsichtlich ihrer Bewertung politischer Maßnahmen auf den Krieg in der Ukraine bilden? Welchen Zusammenhang gibt es dabei mit sozialen Disparitäten? Analysen der Daten aus unserer repräsentativen Befragung mit 3240 Teilnehmenden (16–29 Jahre) weisen auf vier Typen hin: die Diplomatischen , die Allrounder , die Militanten und die Nationalen . Unsere Studie zeigt auch, dass Bildung, Geschlecht und Gefühle gesellschaftlicher Zugehörigkeit bei der Typenzuordnung eine wichtige Rolle spielen. Die Ergebnisse verdeutlichen die Herausforderungen politischer Bildung in Krisenzeiten und können dazu beitragen, gezielt politische Bildungsprogramme zu entwickeln, um Krisenzeiten besser zu bewältigen.

‘Do young legislators face age-based discrimination in parliament? Views from young MPs across the globe'

Article

May 2024

Political Socialization and Its Impact on Psychological Resilience and PTSD among Individuals Engaged with Israeli Occupation Forces on Mount Sabih

Article

May 2024

Treading carefully: the environment and political participation in science education

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2024
Cult Stud Sci Educ

Politics and science are inextricably connected, particularly in relation to the climate emergency and other environmental crises, yet science education is an often overlooked site for engaging with the political dimensions of environmental issues. This study examines how science teachers in England experience politics—specifically political participation—in relation to the environment in school science, against a background of increased obstruction in civic space. The study draws on an analysis of theoretically informed in-depth interviews with eleven science teachers about their experiences of political participation in relation to environmental issues. We find that politics enters the science classroom primarily through informal conversations initiated by students rather than planned by teachers. When planned for, the emphasis is on individual, latent–political (civic) engagement rather than manifest political participation. We argue that this is a symptom of the post-political condition and call for a more enabling environment for discussing the strengths and limitations of different forms of political participation in school science.

Transformative agency of students as a resource to form civic consciousness in education system

Article

Full-text available

Apr 2024

ntroduction. The relevance of the study is associated with the need for the formation of civic consciousness among the young generation. It is important to create mechanisms for involving young people in active creative activity through volunteering and constructive political activity. In the current conditions, it is necessary to restructure the consciousness and correct the behaviour of young people by creating certain conditions for prosocial activity, mutual assistance and support for those who need it especially. Aim. The aim of the article is to assess the real practices and potential of civic participation of students in the Sverdlovsk region, identifying the sociocultural features of civic consciousness of high school students and students through the prism of their transformative agency and identifying the conditions of the educational environment for the expansion of youth prosocial activity in the interests of territorial development. Methodology and research methods. The methodological basis of the article is a set of theoretical ideas about the transforming agency of youth and the formation of socially responsible behaviour of young Russians as citizens of their country, region, and city of residence. The theory of civic consciousness has received a certain development in the article. The present article is based on the materials of the authors’ research project implemented in 2022 in the Sverdlovsk region. The authors analysed the data of a mass survey of young people in the Sverdlovsk region from 14 to 24 years old from 79 settlements of the region, carried out by the questionnaire method. 996 people were interviewed, the sample is representative, the error is no more than 3,5%. There are four quotas in its base: gender, age, main type of education (school, secondary school, university); type of city by population. The data of the quantitative survey are supplemented by the results of the analysis of social youth projects that received government support at the regional level in the subsidy competition of the Ministry of Education and Youth Policy of the Sverdlovsk Region in 2022–2023. Results and scientific novelty. The study demonstrated that the educational environment is designed and creates conditions for the acquisition of civic experience by young students today. On the one hand, projects, actions, information events should be called for the formation of civic consciousness in the development of transformative agency of youth. On the other hand, they should give young people the opportunity to realise and develop their transformative agency as citizens of their country, residents of their city through reflection, initiative, plans aimed at solving urgent social problems, and their implementation. Systematic work to create conditions for this in educational institutions should help complement the organisation of passive civic participation with mechanisms that help young Russians realise their active civic position, stimulate them to take real actions in the socio-political sphere. The study proves that civic experience and civic subjectivity, which manifests itself in various practices of civic participation, accumulates and is formed among young people depending on age. This is less expressed in high school students, and more expressed in university students. University students are more subjective; they do not just formally use resources for civic engagement, but try to accumulate civic knowledge with their help, consciously showing interest and intention in the sphere of such activity. The conditions of the environment of civic participation in the education system largely determine the differences in the subjective value characteristics of high school students and university students, revealing the transformative agency in the development of their civic consciousness. Practical significance. Considering the geopolitical challenges in Russian education today, the issue of implementing educational work with young people is acute. Given the special characteristics of the civic activity of Russian youth for the organisation of social work with high school students and university students, it is important to understand the potential of civic activity of the young generation, especially those characteristics possessed by the socially active part of schoolchildren and students for correcting the course of regional youth policy and improving the mechanisms of government support for youth projects in the education system.

On the causes and the significance of the December 2008 social explosion in Greece

Article

Full-text available

May 2022

Spyros Sakellaropoulos

Claiming and Framing Youth in the Public Domain During Times of Increasing Inequalities

Article

Full-text available

Nov 2019

Aiming to contribute to research on youth representation in the mainstream media, this special issue provides eight articles offering fresh empirical comparative analyses of the ways in which young people as well as issues concerning them are dealt with in the public domain. Applying political claims analysis on original data from the EURYKA project (European Commission, Horizon 2020), the special issue is focused on how youth-related claims are raised in the media by youth and nonyouth actors during a period of increasing inequalities and social and political exclusion, how young people’s ways of doing politics are dealt with in the media, and to what extent organized youth and contestation are visible in the public domain.

Emerging Adulthood: The Winding Road from the Late Teens Through the Twenties (2nd edition)

Book

Full-text available

Jan 2019

Jeffrey Jensen Arnett

Since 1960, the lives of young people in their late teens and twenties have changed so dramatically that a new stage of life has developed. In his provocative work, Jeffrey Jensen Arnett has identified the period of emerging adulthood as distinct from both the adolescence that precedes it and the young adulthood that comes in its wake. Arnett's new theory has created an entire thriving field of research due to his book that launched the field, Emerging Adulthood. On the 10th Anniversary of the publication of his groundbreaking work, the second edition of Emerging Adulthood fully updates and expands Arnett's findings and includes brand new chapters on media use, social class issues, and the distinctive problems of this life stage. Merging stories from the lives of emerging adults themselves with decades of research, Arnett covers a wide range of other topics as well, including love and sex, relationships with parents, experiences at college and work, and views of what it means to be an adult. As the nature of growing up and the meaning of adulthood further evolve, Emerging Adulthood will continue to be essential reading for understanding ages 18-29.

Prostrating Walk in the Campaign against Sino-Hong Kong Express Railway: Collective Identity of Native Social Movement

Article

Full-text available

Sep 2018

Steve Kwok Leung Chan

Political Participation and Democracy in Britain

Book

Jan 1992

Why do some people involve themselves in politics and others not? Which issues are they concerned with? What do they get out of it? Answering such questions is fundamental to understanding political life and the workings of liberal democracies. This book presents the results of one of the most extensive surveys ever undertaken on the levels and patterns of political involvement in Britain. It is based on the findings of a sample survey of nearly 1,600 people across England, Scotland and Wales as well as a further 1,600 men and women and nearly 300 leaders in six specially selected and contrasting communities. These people were asked about the extent to which they had taken political action, particularly at a local level, and the authors found higher levels of participation than previous research has revealed. They analyse these findings in terms of age, gender, social class and education and look at the reactions of local leaders to the efforts people make to influence them.

Teenage Citizens: The Political Theories of the Young

Book

Feb 2013

Constance Flanagan

Young People’s Political Participation in Western Europe, Continuity or Generational Change?

Article

Jan 2014

Gema García-Albacete

The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion

Book

Aug 1992

John R. Zaller

Youth employment in Europe: Coordination as a crucial dimension

Article

Jul 2019

Coordination has attracted considerable attention in the various sub-disciplines of political science. For example, public choice research on collective action problems acknowledges coordination as a situation in which ‘cheating’ among actors is not rewarded. Assuming that we have a game between two players A and B, both players are rewarded if they jointly choose either strategy ‘a’ or strategy ‘b’. If they fail to coordinate their strategies, and one player goes for ‘a’ and the other one for ‘b’, both receive a payoff of zero. This need to align decisions with one another represents the basic logic of the ‘coordination game’ (see Holzinger, 2001). In comparative political economy, coordination also plays an important role (Hall & Gingerich, 2009; Hall & Soskice, 2001). There the idea is that employers coordinate among themselves to produce collective goods, and in so doing, social institutions such as labour unions support the employers (Regini, 2003). The coordination or the lack of it in the economic domain then has implications for adjacent policy domains such as (higher) education (see Busemeyer & Trampusch, 2012). Policy studies have elaborated on coordination as a means to produce more effective and/or efficient solutions to policy problems since these are typically not limited to the actions taken in one policy domain, but may require actions in two or more policy domains (see Tosun & Lang, 2017). Public administration has concentrated on institutions and procedures that are conducive to coordination, such as centralised agencies and leadership (e.g., May et al., 2011). Research in public administration and public policy is broader than the previous perspectives in the sense that the analytical interest includes the proposing, adoption and implementation of policies. Coordination has been a research theme in studies concentrating on specific types of policies such as climate change, development cooperation and environmental protection (see Tosun & Lang, 2017). In marked contrast, and somewhat surprisingly, studies of social welfare have paid little attention to coordination (but see, e.g., Heidenreich & Rice, 2016). One of them is the empirical investigation by Zimmermann, Aurich, Graziano, and Fuertes (2014), in which the authors examine to what extent the local-level public employment services in Germany coordinate employment policies with measures in other policy domains. This perspective is insightful since, in many if not most cases, welfare policy and service delivery require a coordination of the measures in the different policy domains such as education, economy, employment, family affairs, housing and migration. To reduce this knowledge gap, the theme of this special issue is coordination. The key argument we advance is that there exist various forms of coordination and that each of these forms has the potential to advance our understanding of how welfare-related policies come about, how they are delivered and what their effects are. Why is it analytically rewarding to study coordination? The myopic nature of policy-making makes it difficult to pursue and attain coordination. As Jochim and May (2010, p. 304) put it, ‘each of the relevant [policy] subsystems provides a separate lens through which to view problems’, which is complemented by separate ‘histories’ and the involvement of different interests. Following this perspective, even if desirable, coordination is not easy to attain and when it is attained it is worth analysing how this is so. In the next section, we introduce in detail our key concepts and provide a rationale for the analytical focus of this special issue. Subsequently, we explain how the contributions relate to each other and which insights we can gain from them regarding the overarching theme. In the closing discussion section, we offer some concluding remarks and develop a specific research agenda for research on coordination in social welfare.

Political Participation in a Changing World: Conceptual and Empirical Challenges in the Study of Citizen Engagement

Book

Sep 2017

In the last decades, political participation expanded continuously. This expansion includes activities as diverse as voting, tweeting, signing petitions, changing your social media profile, demonstrating, boycotting products, joining flash mobs, attending meetings, throwing seedbombs, and donating money. But if political participation is so diverse, how do we recognize participation when we see it? Despite the growing interest in new forms of citizen engagement in politics, there is virtually no systematic research investigating what these new and emerging forms of engagement look like, how prevalent they are in various societies, and how they fit within the broader structure of well-known participatory acts conceptually and empirically. The rapid spread of internet-based activities especially underlines the urgency to deal with such challenges. In this book, Yannis Theocharis and Jan W. van Deth put forward a systematic and unified approach to explore political participation and offer new conceptual and empirical tools with which to study it. Political Participation in a Changing World will assist both scholars and students of political behaviour to systematically study new forms of political participation without losing track of more conventional political activities.

What Is Youth Political Participation? Literature Review on Youth Political Participation and Political Attitudes

Abstract

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