Revisiting Youth Political Participation

This book explores how young people across different European contexts participate in decision-making and foster changes on issues that concern them and their communities, giving new insights into discourses on young people’s as active citizens across Europe.

The relations between macro and micro democratic political socialization agents and youth civic participation were examined to foster understanding of the changing conceptualization of youth political socialization in modern society. Extant research on youth political socialization has failed to adequately examine the effects of broader political contexts in tandem with the effects of the broader democratic schooling processes, and thus presented a limited understanding of the relationship between the broader political context and youth political socialization. Youth civic participation was examined across 21 participant-countries of the cross-sectional survey, International Civics and Citizenship Study (ICCS) 2016 using Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM). The purpose of this dissertation was to examine the traditional political socialization framework that attracts more attention to the significance of the broader political context regarding its relationship to youth civic engagement. This study extends previous research by simultaneously focusing on the political socialization agents of the broader political context as well as the broader democratic schooling processes from a macro-lens while controlling for other relevant distal and proximal institutions of socialization such as, at the individual-level, adolescents' political interest, gender, age, immigration status, and number of books at home; parents' level of political interest, and education; at the school-level, urbanicity, socioeconomic status and size of the school, and lastly, at the nation-level, the GDP Per Capita (US dollar) and their relationship to youth civic engagement, measured by the participation behavior of youth in and out of schools (as opposed to or instead of civic attitudes, knowledge or skills). The results of the HLM analysis indicate that the broader political contexts, as measured by the democracy level of each country, are not significantly related to youth civic participation in and out of school when democratic schooling processes and the relevant nation-level control variable are considered in the full models. This suggests that the broader political contexts may not be as effective in the political socialization of the young person. Another key finding is regarding the significant relationships between democratic schooling processes and youth civic participation in and out of school. The results show that throughout all the models, almost all the school-level variables representing democratic schooling processes are significantly related to youth civic participation in and out of school, even after adding the main nation-level variable of interest, the democracy level, and the nation-level control variable, GDP per capita. The non-significant relation between the broader political environment and youth civic participation in and out of school and the significant relation between the broader democratic schooling processes and youth civic participation in and out of school do not reflect the traditional view of youth political socialization. In fact, these findings suggest that the traditional political socialization framework may not function in a schooled society.

Learning about politics and life as a citizen is part of the transition to adulthood. During this stage young people in most Western democracies are introduced to political processes and issues, as well as a range of political activities including voting and participation in social movements. But young people make this transition differently. The articles in this Book explore a range of ways that young people participate politically and also discuss those who are not ‘active citizens’.

Although many scholars are convinced of the apparent civic disengagement of youth, others suggest that civic participation of young people is stable and increasingly expressed through non-institutionalized forms of practicing politics. This book makes a key contribution to this discussion by asking whether the "decline or shift" paradigm is sufficient in understanding political participation of the youth. It argues that we need to move beyond this framework and develop a renewed reflection on the meaning of "civic and political engagement". It asks crucial questions such as: How can the young be educated into assuming civic and political responsibility? Why and how do young people engage in social and political action? How do the principal mediating institutions (education, media and the family) contribute to new or different forms of youth civic engagement? This text contains contributions from acknowledged specialists such as Constance Flanagan, Mark Elchardus, Marc Hooghe and Bert Klandermans and will be of key interest to students and scholars of youth and young citizens, civic & political involvement, European politics, youth studies, sociology, political participation and electoral behaviour.

Individuals who are civically active have three things in common: they have the capacity to do so, they want to, and they have been asked to participate. New Advances in the Study of Civic Voluntarism is dedicated to examining the continued influence of these factors—resources, engagement, and recruitment—on civic participation in the twenty-first century. The contributors to this volume examine recent social, political, technological, and intellectual changes to provide the newest research in the field. Topics range from race and religion to youth in the digital age, to illustrate the continued importance of understanding the role of the everyday citizen in a democratic society. Contributors include:Molly Andolina, Allison P. Anoll, Leticia Bode, Henry E. Brady, Traci Burch, Barry C. Burden, Andrea Louise Campbell, David E. Campbell, Sara Chatfield, Stephanie Edgerly, Zoltán Fazekas, Lisa García Bedoll, Peter K. Hatemi, John Henderson, Krista Jenkins, Yanna Krupnikov, Adam Seth Levine, Melissa R. Michelson, S. Karthick Ramakrishnan, Dinorah Sánchez Loza, Kay Lehman Schlozman, Dhavan Shah, Sono Shah, Kjerstin Thorson, Sidney Verba, Logan Vidal, Emily Vraga, Chris Wells, JungHwan Yang, and the editor.

Why does it appear that many young people are disengaging from democracy and political participation? For many governments, politicians, academics, social commentators and researchers this is a serious and challenging problem. Consequently widespread interest exists on how to engage young people in politics and democracy.

Critically examining narratives of participation in governance and development, this volume adds Caribbean voices and experiences to the global discourse on youth participation. The essays provide empirical case studies of institutions, practices and processes of youth engagement in the politics of Caribbean development, orienting the reader to the political culture of the Caribbean and the position of youth within small societies. Covering experiences at intergovernmental, national and local levels, as well as formal and informal modes of participation, it examines how young people have organised themselves or have been organised to engage with the state and with community agents in politics, public policy and activism. It illustrates the heterogeneity of youth political participation, employing multi- disciplinary, multi- level and mixed- method analyses from the fields of demography, political science, social policy, development studies and youth development. Critical themes addressed include regional governance, democratic representation, online engagement, local governance and community development. In exploring these themes, the book discusses the legitimacy and inclusiveness of governance in relation to age, gender, race, geography and socio-economic status. The findings will be useful to students, researchers and policymakers alike who are keen to improve governance and contribute to inclusive sustainable development in the Caribbean.

Are young people today politically 'apathetic'? Or are they democratically 'mature' citizens? This book examines several types of involvement to reveal changes in young people's political participation in Europe in recent decades. It uses various concepts of 'age' to compare participation across countries and over time.

What exactly is civic and political participation? What factors influence young people’s participation? How can we encourage youth to actively participate in their own democracies? Youth Civic and Political Engagement takes a multidisciplinary approach to answering these key questions, incorporating research in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science and education to explore the issues affecting youth civic and political engagement. Drawing on evidence that has been obtained in many different national contexts, and through multinational studies, this book provides a theoretical synthesis of this large and diverse body of research, using an integrative multi-level ecological model of youth engagement to do so. It identifies unresolved issues in the field and offers numerous suggestions for future research. Youth Civic and Political Engagement is an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, youth workers, civil society activists, policymakers and politicians who wish to acquire an up-to-date understanding of the factors and processes that influence young people’s civic and political engagement, and how to promote youth engagement. Chapters 1, 2, 3, and 4 of this book are freely available as downloadable Open Access PDFs at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.