politics and youth essay

Youth in Politics: Challenges, Importance, Role (Essay and Debate)

Political participation: overview and faced challenges

“Where few take part in decisions there is little democracy; the more participation there is in decisions, the more democracy there is” (Verba & Nie, 1972). The present statement proves that the political presence of different individuals has a huge impact on democracy and policy. Hence, the present article will attempt to tackle the political participation of youth in the field of politics.

• Table of contents
• Introduction

What is youth political participation?

Must the youth participate in politics.

• Obstacles to youth participation

Meaningful political participation

So, what is the role of youth in politics after all.

Political participation refers to “those voluntary activities by which members of a society share in the selection of rulers and, directly or indirectly, in the formation of public policy” (McClosky, 1968). In other words, it encompasses citizens’ activities that affect politics in general. These participatory activities include voting, demonstrating, contacting public officials, boycotting, attending party rallies, guerrilla gardening, posting blogs, volunteering, joining flash mobs, signing petitions, buying fair-trade products, and even suicide protests (Jan W. van, 2021). According to Weiss (2020), even though “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.” In the same vein, Dan Maxon believes that in the youth field, political participation is used loosely to indicate activities, phenomena, and practices. He also points out that some forms of participation have a limited impact on policy-making such as youth activism and youth social action; the alternative use of public spaces; and political memes and online political debates. The latter forms of participation can take place away from political institutions, which makes political participation a challenging term to define.  Apparently, almost every activity by some citizens somehow can be understood sometimes as a form of political participation (van Deth, 2001).

Youth constitute a large portion of the population in every community. Consequently, it is imperative to give them a voice and include them in political decision-making. Not only is inclusiveness “a fundamental political and democratic right” but it is also “crucial to building stable and peaceful societies and developing policies that respond to the specific needs of younger generations.”(Goudie et al, 2018).

According to the OECD’s guide, many benefits can come from “putting youth at the heart of the government’s strategies and initiatives”:

• Taking advantage of the demographic transition : the youth represent a large portion of the population, which means that their participation can have a great impact on the balance of power. As a result, empowering the youth to take action socially, economically, and politically is of great importance.
• Encouraging innovation and economic development : youth is a great source of innovative and original ideas. Hence, engaging them and encouraging their active participation can boost the development of societies.
• Building active citizenship : only through taking on the duty to make important decisions will the youth understand how crucial their role is. When policymakers address their needs and demands, civic behaviour is strengthened and trust and transparency are promoted between the government and the citizens.
• Encouraging an online debate: living in a digital age, and understanding how technology works are useful to improve youth interaction and engagement.

Bárta (2021) points out that there are four main aims of youth political participation:

• Right-based aims: youth actually have access to mechanisms that enable them to participate effectively.
• Empowerment aims : youth speak their minds and express themselves freely regarding decision-making and political processes.
• Efficiency aims : allow the youth to develop informed processes and regulations.
• Developmental aims : enable the youth to acquire the necessary skills and competencies to become efficient actors.

It is safe to conclude that supporting the acquisition of commitment and participation from an early age through the reinforcement of civic education and citizenship as well as community involvement is very important.

Obstacles to youth in politics

According to The ACE Electoral Knowledge Network website, youth political engagement occurs at several levels and in various contexts, namely on structural, individual, and organizational levels:

On the structural level, the following elements are included: age requirements to vote or run for office, age restriction in campaigning in some countries, lack of political finance, Social and cultural traditions, and women’s discrimination based on their age and gender.

On the individual level, there exists Distrust in political institutions, a sack of confidence and trust in EMBs, lack of access to/knowledge about political processes, and social and economic exclusion/marginalization.

On the organizational level, there is limited data on youth political participation and a lack of an exclusive EMB youth policy and sustainable funding.

Also referred to as ‘effective practice or participation’, meaningful political participation is a concept with many definitions across the literature. However, the following aspects are common in most definitions according to Bárta et al (2021):

Information and communication : in order to achieve favourable results, young people should have access to the latest information at all times. This fosters their knowledge and hones their awareness about different matters. The implementation of youth-focused conferences, workshops and other capacity-building formats can also facilitate a great deal achieve meaningful political participation.

Authority and voice: giving young people the authority to express their ideas and thoughts publicly is not enough. Other stakeholders in political involvement procedures must also hear and respect their voices.

Power sharing : young people should also have the opportunity where they can actively participate in decision-making processes alongside stakeholders. This obviously should be executed in a transparent environment to attain efficiency.

Transparency and accountability: these elements are imperative to achieve meaningful participation. Young people should be fully briefed on the procedures and mechanisms that are taking place and affecting them. They should be aware of the roles they play, as well as the other players that are engaged and in what capacity.

Material and non-material support : no matter what their background, status, gender, or identity, young people should be able to participate freely and safely. They should also feel welcomed and appreciated during their political activities. Stakeholders should also recognise their efforts and engage them.

According to the Palestinian News and Info Agency ( Wafa ), conforming to democratic standards, young people are to fulfil their role in politics as follows:

• Strengthening the collective spirit between the youth to value the teamwork experience.
• Selecting experienced youth with qualified competencies, such as modern management methods.
• Enhancing a sense of belonging in young people to render them conscious of regulations and laws.
• Encouraging initiatives among young people by unleashing their energies to get creative and innovative results. Awarding them can be a great incentive too.
• Pushing young people to open up to other cultures through meetings with youth organizations in different countries, will promote relations of solidarity and cooperation between nations as an alternative to war and aggression tendencies.
• Enhancing the role of youth in public service through volunteering in different sectors to have a better understanding of their communities. 
• Discovering and adopting the different talents and potentials of young people by giving them opportunities to give, innovate and develop in various practical, scientific, artistic and other fields. Investing in their capacities would have many benefits in the future
• Promoting the values of tolerance, goodwill, and acceptance of the “other” from a position of difference and acknowledging their existence.
• Supporting the plurality of ideas and convictions in society as part of the values and principles of democracy creates a safety valve for the promotion of the general community and the official political environment.

To conclude, creating a legitimate, accountable, democratic system requires parity of the political presence of its members. The more all parties in society are involved in the political aspects, the more the country will strive. Young people, who make up an important party usually in countries, play a huge role in the future of politics. Not only do they come up with innovative solutions, but also one can notice a number of positive outcomes such as enhanced social skills, better conduct, higher academic performance, higher self-esteem, and higher self-efficacy. As a result, it is time for decision-makers to act in order to involve the youth in policy-making, enabling them to participate meaningfully.

Bárta, O. et al (2021). Meaningful Youth Political Participation In Europe: Concepts, Patterns And Policy Implications. Council of Europe and European Commission.

Faire Participer Les Jeunes Au Gouvernement Ouvert. Guide de communication. OCDE.

• Jan W. van Deth. (2021). What is political participation?
• Weiss, J. (2020). What Is Youth Political Participation? Literature Review on Youth Political Participation and Political Attitudes
• Young people’s role in the process of societal change. Link: https://info.wafa.ps/ar_page.aspx?id=3202
• Youth, Political Participation and Decision-Making. The United Nations.

Kawthar Marchli

Kawthar Marchli is a freelance translator translating from and into Arabic, English, and French. She got her Master thesis from King Fahd School of Translation in 2020. Since her graduation, she had the opportunity to translate a number of lengthy works (reports, guides, drafts, documents research, advertisements, surveys, manuals...) in the three languages, related to the political field administration, banking, etc. In her free time, she loves to read books, listen to podcasts, watch movies or take pictures.

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Youth Are Interested in Political Action, but Lack Support and Opportunities

Lead author:  Ruby Belle Booth Contributors:  Alberto Medina, Kelly Siegel-Stechler, Abby Kiesa

Following a 2022 election cycle in which youth (ages 18-29) played a critical role, our exclusive survey reveals that more than half of young people still believe the country is on the wrong track, and many express major concerns about American values and institutions. At the same time, a majority of young people see politics as important to their personal identity, and more than three in four youth say they believe they can get involved and improve things in their communities. 

Some youth are putting that belief into action through various forms of civic and political engagement, and many more say they might do so if given the opportunity. But too many young people—often those from historically marginalized groups—continue to say they don’t feel well-informed or qualified enough to participate in political life. That points to ongoing challenges in ensuring the equitable civic preparation and participation of all young people.

Major findings from our youth survey include:

• 55% of young people (ages 18-29) say the country is going in the wrong direction and only 16% believe it’s on the right track.
• 76% of respondents believe young people have the power to change the country, and 77% believe there are ways for them to get involved.
• A third of youth (32%) have signed a petition or joined a boycott, and 1 in 7 youth have participated in a march or demonstration, with even more youth (28%) saying they plan to protest or would do so or would if presented with the opportunity.
• Half of youth say they’re “as well-informed as most people” and only 40% say they feel well-qualified to participate in politics.

Concerned and Distrustful—but Hopeful

The majority of young people (55%) believe the country is heading in the wrong direction , with 16% saying it’s on the right track and the rest (28%) saying they’re not sure. There are some differences among groups of youth: for example, youth of color are more likely than white youth to say the country is on the right track or that they are unsure. Some of that may be partially explained by young people’s partisan preferences, since youth of color are more likely to support Democrats and their view of the current presidential administration may shape their view of the country’s direction.  Young people who reported that they didn’t vote in 2022 were more likely to say they weren’t sure how they felt about the way things are going in the United States.

When asked why they feel the way they do about the direction of the country, many young people who say the country is on the wrong track cite inadequate action on issues they care about like inflation and cost of living, crime, and inequality. Some youth who are pleased with the country’s direction cited progress on some of those issues or the results of the 2022 election as reasons for their optimism. Crucially, while some young people who stated they weren’t sure how they would characterize the direction of the country said they weren’t following politics, others said they had mixed feelings because they saw both good and bad things happening in the country.

Many youth are also concerned about the country’s values and distrustful of major institutions. Nearly two-thirds of young people (62%) expressed concern about the values of the American people, and 45% said they believe that the country is failing to live up to its promises of freedom and fairness , compared to just 18% who believe the country has lived up to these promises.

Less than a third of young people said they trust either of the two major political parties, their state government, Congress, or the President. Among political institutions, the GOP and Congress garnered the highest levels of distrust from youth: 49% and 41%, respectively.

Youth also expressed distrust in large corporations (53%) and major news media (46%) ; the latter is especially concerning given the important role of news organizations in young people’s electoral learning and engagement. As with the direction of the country, there are important differences by race/ethnicity (51% of white youth distrust major news media, compared to 43% of young Latinos and 35% of Asian and Black youth) that may also correlate with differences in partisan leaning.

With regard to many institutions in American life, about a third of youth said that they neither trust nor distrust the institutions. As with young people who said they’re not sure how they feel about the direction of the country, their ambivalence may reflect a lack of access to/information about a particular institution, or complicated feelings about institutions in which youth see both negative and positive elements.

Young people also have mixed feelings about democracy itself. Only a quarter of young people said they feel confident about democracy in the United States, compared to 31% who are not confident and 43% who said neither. But even as they have major doubts about the democracy they see around them, youth are more optimistic about the potential of democracy: 50% agree (and only 13% disagree) that the democratic system “is capable of creating change” in the country. Similarly, 75% agree that voting is an important way to have a say in the future of the country .

That may be one reason why, despite the tensions between young people’s ideals and the realities of American democracy, more than half of youth (53%) said they are hopeful things will get better in the country.

Youth Know they Have Power, but Need Information and Support

Young people’s hope for the future may also be a reflection of their belief that their generation can and should engage in civic life and effect change. At the same time, there appears to be a gap between young people’s interest in political participation and whether they feel prepared and qualified to do so.

Young people have a strong sense of both individual and collective efficacy: 74% said that there are things they can do to make the world a better place, and 76% believe that their age group has the power to change things . Even more (83%) recognize the potential of young people working with other generations to create change. 

In addition, almost two-thirds of young people (62%) say that their political views are a somewhat or very important part of their personal identity. Young women of color, LGBTQ youth, youth with college experience, and the older segment of the cohort (ages 25-29) are all more likely to say that politics are an important part of their identity, indicating both how marginalized identities and educational and lived experience can contribute to the formation of such political identities. 

However, while a majority of youth have a strong sense that they could achieve change and a strong personal political identity, many don’t feel informed or qualified enough to participate in politics. Only half of youth say they feel they’re “as well-informed as most people,” which underscores our previous finding that 1 in 5 youth who did not vote in 2022 said they did not have enough information about the candidates or the voting process.

Even fewer youth in our survey (40%) say that they feel well-qualified to participate in politics, and youth from groups that have historically held less political power were even less likely to feel qualified. For example, 34% of youth of color say they feel qualified to participate in politics, compared to 44% of white youth . Young people ages 22-29 were also more likely to feel qualified than youth ages 18-21, who are often neglected by parties, campaigns, and organizations.

Whether a young person feels qualified can have a strong impact on participation at the ballot box and beyond, as evidenced by the fact that 53% of youth who voted in 2022 said that they felt well-qualified, compared to just 22% of those who didn’t vote in the midterms.

Some Youth Are Taking Action, Others Want More Opportunity

Young people’s sense of whether they’re well-qualified to participate in politics may be shaping, not just their voter turnout, but their willingness and ability to engage in other forms of political action. Young people’s participation in activities like volunteering for political campaigns, donating money, attending protests, or joining boycotts has risen in recent years, and our 2022 survey finds that youth are engaging in these efforts at rates similar to 2018—a year that was marked, in part, by youth-led gun violence protests after the Parkland school shooting .

That said, relatively few young people are participating in some of these political activities, perhaps owing to a majority of youth feeling they’re not qualified to do so. However, with regard to nearly every type of political engagement we asked about in our survey, far more young people said they plan to do it in the future or would be interested in doing it if they were presented with the opportunity. That suggests it may not be a lack of interest, but a lack of access, that is preventing a significant number of youth from engaging in political life.

Among the types of political engagement we asked about in the survey, signing a petition/joining a boycott, following candidates on social media, and attending demonstrations were the actions most frequently taken by youth. More than 1 in 7 young people said they’ve been to a protest or demonstration , and an additional 28% who haven’t yet done so said they plan to do it, or would do so given the opportunity. That means more than 40% of youth are interested in this type of political engagement.

Notably, while just 7% of youth said they have volunteered for a campaign, three times as many (21%) expressed interest in doing so, which suggests there is strong untapped potential for campaigns and candidates to recruit young people. Similarly, while only 2% of young people say they’ve run for office, more than 1 in 10 said they might do so . Our research has recently explored how young people are increasingly interested in running for office but face various barriers that must be addressed through explicit encouragement and support.

This new survey data underscores ongoing trends in young people’s civic engagement: youth are interested in getting involved and understand they have the power to effect change, but they sometimes lack the information, support, and explicit opportunities to do so. The fact that less than half of youth feel well-qualified to participate in political life also speaks to a lack of systemic, developmental support for young people to develop as voters and civic actors and find their voice within democracy.

Addressing these issues will require a commitment to the work we describe in our CIRCLE Growing Voters framework: multiple institutions working together to create diverse pathways for all youth to enjoy electoral learning and engagement opportunities.

CIRCLE Growing Voters

Released in 2022, the CIRCLE Growing Voters report introduces a new framework to transform how communities and institutions prepare youth for democracy. It includes major recommendations for organizations across sectors to do this work more equitably and effectively.

About the Survey: The survey was developed by CIRCLE at Tufts University, and the polling firm Ipsos collected the data from their nationally representative panel of respondents and a sample of people recruited for this survey between November 9 and November 30, 2022. The study involved an online survey of a total of 2,018 self-reported U.S. citizens ages 18 to 29 in the United States. The margin of error is +/- 2.2 percentage points. Unless mentioned otherwise, data are for all 18- to 29-year-olds in our sample.

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Young People's Civic and Political Engagement and Global Citizenship

About the author, martyn barrett.

January 2018, No. 4 Vol. LIV 2017, Global Citizenship

O ver the past 20 years, many commentators have argued that there is a crisis in young people’s civic and political engagement. This is because youth who are eligible to vote in national elections tend to do so less frequently than older generations. In addition, over the past few decades, there has been a decline in many countries in the percentage of young people who vote in national elections. These trends have been used to argue that the future of democracy is in jeopardy, because political engagement in later life is rooted in the habits developed in youth, and the youth of today will eventually become the adults of tomorrow.

I have argued elsewhere for a different reading of these trends. 1 First, very clearly, these trends have not occurred in all countries—they tend to be specific to Western democracies. In addition, there are many ways in which people can be civically and politically active. Some ways involve engaging with electoral processes such as voting, trying to persuade others to vote for a particular candidate, and working for a political party. These are conventional forms of political participation. There are also non-conventional forms of action, however, such as participation in political demonstrations, protests and marches, signing petitions, writing political articles or blogs, and liking and sharing them on social media. Other forms of engagement may be focused more directly on providing help to people in need, solving community problems or raising money for charitable causes. These forms of engagement are perhaps better termed ‘civic’ rather than ‘political’ actions because they sidestep the political arena.

While young people’s commitment to conventional political participation does indeed appear to be in decline in many democracies today, research clearly demonstrates that large numbers of young people are nevertheless strongly committed to non-conventional and civic action in their respective countries. Whereas, in the past, issues of concern might have mobilized them into voting for particular candidates or writing to their elected representatives, these same issues today might be tackled instead through consumer activism, protests and demonstrations, activity on social media, charitable fundraising or voluntary work in the community.

A further feature of youth political and civic engagement today concerns the specific topics on which youth activism tends to be focused. Because of their sense of frustration and cynicism about politicians and conventional political processes, many youth instead choose to focus their energies on single issues or causes about which they have strong feelings. Issues that commonly attract their attention include global warming, pollution, global poverty, the use of low-wage labour in the developing world, the greed of multinational corporations, and human rights (at the global level), as well as graffiti, unsafe streets, transport and recycling facilities, and youth amenities (at the local level).

This twin focus on global and local issues emerged clearly from a European Commission-funded large-scale research project called Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP) that I led from 2009 to 2012. 2 We collected data from 16- to 26-year-olds drawn from 27 national and ethnic groups living across Europe. We found that these young people often chose not to engage with conventional politics because they felt they had no voice, were ignored by politicians, and did not have the resources or the competences needed to engage politically. They also tended to think that conventional political engagement was ineffective in bringing about genuine change.

At the same time, these young people’s interest in and enthusiasm for global issues were often very pronounced. These issues were usually experienced as having considerable personal meaning and relevance for their own lives. For this reason, I would dispute the claim that there is a crisis in young people’s civic and political engagement due to their apathy and alienation. Instead, youth today are more likely to focus on specific issues that are of personal concern, using alternative modes of action that differ from those that were used by their parents’ and grandparents’ generations.

That said, it is important not to make overly simplistic generalizations based on studies that have been conducted in Western democracies, which is where the bulk of the research in this field has taken place. The lives, concerns and range of political and civic activities that young people undertake are often very different from one country to another. They also vary considerably within countries.

Differences between countries stem from the specific historical, economic and cultural characteristics with which young people are living, and also from the design of political institutions within those countries. For example, the importance which youth attribute to conventional political participation tends to be lower in countries in which there are long-standing democratic traditions, and higher in countries in which conventional democratic institutions and forms of participation have been strengthened over the last 30 years. Political knowledge and engagement of youth also tend to be higher in countries which are more economically developed. In addition, political institutional structures can be designed in such a way that they either provide plentiful and diverse opportunities for youth to participate and contribute, or they can be designed to inhibit, restrict or even prevent such possibilities. Finally, all countries have their own specific internal cultural and political concerns and preoccupations, which also influence patterns of youth engagement.

Young people’s political and civic engagement also varies considerably within countries. For example, those individuals who are of a higher socioeconomic status usually display higher levels of participation; males are more likely to vote and to engage in illegal actions, such as spraying political graffiti, whereas females are more likely to be interested in social and environmental issues; while ethnic minority and majority individuals participate in different kinds of volunteer activities, with the former participating much more in activities relating to their own ethnic communities.

Variations within countries are also linked to social factors. Parental behaviours are extremely important. For example, parents who engage in protests are more likely to have offspring who also engage in protests, and adolescents whose parents are interested in political and social issues also have higher levels of such interest. Other relevant social factors include peer group relationships, since young people are more likely to commit to civic and political goals and values when they feel a sense of solidarity with their peers at school. Membership in youth organizations and involvement in organizations that provide a context for activities such as public speaking, debate and community service, are also linked to political participation for years to come.

The education that young people receive at school is also critical. If schools enable students to raise ethical, social, civic and political issues in the classroom, allow them to discuss controversial topics, encourage them to express their own opinions and to listen to one another in order to explore a variety of different perspectives, students will tend to acquire higher levels of political interest, trust and knowledge, which in turn will boost the likelihood of them voting in the future. It is also beneficial for students’ engagement if schools themselves operate on democratic principles and provide opportunities for students to contribute to formal decision-making, for example, through class representatives, student councils and student representation in working groups. 3

Educational effects are further amplified if schools adopt a competence-based curriculum in which the competences required for civic and political engagement are targeted. Such a curriculum aims to enhance not only students’ knowledge and skills, but also their values, attitudes and critical thinking, so that they are empowered to act as autonomous agents capable of pursuing civic and political action effectively. The competences that need to be targeted in order to achieve this outcome include, among others, knowledge and understanding of politics, analytical and critical thinking, civic-mindedness, responsibility, empathy, communication and cooperation skills, and the valuing of democracy. 4 A large range of pedagogical methods, such as cooperative, project-based and service learning, can be used for promoting precisely these sorts of competences.

These same competences are also required if young people are to take effective action on the global issues that are of concern to them, such as global warming, pollution, global poverty and human rights. 5 However, in this case, civic-mindedness—i.e. concern for other people within one’s community and a sense of civic duty—needs to take the form of global-mindedness—i.e. concern for the whole of humanity and the planet. 6 A very positive feature of many young people’s civic and political engagement today is precisely their concern for the global community, and not just for their own local community.

Research into global citizenship is still in its infancy. However, studies have revealed that young people who have a high level of global-mindedness are more likely to be:

• Engaged in intercultural contact, cooperation, interaction and dialogue.
• Tolerant of cultural differences and appreciative of cultural diversity.
• Supportive of global human rights and humanitarian needs, and willing to contribute to international humanitarian relief.
• Concerned for the environment and engaged in pro-environmental activities.

Likewise, these studies have revealed that a range of actions can be taken by schools to enhance young people’s global-mindedness and global citizenship activities.

These include:

• Building on students’ existing motivations by providing opportunities for them to explore, learn about and critically understand the global issues with which they are already engaged.
• Using the curriculum to target the competences required for engaging in effective and appropriate action on global issues, and using the pedagogies  that are the most suitable for fostering the development of these competences.
• Providing opportunities for students to practise their competences (i.e. to use their values, attitudes, skills, knowledge and critical understanding) on global issues.
• Providing opportunities for students to engage with different cultures in the classroom, in their neighbourhood and, through the Internet, to enable them to experience meaningful intercultural contact and respectful communication with others.

The civic and political engagement of young people is certainly in tremendous flux today. But my reading of the research literature is that we have a great deal to be optimistic about in relationship to their engagement, although national education systems could be employed far more effectively in supporting and promoting their global competence and global engagement.    

• Martyn Barrett and Dimitra Pachi, Youth Civic and Political Engagement (London, Routledge, forthcoming).
• Processes Influencing Democratic Ownership and Participation (PIDOP), European Commission, 7th Framework Programme. Available from http://www.pidop.surrey.ac.uk/ .
• These findings come from CIVED and ICCS, which are large-scale comparative international projects conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). Available from http://www.terpconnect.umd.edu/~jtpurta/and http://www.iea.nl/iccs .
• Council of Europe, Competences for Democratic Culture: Living Together as Equals in Culturally Diverse Democratic Societies (Strasbourg, Council of Europe Publishing, 2016). Available from http://www.coe.int/en/web/education/competences-for-democratic-culture .
• Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), Global Competency for an Inclusive World (Paris, 2016). Available from https://www.oecd.org/education/Global-competency-for-an-inclusive-world.pdf .
• United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO), Global Citizenship Education: Topics and Learning Objectives (Paris, 2015). Available from http://unesdoc.unesco.org/images/0023/002329/232993e.pdf .

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Rejuvenating Politics: Young Political Participation in a Changing World

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• First Online: 07 December 2018

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• James Sloam 6 &
• Matt Henn 7  

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Young People and Politics ((PSYPP))

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This chapter reviews existing theories of youth electoral participation and political participation more generally. We separate the literature into studies that deal with the implications of socio-economic change, those that emphasize changes in the nature of the political system, and those that pay greater attention to (youth) political activism. The analysis highlights the central role of education, identity and communication in shaping youth engagement in, or disillusionment with, politics.

The chapter sets out our conceptualisation of ‘young cosmopolitans’. We argue that a combination of economic stagnation, high levels of educational attainment, and rapid social change, have resulted in a historically distinct cocktail of political engagement and resentment, and the emergence of a large, young group of cosmopolitan-left citizens in the UK and other established democracies. These developments explain the widespread youth support both for Britain remaining in the European Union and for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party. Building on the recent work of Norris and Inglehart (2018), we assert that young people’s politics is defined both by material interests (which became more pressing in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis), but also by an outward-looking cosmopolitanism and acceptance of cultural diversity. Young cosmopolitan-left individuals are likely to hold university degrees, to be in full-time education, female, and live in an urban environment. Conversely, young, white males with low levels of educational attainment are least likely to possess these views.

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In the introduction, we demonstrated that youth participation in electoral politics has declined in recent decades, albeit at different rates and at different times in different democracies. The large, mainstream catch-all parties, founded on cleavages of blue-collar and white-collar workers, do not reflect the reality of our postindustrial societies. This partly explains the process of ‘voter dealignment’ – the weakening of collective ties between citizens and political parties. Furthermore, the total share of the vote for catch-all parties, such as the Conservatives and Labour in the UK and Christian Democrats and Social Democrats in Germany, has eroded dramatically during this period.

One reason for optimism regarding youth participation, is that young people continue to engage in ‘politics’ (broadly understood) despite their relative lack of enthusiasm for politicians and political parties. European Social Survey data reveal that young people in the UK are as interested in politics as their peers elsewhere in Europe, despite the slump in youth voter turnout after the early 1990s (Sloam 2016 ). This suggests that the problem is less to do with a general lack of political engagement and more to do with the disconnection between young people and the political system.

Further evidence is provided by the growth in non-electoral and non-institutionalized forms of political engagement over several decades. Inglehart and Welzel ( 2005 ), for example , showed how levels of participation in petitions, boycotts and demonstrations doubled in the UK and the Federal Republic of Germany (and increased by around a third in the United States) between the 1970s and the 2000s. Dalton ( 2017 : 93) similarly argues that, if we include other actions such as contacting local government, protest, petition signing, political consumerism and online participation, ‘the contemporary US public displays a substantially higher level of activity than in the 1960s’.

Figure 2.1 illustrates how aggregate rates of youth participation in petitions, boycotts and demonstrations (just three of the many non-electoral forms of participation) today far exceed aggregate rates of voting in national elections and political party membership. This is the case in the United States, the UK and the six other established European democracies – France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden – included in Wave 5 of the World Values Survey. In the UK, 18–24 year olds were almost twice as likely to participate in these non-electoral forms of political action than they were to vote or be a member of a party. It is also worth adding that citizens do not have the opportunity to vote in parliamentary or presidential elections every year – indeed, they have taken place on average once every two or three years in the eight countries in Fig. 2.1 . Footnote 1 By contrast, World Values Survey data shows that in 2011 around a third of young Americans, young Swedes and young Germans had signed a petition multiple times during the previous 12 months alone.

Youth (18–24 year old) participation in electoral and non-electoral forms of politics in Europe and the United States (%). (Source: World Values Survey, Wave 5 (2005–2009))

When large, established political parties have prospered amongst young people in recent times, they have usually done so by electing a leader who is perceived to be more authentic or through the adoption of a radical policy programme. With regard to cosmopolitan-left politics, the Labour Party in New Zealand achieved a double-digit increase in its share of the vote in 2017 , in an election that saw a 7% increase in youth turnout and about two thirds of 18–30 year olds voting for Labour (New Zealand Herald, 20 September 2017 ). This youth support for Labour, with its most interventionist agenda in decades, helped to propel 37-year-old Jacinda Ardern to the prime ministership at the head of a Labour-led coalition government. However, in the same year, the 31-year-old Sebastian Kurz (of the conservative People’s Party) was elected as Chancellor of Austria. His anti-Islamic campaign was founded on the reassertion of ‘Austrian values’ and opposition to immigration. The People’s Party, together with the far-right Freedom Party, captured the support of 58% of 18–30 year olds and two thirds of young men with low levels of educational attainment (SORA 2017 ). The unexpected success of Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 US presidential race illustrated (even more starkly) the rise of radical, anti-establishment candidates. In all these cases, the resurgence of cultural politics, whether authoritarian-nationalist or cosmopolitan in character, has been evident. We would add to this list, the 2016 EU referendum and the 2017 General Election in the UK.

This chapter provides a theoretical account of young people’s political engagement in the UK and other established democracies. It begins by outlining the changing social, economic and political conditions for engagement. These include the increasing prominence of identity politics, austerity in public spending since the start of the 2008 global financial crisis, and the role of new media in facilitating political engagement. Afterwards, it looks at agent-centred theories that account for Young Millennials’ attitudes towards, and participation or non-participation in, various forms of politics. We proceed by highlighting the cultural turn  – the emergence of postmaterialist politics and contentious cultural issues over recent decades. Finally, the chapter fleshes out the cosmopolitan character and leftward drift of youth politics in contemporary Britain and other democratic systems. Here, we present our own conceptualisation of young cosmopolitans in an era of economic and cultural conflict.

Shifting Tectonic Plates

Over several decades, the tectonic plates that shape and sustain democratic participation have shifted. The changes have been economic, social, cultural and political in nature, and are all interlinked (see Fig. 2.2 , below).

Trends in young people’s politics

Between the 1960s and the 2000s, postindustrial democracies experienced a prolonged period of economic growth, increasing levels of educational attainment, a reconfiguration of the labour market, and the loosening of traditional norms regarding religion and family life. As a result, transitions from youth to adulthood have become delayed and staggered (Arnett 2004 ; Furlong and Cartmel 2007 ; Flanagan 2013 ). Young people stay in education longer, enter full-time employment later, and marry and have children at an older age than was the case in previous decades. In the European Union, the number of 15–24 year-olds still in education rose from 49% in 1987 to 58% in 1995 to 68% in 2007, and the median age for a young person entering the workforce rose from 18 to 20 during the same period (European Commission 2008 ). In the United State s, the proportion of 20 year olds who were married fell from 79% to 22% between 1967 and 2014 while the proportion of young men in work by this age fell by half (Dalton 2017 : 92). Smets ( 2012 ) shows that these changes have profound implications for political participation – countries with more heterogeneous maturity patterns have larger disparities in voting between older and younger citizens.

Young Millennials have more opportunities than previous generations, but also face greater risks than their predecessors (Beck 1992 ; Furlong and Cartmel 2007 ). Structural changes in the labour market mean that there is no longer any real prospect of a job for life (Goodwin et al. 2017 ; Bessant 2018 ), whilst the breakdown of traditional social mores has led to identities that are shaped by fluid categories of class, community, ethnicity and culture (Bauman 2000 ). These developments have led to the individualization of values and lifestyles and the growth of identity politics. Young people must constantly reinvent themselves economically and socially – from their CVs to their Facebook profiles – within a network society (Castells 2015 ). When citizens do engage, they increasingly participate in personally meaningful causes guided by their own lifestyles and shifting social networks (Norris 2002 ; Bennett and Segerberg 2013 ).

Another central dynamic in postindustrial economies and societies is globalization , which Held ( 2003 : 516) describes as the ‘growing interconnectedness and intensification of relations among states and societies’. This process has involved a sharp increase in the volume of international trade and financial transactions, and of multinational companies. In a globalized and globalizing world, individual outlooks, behaviours and feelings can transcend local and national boundaries (Held 2003 ). And, ‘it is through engagements with various forms and representations of the global [from international markets to the European Union] that cosmopolitan, or anti-cosmopolitan values surface and find expression’ (Woodward et al. 2008 : 210). Indeed, cosmopolitanism is often defined as the acceptance of and adaptation to globalization , whilst religious fundamentalism, nationalism, and ethnic and territorial identities are often depicted in opposition to this process (Beck 1996 ; Castells 1997 ).

Political action is increasingly centred around everyday issues that challenge citizens’ identities, and can bubble-up with great speed and intensity. Black Lives Matter, for example, emerged as a national movement in the United States in 2014 in response to cases of police brutality against mainly black men (such as that of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri) and immediately struck a chord with civil rights groups across the country. In October 2017, #MeToo encouraged women to record their experiences of sexual assault in the wake of the Harvey Weinstein scandal. Within two months, the #MeToo status had been posted on Facebook 100 million times across more than a hundred countries. In February 2018, a mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, led to the establishment of a survivors’ group supporting tighter gun controls under the hashtag #NeverAgain. This grew into a nationwide movement pushing for gun controls and calling for action against politicians and companies associated with the National Rifle Association. The resulting ‘March for Our Lives’ rallies on 24 March 2018 attracted hundreds of thousands of young people across the country.

Physical location remains important for young people’s politics: in fostering a sense of identity, in offering spaces to practice democratic skills, and in providing symbolic locations (such as city squares and university campuses) for political action (Weller 2003 ; Hopkins and Todd 2015 ). However, the sheer diversity of the Millennial Generation, coupled with the rise of new communication technologies has led to the reformation of communities across traditional territorial boundaries, so that political action has become increasingly channelled through social networks across ‘hybrid public spaces’ (Castells 2015 ). In this respect:

A person may make use of diversity in order to create a distinctive self-identity, which positively incorporates elements from different settings into an integrated narrative. Thus, a cosmopolitan is precisely one that draws strength from being at home in a variety of contexts. (Giddens 1991 : 88)

Conversely, greater diversity has also provoked an authoritarian-nationalist reaction, leading to the retreat of those who feel threatened by these changes into national, regional and religious identities.

As we have already noted, different democracies have quite different patterns of political participation. We can observe large variations even across similar democratic systems. For example, youth voter turnout in the UK was approximately 40% for the four elections between 2001 and 2015 , compared to 80% in Sweden during the same period (Sloam 2016 ). In France and Spain there is a strong tradition of youth participation in public demonstrations. In the UK, it is more common for a young person to sign a petition than in most other European countries. In the United States, young people are very active in community projects (Dalton 2017 ). However, as we pointed out in the introduction, there has been a worryingly large gap in the UK between the electoral participation of younger people and older generations.

Nevertheless, there are trends that are common to all these countries (Fig. 2.2 , above). As we previously argued, the representative capacity of mainstream politicians and traditional political institutions has weakened significantly in recent decades. At the same time, the growth of issue-based lifestyle politics has supported a transition from politics to policy, whereby citizens, politicians and government officials have together shifted ‘the emphasis from democratic participation to good governance’ (Bang and Esmark 2009 : 18). On the one hand, this can be viewed as a positive development, increasing opportunities for citizen interaction with policymakers through small scale democracy (Goul-Anderson and Roβteutscher 2007 ). On the other hand, the belief of many political representatives in the logic of deregulation of public services and the depoliticization of policy-making has led to the outsourcing of policy to expert bodies, international institutions and even international markets (Burnham 2001 ; Held 2003 ; Hay 2007 ). This, in turn, has helped fuel the rise of managerialism in politics. Footnote 2 Considering these developments, there is also a tendency to view citizens as customers rather than democratic citizens. As a result, public consultations can easily become instrumentalized. Chadwick and May ( 2003 ) show , for example, how e-democracy was transformed from being perceived (by politicians) as a tool of democratic participation to being viewed as an instrument for efficient government (providing cheap and convenient online services).

The economic risks for young people from all social groups have been exacerbated by the recent financial crisis (Fig. 2.2 ). In most countries, youth unemployment increased considerably in the five years after 2008, whilst jobs have also become more precarious (Verick 2009 ; Erk 2017 ). In those countries worst affected by the sovereign debt crisis, such as Greece and Spain, youth unemployment surpassed 50% (OECD 2015 ). Moreover, austerity in public spending has placed a disproportionate burden on the young (Willetts 2011 ). The Intergenerational Foundation ( 2016 ) has demonstrated how intergenerational inequalities have increased in the UK due to the long-term pressures of an ageing population (such as the burgeoning of public sector pensions liabilities) and a further economic squeeze on Millennials since 2008: including, a 10% cut in real terms spending on education between 2010 and 2016, the stagnation of wages, the rising costs of housing, and the trebling of university tuition fees in 2012.

We should also remember that an individual’s position and progress in society are not only determined by their cognitive and social skills (though they do play an important role), but also by their economic class, gender and ethnicity (Furlong and Cartmel 2007 ). These factors can affect whether a young person is invited to a job interview (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2003 ), how they are treated by official authorities, and the barriers or opportunities for their entry into representative politics. These intragenerational inequalities are particularly acute in the UK, Italy, France and the United States, which have the lowest levels of social mobility amongst advanced OECD economies (OECD 2015 ). This clearly matters for youth political participation given what we know about the key role of economic resources in determining whether or not an individual participates in politics (Verba et al. 1995 ).

Theories of Youth Participation

In the introduction we outlined competing claims regarding youth political participation. A number of authors have lamented the decline in youth voter turnout and engagement in key social and political institutions. Robert Putnam’s ( 2000 ) Bowling Alone is perhaps the best-known example of this work. Another branch of the literature has pointed to the proliferation of youth participation across a vast array of alternative, non-electoral and non-institutionalized forms of engagement. Pippa Norris ( 2002 ) has, thus , conceived of political participation as a Democratic Phoenix , evolving to adapt to new political, economic and social realities.

What is certain is that young people’s perceptions of politics and repertoires of engagement have changed. Political participation is increasingly viewed through the lens of individual action frameworks, whereby ‘formal organizations are losing their grip on individuals, and group ties are being replaced by large-scale fluid social networks’ (Bennett and Segerberg 2012 : 748). These networks form the basis of alternative modes of political engagement that seem to better fit younger citizens’ preferences for horizontal forms of engagement. For example, it is much more attractive to sign an online petition, forwarded by a friend, on online ‘snooping’ by the state, than to actively promote the broad programme of a top-down organisation like a political party.

Earlier in the chapter, we recognised the transition from politics to policy as a fundamental change in modern democratic politics. Amnå and Ekman ( 2014 ) make some important arguments about the temporal nature of issue-based participation. In their study of young people in Sweden, they identified ‘four faces of political passivity’: an ‘active’ group with high levels of interest and participation (6% of the sample); ‘standby’ citizens with high interest and average participation (45%); an ‘unengaged’ group with low levels of interest and average participation (27%); and, ‘disillusioned’ citizens with low participation and low interest (22%) (Amnå and Ekman 2014 : 274). So, just under half of young Swedes can be described as standby citizens , who ‘stay alert, keep themselves informed about politics by bringing up political issues in everyday life contexts, and are willing and able to participate if needed’ (Amnå and Ekman 2014 : 262). This has implications for our understandings of why young people turn out to vote in transformative elections. It suggests that many young people will turn out to vote when they can identify with the issues emphasized by a candidate or party – a point reinforced by evidence from Henn et al. (2017).

If the Millennial Generation is primarily concerned with issue-based engagement, the outsourcing of public policy (within the context of globalization ) helps to explain why today’s young people target a more diverse range of political, economic and social actors than previous generations. Individual (young) citizens might simultaneously support issues and causes across several geographical planes – for example, by campaigning for better recycling in schools and colleges, while at the same time being an active member of an international environmental organisation such as Greenpeace. Footnote 3

Yet, within the context of globalization and the individualization of values and lifestyles, young citizens also wish to anchor themselves to ideological or values-based parties, movements and candidates. According to Spannring and her colleagues ( 2008 : 73), ‘the managerial approach shared by most politicians does not offer young people ideals and values with which to identify’. The preference for issue-based engagement and the desire for politicians and causes in which they can believe, together pose an immense challenge for political parties. To connect with young people, these parties must emphasize and communicate policies that young people are interested in, whilst at the same time providing them with an authentic set of values or ideology with which they can identify (Henn and Foard 2014 ). Electoral youthquakes are the consequence of a political party or candidate meeting this challenge.

After the onset of the financial crisis, we experienced an initial surge in youth participation in non-electoral forms of politics, motivated by frustration and anger with the politicians and public policy and facilitated by recent advances in communications technologies. The Internet and social media have enabled a dramatic speeding up of political mobilisation by: acting as a real-time filter for alternative politics, where only the most resonant ideas – such as ‘The outraged young’ and ‘We are the 99%!’ – rise to the surface; and, radically reducing communication costs for participation (Bimber et al. 2005 ). During this wave of youth protest we have witnessed the emergence of a new ‘logic of connective action… based on personalized content sharing across media networks’ (Bennett and Segerberg 2012 : 739). This perfect storm of political outrage and readily available new technology facilitated the engagement of many young people into social movements, such as Occupy and the Spanish Indignados , with a cosmopolitan-left core. This, in turn, laid the seeds for their participation in the electoral process where and when the conditions were right.

Web 2.0 and social media have also become important features of electoral politics. First, they have dramatically altered how young people learn about politics. Comparative research across 36 countries by the Reuters Institute (2017) found that the proportion of adults using social media as a news source almost doubled (from 23% to 46%) between 2013 and 2017. Nearly two thirds (60%) of 18–24 year olds used online sources or social media as their main source of news (46% used Facebook to obtain political information) in 2017 compared to only 28% of over 55s. Footnote 4 The research also revealed that just under a quarter (24%) of young people used TV as their primary source of political news, compared to one half (51%) of over 55s. Interestingly, for our study of young cosmopolitans , the report also shows that, in certain countries (including the UK, the United States and Italy), new news media have a socially liberal and economically left-wing political orientation.

These new communication technologies are also increasingly utilised by political actors. The 2008 Obama campaign for the US presidency pioneered the use of the Web 2.0 and social media in elections. The Obama team maximized the potential of email, text messaging and social networking sites to spread their message, raise money and mobilize supporters. In doing so, they established a nationwide virtual network of over three million contributors in less than 12 months (Cogburn and Espinoza-Vasquez 2011 ). The campaign, thus, empowered mainly younger citizens to engage their friends and family in Obama’s bid for the presidency. And, the organic growth of the ‘Students for Barack Obama’ Facebook group was ‘so effective at energizing college-age voters that senior aides made it an official part of the campaign’ (Vargas 2008 : 2). As we shall see in Chap. 5 , this bears a resemblance to the communication strategy of the Labour Party in the run-up to the 2017 General Election. The use of non-traditional media and horizontal forms of citizen-to-citizen engagement was a vital ingredient in attracting young people to the Labour cause – especially given the negative portrayal of Jeremy Corbyn in the mainstream media.

Whilst the existing literature on youth political participation does a good job in explaining new trends, it often neglects the social inequalities of participation. Footnote 5 There are many young people who are not politically engaged or active. And, these young people tend to come from poorer backgrounds, to not go on to higher education, and to leave school with few, if any, qualifications. This large segment of the youth population tends to be – in Amnå and Ekman’s ( 2014 ) terms – disillusioned and disengaged . Schlozman et al. ( 2010 ), thus, depict the Internet as ‘the weapon of the strong’, noting the digital divide in online participation. And, evidence suggests that young people who engage in non-electoral forms of politics are usually the very same individuals who also engage in electoral politics. Those disengaged or disillusioned young people are, in direct opposition to young cosmopolitans, likely to react negatively to the perceived threats of cultural diversity and immigration. When they do, on occasion, become engaged in politics, these young outsiders are often attracted to authoritarian-nationalist values and causes. The National Front (FN) in France is an example of a far-right party that has been very successful at appealing to this demographic (Lubbers and Scheepers 2002 ). The FN gathered 6% of the youth (18–24 year old) vote in the first round of the presidential election in 2007, 18% in 2012 and 21% in 2017 (Martin 2017 ). In the second round run-off of the 2017 French Presidential Election, Marine Le Pen, the FN Leader, gained 44% of the youth vote compared to 20% of over 65s (The Independent, 1 May 2017 ).

The Rise of Postmaterialism

So far in this chapter, we have considered a range of debates and an array of empirical data that, when combined, point to the importance of economic, social and political changes in shaping young people’s political values, engagement and participation across a range of contemporary postindustrial societies. We have also argued that these developments and processes have impacted on different groups of youth in different ways.

The underlying causes of these trends are much debated. One prominent theory which seeks to account for citizens’ (of all ages) apparent disconnection with formal politics, their shifting values and their increasing rejection of mainstream parties and their concerns about the limitations of existing democratic processes , is Inglehart’s postmaterialist thesis (Inglehart 1971 ; Inglehart and Welzel 2005 ). According to this theory, citizens’ political values are profoundly impacted by their adolescent experiences, particularly by the material circumstances prevalent during any particular period – ‘period effects’ as opposed to long-term generational effects. Where pre-adult socialization occurs under conditions of relative economic austerity, people’s values will tend to focus on immediate materialist concerns, emphasizing economic and physical security. Such citizens are likely to be attracted to policies geared towards low inflation, employment growth, immigration control and law and order. In contrast, where those socialization experiences are gained during times of relative economic prosperity, citizens will be pre-disposed towards postmaterialist preferences, valuing quality of life issues such as political and expressive freedoms, environmental sustainability and global social justice. They will also be increasingly disenchanted with the limits of existing democratic arrangements, and instead be drawn toward alternative and transformative politics (Inglehart 1997 ) including looser non-institutional forms of political participation created from below (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim 2002 ).

The value of Inglehart’s postmaterialist thesis has been the subject of significant debate, and its theoretical claims have been tested in numerous studies, including a small number that consider youth in Britain (Majima and Savage 2007 ; Sloam 2007 ; Theocharis 2011 ; Rheingans and Hollands 2013 ; Henn et al. 2017). Nonetheless, there is considerable evidence to suggest that postmaterial value change is gaining momentum, globally. Indeed, all eight of the EU15 countries studied by Inglehart and Welzel ( 2005 ) became much more postmaterialist between 1970 and 2000, and postmaterialist values are found to be particularly advanced within younger generations. Figure 2.3 indicates that even during the austerity conditions ushered in by the 2008 global financial crisis, postmaterialist values remained evident amongst a noticeable minority of young people in Britain – although as expected, numbers have fallen from the more economically secure environment of a decade earlier.

Materialist, postmaterialist and ‘mixed’ value preferences of young Britons (19 year olds), 2002–2011 (%). (Source: Henn and Weinstein 2003 ; Henn and Foard 2012 )

The endurance of postmaterialist values – even under current austerity conditions – is significant, because postmaterialists tend towards lifestyle politics, and are much more likely than materialists to engage in non-electoral forms of politics such as signing a petition, joining a boycott and participating in a demonstration (Copeland 2014 ; Stolle et al. 2005 ). What is more, the long-term spread of postmaterialist values has created new cultural cleavages to rival the old postindustrial (materialist-economic) ones. The emergence of new social movements and political parties from the libertarian left and the authoritarian right have made the political landscape more complex.

However, there are large variations across these postindustrial countries. In many, the increasing prominence of postmaterialist values has led to the rise of alternative political parties, resulting in the participation of Green parties in several European governments (Muller-Rommel and Poguntke 2013 ). In the United States, it has led to the rejuvenation of political campaigning for socially liberal candidates (as illustrated by youth political activism in the Obama and Sanders campaigns) and a significant increase in collective political action for local causes (Dalton 2017 ). Young Britons, without the same opportunities for engagement, have become more involved with volunteering or charity work and direct action (Birdwell and Bani 2014 ).

Henn et al. (2017) use Inglehart’s four-item materialist-postmaterialist scale to compare the values and political participation preferences of British young materialists, postmaterialists and those who hold intermediate or “mixed” views, during periods of relative economic prosperity and of economic insecurity. It supports Inglehart’s claims ( 2016 ) that, even under the austerity conditions of the current global recession, the materialist-postmaterialist cleavage retains importance – this is evident in terms of young people’s political values, and particularly so with respect to their political participation.

Henn et al.’s results (2017) indicate that during periods of both economic affluence and scarcity, postmaterialists are considerably more likely than other young people to feel dissatisfied with the way that democracy works in their country. Indeed, they are especially critical of the practice of electoral politics and are keen supporters of proposals to reform the first-past-the-post system to break the hegemony of the traditional mainstream parties, and to back emergent parties. Interestingly, although young postmaterialists in the UK seem particularly sceptical of the value of institutionalized electoral politics, they are significantly more likely than their contemporaries to consider voting in future elections, whether national, European or local. They are also the most likely youth group to engage in party politics by activities trying to convince someone else how to vote, donating money to a political party, or working for a political party during an election campaign. This seems somewhat contrary to Inglehart’s thesis that postmaterialists would be especially frustrated by the limits of existing electoral methods. However, it might instead be argued that their willingness to vote perhaps reflects the fact that postmaterialist youth will turn to any form of political action available that offers them the means to challenge austerity politics in the UK.

Less surprising is that young postmaterialists are more interested in non-institutionalized and extra-parliamentary forms of action than materialist youth. This fits with the findings of other studies which suggest that young postmaterialists are attracted to political action that accords with their individuated life-styles and which they consider to be more expressive, less hierarchical, more flexible and ultimately more effective (Beck 1992 ; Furlong and Cartmel 2007 ; Busse et al. 2015 ; Soler-i-Marti 2014 ; Tormey 2015 ). These range from low impact activities such as discussing politics with family or friends through to more demanding activities such as involvement in community associations, charity groups or youth forums, participation in protests, rallies or demonstrations, or working with other people to address a public issue or tackle a particular social problem.

The data also indicate that young postmaterialists are particularly tolerant of others who engage in extra-parliamentary actions, and see the use of such methods of political participation as having potentially greater value and efficacy than voting in elections. For instance, they were much more likely than other young people to agree with the notion that people should be allowed to organise public meetings in protest against the government. Furthermore, they consider that getting involved with campaigning and single issue pressure groups (such as Greenpeace) provides a more effective means to influencing the government than being active in a political party. Interestingly, young postmaterialists also expressed support for people who use direct action to change the political world . Again, such styles of political participation are considered to have considerably more value than parliamentary-focussed activities.

In all of these areas, the distinctiveness of young postmaterialists is noticeably more evident for those socialised under conditions of ‘austerity’ (the 2011 cohort) than those who reached the age of attainment under the significantly more affluent circumstances in the early years of the new Millennium (the 2002 cohort). This would seem to run counter to Inglehart’s thesis that postmaterialist values and outlooks would be most evident amongst young people socialised during periods of relative economic security, and support recent claims that young Britons have been radicalised by their experiences of austerity politics, and are choosing to embrace alternative styles of political action. We will develop this idea in the next section when we consider the rise of young cosmopolitans – a group of leftist-oriented youth who in many respects mirror Inglehart’s postmaterialists in that they express particular dissatisfaction with existing democratic processes and institutions, and are increasingly drawn to new transformative agendas and visions for change.

Young Cosmopolitans

Our conception of young cosmopolitans builds upon the work of Norris and Inglehart ( 2018 ), emphasizing the cultural turn , which so distinguishes Millennials from older generations, but also the leftward drift that is particularly prevalent amongst many young people in countries which, like the UK, experienced a prolonged period of austerity after 2008.

Norris and Inglehart ( 2018 ) write of the increasing importance of a cultural axis in contemporary liberal democracies – from populism, conservatism and nationalism at one end, to cosmopolitan liberalism at the other end. Whilst the left-right economic axis remains significant, they argue that the emergence of this cultural cleavage has accelerated over the past ten years since the onset of the global financial crisis Norris and Inglehart ( 2018 ). In the UK context, Sanders and Twyman ( 2016 ) divide the electorate into four ‘tribes’: ‘liberal left’, ‘liberal centre-right’, ‘centrist-moderate’, and ‘authoritarian-populist’.

The book focusses on these cosmopolitan-liberal and liberal left groups – referred to here as the ‘cosmopolitan left’ – who Sanders and Twyman ( 2016 : 4) claim represent 37% of all British adults and 43% of 18–29 year olds. The cosmopolitan-left incorporates a leftist belief in state intervention to address economic inequalities and provide well-funded public services (including free education), and a cosmopolitan belief in human rights, outward-looking and inclusive societies, and a relatively relaxed attitude towards immigration (Young Cosmopolitans 2018; Sanders and Twyman 2016 : 3). We would emphasize, in the UK context, this group’s positive attitudes towards cultural diversity and European integration. In the following empirical chapters, we therefore investigate the existence of materialist and postmaterialist values amongst young people (before and after the onset of the financial crisis), and youth support for both social liberal and economically redistributive policy programmes.

Efforts to categorise emerging political and cultural cleavages are not without their critics (Bean and Papadakis 1994 ; Duch and Taylor 1994 ). The aggregation of individuals into broad groups may overlook important intra-group differences. Moreover, axes of political and cultural values may gloss over the nuanced realities of anti-establishment parties and movements. Young people may, for example, advocate protection of the environment, but favour tough action against terrorism. And, the cosmopolitan-left in Greece and Spain tends to be Eurosceptic – given the tough austerity measures imposed by the EU. But the same group in the UK was overwhelmingly supportive of European Union membership in the 2016 referendum. So, national political and social contexts are crucial in determining how cosmopolitan-left values translate into political action. In the empirical sections of the book, we are sensitive to these structural factors.

The question of ethnic diversity and how countries should integrate different cultures and traditions has become a central feature of electoral politics. As our societies have become more open and diverse – and in response to terrorist attacks carried out by ‘home-grown’ Daesh-inspired individuals and groups – resistance to cosmopolitan values has also grown. Mainstream, usually centre-right, politicians have attempted to tap into this authoritarian-nationalist sentiment in order to outflank populist movements and parties. In late 2010 and early 2011, David Cameron, Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel (then, Prime Minister of the UK, President of France and Chancellor of Germany) all decried the failure of multiculturalism in their respective countries. Footnote 6 According to Sarkozy: ‘We have been too concerned about the identity of the person who was arriving and not concerned enough about the identity of the country that is receiving him’ (Daily Telegraph, 11 May 2011 ). What these statements mean in practice is open to interpretation.

These political interventions on the subjects of immigration and national identity fuelled a public debate in many countries about the future of cosmopolitanism. Jeremy Cliffe ( 2015 ), in a paper for Policy Network, addressed this theme directly from a liberal perspective. He argued that Britain was becoming more like London: its citizens were increasingly diverse, highly educated, urban, socially liberal, and possessing an international outlook. Cliffe’s point that greater ethnic diversity will inevitably bring about a greater preponderance of cosmopolitan values may appear naïve to some, given the rise of UKIP and the EU referendum result (Ford and Goodwin 2014 ) as well as the conservative values of some immigrant groups (Katwala 2015 ). He nevertheless captured the essence of many Young Millennials, who, though outnumbered by older citizens, have become increasingly prepared to defend these values in the political arena.

After the EU referendum and the decision for Brexit, it was widely assumed that anti-cosmopolitan or populist-nationalist rhetoric would be politically useful in gaining the support of Leave voters. Prime Minister Theresa May’s address to the 2016 Conservative Party Conference attacked political and economic elites as ‘citizens of nowhere’ (Daily Telegraph, 5 October 2016 ). Although this strategy succeeded in attracting back many voters to the Conservatives from UKIP, it also turned many socially liberal, pro-EU, younger voters towards Labour. Jeremy Corbyn was able to capitalize on this sentiment through his liberal credentials on cultural diversity and immigration, despite his ambivalent views on the EU expressed during the referendum campaign.

In many countries, young adults have proved to be more resistant to authoritarian forms of populism than older citizens. In these places, they are likely to possess socially liberal and economically left-wing attitudes and values, and favour movements that set themselves apart from the political mainstream and protest against what is perceived to be a neo-liberal or corrupt political establishment. Elsewhere, there is evidence to show that economically disadvantaged young people are particularly susceptible to authoritarian-nationalist values, candidates and parties (Foa and Mounk 2017 ).

In this book, we demonstrate that the cosmopolitan-left orientation of young people is particularly widespread in the UK, but also relevant to a large segment of the youth population in other European democracies and in North America. From an international perspective, we note that young cosmopolitans vary in their adherence to economically left-wing attitudes according to the economic circumstances of the country or region in which they live. For example, Justin Trudeau’s success with younger voters in Canada was much more to do with his socially liberal persona than any radical economic policies.

In the UK, we account for the resurgence in youth activism and cosmopolitan-left orientations in the following ways. First, the redistribution of resources away from younger citizens and youth-oriented public policy over the past ten years has persuaded more young people to favour state intervention and increased public spending. Second, cultural differences across generations have deepened. Young people are more approving of cultural diversity, more welcoming of European integration, and less concerned about immigration than older generations.

Cosmopolitan values apply to many, but not all, young people. As we demonstrate later in the book, cosmopolitan-left individuals are very likely to hold university degrees, and to be students and women. Conversely, old, white males with low levels of educational attainment are least likely to possess these views. It is hardly new to state that young, highly-educated citizens are open to cosmopolitan values. Inglehart and colleagues have made this argument for several decades (Inglehart and Welzel 2005 ). Our claim is that young cosmopolitans have crystalized into a distinct and coherent political force, united by their common values and common positions on postmaterial issues such as Brexit, immigration and the environment, and material issues such as healthcare, housing and education, and in opposition to the authoritarian-nationalist forms of populism characterized by UKIP, Donald Trump and elements of the British Conservative Party. We also observe that the differences between younger and older voters are greater in cultural than in economic issues.

In this chapter we have considered the relationships between young citizens and democratic processes and institutions in a variety of postindustrial societies. In particular, we have noted that these relationships are beset by stresses that often result in young people withdrawing from parliamentary-oriented politics, as evidenced by reduced rates of voting and a generalised lack of appetite for engaging with mainstream political parties.

Pessimistic observers have concluded that such developments reflect an on-going and irreversible trend that is leaving representative democracies lacking broad societal support, and consequently in danger of losing their legitimacy. However, many have noticed that while today’s youth seem to be abstaining from formal politics, they are increasingly attracted to alternative styles of politics such as petition signing, protesting, political consumerism and online activism. In large part this is because these methods appear to be especially valuable in helping them to actualise their political hopes and ambitions. Young people also seem to be increasingly open to the charms of new political candidates, parties and movements emerging from beyond the mainstream. These political outsiders often focus on issues of immediate relevance and concern to young people – and they also offer bottom-up and participative campaigning approaches that are particularly appealing to youth.

We have also examined various approaches and theories that seek to account for these patterns of youth political engagement and democratic participation. One approach considers a number of structural changes that have occurred since the 1960s and which have fused together to create opportunities, but also considerable risks and uncertainties, for young people. Extended and complex transitions into adulthood prompted by dramatic changes in the organisation of education and of labour markets, increasing levels of geographic mobility that reduce connections and engagement within neighbourhoods, as well as powerful globalising forces. These processes have combined to problematize young people’s life-courses and transform (or obstruct) their routes into democratic life.

More youth-centred approaches focus on the extent to which young people’s experiences of politics – and of the professional political elite – shape their democratic values, orientations and participation. In particular, recent government austerity programmes have coincided with a deepening rift between young citizens and formal politics in many countries. Outraged at having to bear the brunt of these regressive social and economic policies, young people have increasingly embraced new technologies to mobilise opposition to these attacks on their living standards. However, the patterns of youth political engagement and political participation are socially uneven. Whereas many socially disadvantaged ‘left-behind’ youth are susceptible to the rhetoric of authoritarian-nationalist movements and parties, highly educated and middle-class youth are often attracted to cosmopolitan, anti-austerity and leftist forces. In many respects, these contemporary left-facing cosmopolitan youth were anticipated by Inglehart in his postmaterialist thesis. Characterised by a general dissatisfaction with the practice of democratic politics and a deep antipathy towards the political class, they are attracted to individualised, life-style and cultural politics and are interested in moral issues such as environmental sustainability and global social justice. In the next chapter we will consider the factors underpinning young people’s patterns of political engagement and political participation in the early years of the new Millennium, and identify fundamental social, political and cultural shifts that have contributed to the shaping of the current Youthquake .

Over the ten years between January 2008 and December 2017, there were two national elections in Sweden, three in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and the UK, four in Spain and France (including two presidential elections), and eight in the US (including three presidential elections).

Schmidt ( 2006 ) argues that the transfer of powers to the European Union has led to a situation where we have policy without politics at the EU level, and politics without policy at the national level. Mair ( 2006 ) claims that this process has resulted in a ‘hollowing out’ of representative politics in Europe.

Charles Pattie et al. ( 2004 ) demonstrate how widespread micropolitical engagement with regard to policy on schools, the health service and in the workplace. However, it has also been discovered that these contact activities are even more dominated by older, male and well-off citizens than is the case with voting (Sloam 2013 ).

In a few places, including Germany, traditional media – TV and newspapers – retain their strong position as trusted and well read news sources, and new news media have failed to make the same headway as in the UK and the United States.

Accounts of the social inequalities of political participation can nevertheless be found in studies of citizen participation amongst all age groups. Verba et al. ( 1995 ) published the seminal text on this topic. Russell Dalton’s ( 2017 ) book, ‘The Participation Gap: Social Status and Political Inequality’, updates these arguments.

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Sloam, J., Henn, M. (2019). Rejuvenating Politics: Young Political Participation in a Changing World. In: Youthquake 2017. Palgrave Studies in Young People and Politics. Palgrave Pivot, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97469-9_2

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Essay on Role of Youth in Politics

Students are often asked to write an essay on Role of Youth in Politics in their schools and colleges. And if you’re also looking for the same, we have created 100-word, 250-word, and 500-word essays on the topic.

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Introduction.

Youth, the future of a nation, play a crucial role in politics. They are the backbone of a country who can lead towards progress.

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Youths should be politically aware to understand the country’s issues. With their energy and fresh ideas, they can bring about significant changes.

Participation in Politics

Active participation in politics is vital. Youths can join political parties, participate in elections, or voice their opinions to contribute to the political process.

The role of youth in politics is significant. They can shape the future of the nation with their enthusiasm and innovative ideas.

250 Words Essay on Role of Youth in Politics

The role of youth in politics is crucial in shaping the future of a nation. As the torchbearers of change, they are instrumental in driving the political landscape towards a more inclusive and progressive direction.

Political Participation

Youth participation in politics is not just about voting; it extends to engaging in political debates, policy-making, and even holding political office. Their fresh perspectives and innovative ideas can contribute to the creation of more effective and relevant policies.

A Catalyst for Change

Young people, with their energy and passion, often serve as catalysts for political change. They are typically more open to embracing new ideas and are less constrained by traditional political ideologies. This makes them a potent force in challenging the status quo and pushing for political reform.

Overcoming Challenges

However, the path to political participation for the youth is not without challenges. They often face barriers such as age restrictions, lack of opportunities, and the perception that they are inexperienced. Overcoming these obstacles requires concerted efforts from all stakeholders, including the government, educational institutions, and civil society.

In conclusion, the youth’s role in politics is vital for the growth and development of a nation. They bring a fresh perspective, are willing to challenge the status quo, and are often at the forefront of political change. Encouraging and facilitating their participation in politics is essential for a vibrant and progressive political landscape.

500 Words Essay on Role of Youth in Politics

The significance of youth in politics.

The role of youth in politics is pivotal, being the backbone of any nation. They represent the future and are responsible for shaping society’s political landscape. The youth’s energy, innovative ideas, and resilience can bring about significant changes in the political sphere, highlighting their importance in the process.

Driving Change and Innovation

Young people, with their fresh perspectives and willingness to challenge the status quo, often act as catalysts for change. They question existing political systems and advocate for reforms, leading to a dynamic and evolving political environment. Their innovative ideas can lead to the creation of policies that are more in line with the changing times and societal needs.

Representation and Inclusion

The youth constitutes a significant portion of the population in many countries. Hence, their representation in politics is crucial to ensure the interests of this demographic are catered to. Their active involvement in politics can lead to the inclusion of youth-centric policies, addressing issues like education, employment, and mental health.

Political Awareness and Participation

Political awareness among the youth is essential for a robust democracy. It enables them to make informed decisions, participate in debates, and contribute to the political discourse. Their participation, either as voters or candidates, can significantly impact election outcomes.

Challenges and Solutions

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The Way Forward

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In conclusion, the role of youth in politics is integral to the development and progression of any nation. Their active participation can lead to a more inclusive and forward-thinking political landscape. As the leaders of tomorrow, the youth have the power to shape the future of their countries, making their involvement in politics not just desirable but necessary.

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Review article, what is youth political participation literature review on youth political participation and political attitudes.

• 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.

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?

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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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.

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.

Conflict of Interest

The author declares that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

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

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

Received: 18 February 2020; Accepted: 20 April 2020; Published: 15 May 2020.

Reviewed by:

Copyright © 2020 Weiss. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) . The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

*Correspondence: Julia Weiss, julia.weiss@ipw.uni-heidelberg.de

This article is part of the Research Topic

The Civic and Political Participation of Young People: Current Changes and Educational Consequences

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Social Media and the Political Engagement of Young Adults: Between Mobilization and Distraction

Scholars have expressed great hopes that social media use can foster the democratic engagement of young adults. However, this research has largely ignored non-political, entertainment-oriented uses of social media. In this essay, I theorize that social media use can significantly dampen political engagement because, by and large, young adults use social media primarily for non-political purposes, which distracts rather than mobilizes.

Design/methodology/approach

I illustrate this argument using aggregate level data from the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, and Japan by comparing relative voter turnout and social media use data of young adults.

Data suggest a so called Social Media Political Participation paradox in those countries: The gap in voter turnout between young adults and older generations has not significantly decreased, despite a skyrocketing rise of social media use on the side of young adults, and the overwhelming research evidence that social media use fosters offline political participation.

Implications

When trying to understand the implications of social media for democracy across the globe, entertainment-oriented content needs to be brought back in.

Originality/value

This essay challenges the dominant research paradigm on social media use and political participation. It urges future research to theoretically develop, describe, and empirically test a comprehensive model of how social media use has the potential to mobilize and to distract.

1 Introduction

Around the globe, social media have become a centerpiece in young adults’ lives. Particularly with their smartphones, young adults can literally be on social media 24/7, permanently connected to the world and their peers ( Vorderer and Kohring 2013 ). In fact, when comparing the current young generation to their older counterparts, there is a fundamental difference in media use behaviors: While young adults, aged 16–25, rely on digital platforms or messenger services, such as Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp, or WeChat, to get the news, the older generation is much more likely to be exposed to traditional news sources such as television or newspapers. At the same time, there are dozens of studies around the globe demonstrating that, traditionally, young adults are less interested in traditional politics compared to older generations ( Delli Carpini 2017 ), less likely to vote, and generally less politically sophisticated ( Binder et al. 2021 ). In short, political parties had been, before the emergence of digital media, struggling to reach out to the younger generation. Especially when it comes to traditional institutions, you adults are often described as detached and apathetic (e.g., Binder et al. 2021 ; Loader et al. 2014 ).

Yet with social media, scholars have expressed great hopes regarding young adults’ democratic engagement (see Binder et al. 2021 ; Oser and Boulianne 2020 ): It has been argued that particularly social media can build new relationships between political actors and young adults, enable social interaction about political topics, connect people, enhance political opinion expression, equalize engagement and generally foster participation as well as boost voter turnout or contribute to social cohesion (e.g., Boulianne 2011 , 2015 , 2020 ; Goh et al. 2019 ; Loader et al. 2014 ). So, with digital media, there are grounds to believe that the generational engagement gap may be reduced, and that young citizens could be reengaged into the political world. In fact, scholars working on digital media and political engagement have been fascinated by this idea, largely pointing to democratically welcomed outcomes of social media use, such as learning or participation. For instance, researchers observed a positive relationship between the frequency of social media use and protest participation among the youth ( Valenzuala et al. 2014 ), and more generally, it has been found that political social media use is positively related to various forms of political participation (e.g., Ekström et al. 2014 ; Skoric and Zhu 2016 ). With recent meta-analyses on the topic, the evidence for the democratically positive outcomes of social media use is simply overwhelming, particularly in cross-sectional survey research ( Boulianne 2011 ; Chae et al. 2019 ; Skoric et al. 2016 ) and also with respect to young adults ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ).

However, scholarship on the democratic outcomes of social media frequently seem to overlook the fact that social media are primarily used for entertainment and relational purposes, especially when it comes to young adults ( Dimitrova and Matthes 2018 ; but see Skoric and Zhu 2016 ; Theocharis and Quintelier 2016 ). That is, the social media use of young people is clearly dominated by non-political content ( Binder et al. 2021 ). Yet the vast majority of studies do not take these forms of exposure into account, eventually ignoring a large share of the diversity in content on social media. As a consequence, scholars have turned a blind eye on potentially distractive effects of social media use on political engagement, leading to a skewed overall picture of this research field. In this conceptual paper, I take a different approach by theorizing that social media use can significantly dampen political engagement. The main reason is that social media are primarily used for entertainment and social networking purposes, which has the potential to distract rather than mobilize ( Heiss and Matthes 2021 ).

In what follows, I will briefly summarize the literature on digital media and young adults’ political engagement. Then, using illustrative, aggregate level data from the U.S., Germany, Switzerland, and Japan, I will then describe the so called Social Media Political Participation Paradox , that is, the gap in voter turnout between young adults and older generations has not significantly decreased, despite a skyrocketing rise of social media use, on the side of young adults, and the huge amount of studies suggesting a significant relation between social media use and political participation. Then, I will develop a theoretical argument for why social media use is also likely to disengage, challenging the prevailing academic reading of the literature as well as the existing empirical evidence.

2 Digital Media and Young Adults’ Political Engagement

Political engagement, often also referred to as political participation, is understood as “actions or activities by ordinary citizens that in some way are directed toward influencing political outcomes in society” ( Ekman and Amnå 2012 , p. 287). This entails a diverse repertoire ranging from traditional (e.g., voting) and non-traditional (e.g., political online discussion; see Hopmann et al. 2015 ) forms of engagement to political consumerism ( Skoric et al. 2016 ). Political engagement can be conceptualized along the lines of individual and collective actions ( Adler and Goggin 2005 ). In addition, formal political participation, such as voting or party membership, and activism, which allows for influence in the political decision making process though protests represent distinct dimensions of political engagement ( Ekman and Amnå 2012 ).

Social media has given rise to entirely new forms of action and interaction that can only happen in a digitally networked space, such as online petitions or commenting on politicians’ posts ( Sloam 2014 ). Social networks allow for non-institutionalized and horizontal modes of engagement, which are often favored by young adults ( Sloam 2014 ). Since such forms of political engagement only exist and can be exercised within social media, they also have to be treated as a separate subdimension of political engagement. Overall, the various forms of engagement can be described as either institutionalized (e.g., voting) or non-institutionalized (e.g., protest behavior). This distinction is relevant because “young adults are disproportionately more likely to participate through non-institutionalized means.” ( Weiss 2020 , p. 3), particularly in the online world. This is by no means a new insight. Since decades, scholars have bemoaned a participation gap between younger and older individuals ( Quintelier 2007 ), as “in almost every election young people are the least likely to vote, and these participation rates are continuously declining” ( Quintelier 2007 , p. 165). For instance, in Austria, young people are allowed to vote at the age of 16, but nevertheless, their turnout rates are comparably low ( Binder et al. 2021 ). Findings from other countries also suggest that young people have comparatively negative attitudes toward politics and low trust in the political system ( Quintelier 2007 ; see Binder et al. 2021 ).

But there is also hope. In this research area, “[y]outh’s digital media use is often seen as a partial remedy to the decline of youth participation in political and civic life” ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 , p. 112). The argument is that digital media is an important source of information for those not primarily interested in institutional politics. More specifically, it is generally assumed that social media fosters young adults’ political engagement because the networking function of social media helps young citizens to develop skills and psychological dispositions that promote offline participation ( Kahne and Boyer 2018 ). Also, a seminal, cross-sectional study by Gil de Zuniga et al. (2012) suggests that social media indirectly promote participation by fostering opinion expression, which is a key driver of political participation. As another indirect effect of social media on political participation, it has been argued that some forms of social media use, such as news sharing, can strengthen social relationships and increase social cohesion, which in turn, may be the driver for collective action and group engagement (e.g., Goh et al. 2019 ; Hwang and Kim 2015 ). Similarly, social media shapes civic attitudes, and such “civic identity is a central factor that fosters civic engagement because it helps individuals to see society as a construction of human actors with political and moral goals” ( Chen et al. 2015 , p. 445).

In addition, it has been theorized that social media fosters incidental exposure to political information, which leads to learning effects, and ultimately, an increase in traditional forms of political participation ( Matthes et al. 2020 ). Furthermore, as explained by Boukes (2019) , social media increase the opportunities for citizens to learn because “never before has so much information, mostly without extra financial costs, been so close at hand for citizens” (p. 39). In line with this argument, the timeline structure of social networking platforms can lead to a “by-product” learning mechanism through which knowledge gaps are reduced ( Chadwick 2012 ), ultimately leading to political participation. And, more germane to young adults, the Impressionable Years Hypothesis ( Sears and Levy 2003 ) suggests that young people are more susceptible to social media effects compared to adults, as political efficacy and engagement are not fully consolidated during adolescence (e.g., Eckstein et al. 2012 ). That is, when exposed to social media, the notion of efficacy can be strengthened in young adults, leading to participation.

So overall, the dominant argument is that social media use can foster soft—that is, non-institutionalized—forms of engagement in a first step, such as online political expression or low-effort forms of political participation. This, in turn, will then shape classical, institutionalized types of political engagement in a second step. As Bode et al. (2014) have put it, “When adolescents use social networking sites – something many of them do in their daily lives – in a new, politically oriented way, it may actually increase their likelihood of participating in politics in other ways.” (pp. 424–425). In addition, social media can also directly lead to a rise in offline participation among young adults ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ). This theory, in line with the available meta-analyses, leads to the clear prediction that social media use should increase not only non-institutionalized forms of participation, but also—indirectly or directly—traditional forms such as voting. The available “findings offer a strong, conclusive statement that online and offline forms of engagement are highly correlated; youth engage in both environments” ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 , p. 123). But how is this observable at the aggregate level when it comes to the institutionalized forms of participation, such as voting in national parliamentary elections?

3 The Generational Political Participation Gap

To reiterate, the previously available literature unequivocally suggests that social media use, particularly political forms of use, can foster online and offline political engagement (e.g., Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ). With these insights at hand, the traditional generational gap between the young and older generations in terms of institutionalized participation needs to be revisited. One could argue that, over the past decades, social media use of young adults, unlike older generations, increased from basically zero to very high levels. That is, assuming there is a significant small to medium effect size for the relationship between political social media use on online participation, and a medium to large effect size for the relationship between online and offline participation ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ), we would expect that, in the past decades, the generational gap should have decreased.

3.1 The Social Media Political Participation Paradox

To test this idea, I draw on official voter data (i.e., not self-report survey data) from the National Parliamentary Elections in Germany. As can be seen in Figure 1 , as can be expected, social media use of young individuals has increased from zero in the early 2000s to more than 80% at the time of the last election in 2017. So, in terms of the meta-analyses reported above and although such aggregate level analyses do not allow causal conclusions, one of the theorized drivers of engagement has witnessed a skyrocketing increase. But paradoxically, as visible in Figure 1 , there were no significant increases in voter turnout for individuals aged 18–24 over the years. By contrast, in 1983, young individuals showed a turnout of 84.30 (18–20 year old) and 81.50 (21–24 year old)% in the national election. In 2017, these numbers were significantly and substantially lower (69.90% and 67.00% respectively). That is, if anything changed, the numbers are more suggestive of an increase in the generational gap, rather than a decrease. Although these are only aggregate level data, they do not suggest that social media use—emerging in the last two decades—has completely changed the picture.

Voter Turnout in National Elections and Young Adults Social Media Use over Time, Germany.

Source for social media data: Koch and Frees (2007) , source for election data: Bundeswahlleiter (2017) .

Data from the United States suggest a similar, albeit not identical picture. As can be seen in Figure 2 , the generational gap in voter turnout is clearly visible over time, although young individuals slightly increased in turnout (e.g., from 44.30% in 2008 to 48% in 2020), whereas turnout for older generations remained largely at the same level. However, a fundamental shift in turnout when it comes to young adults is clearly not visible in the data, the generational gap is still evident. In Switzerland ( Selects 2019 ), 28% of young adults aged 18–24 participated in the national parliamentary election in 1999 (35% in 2003), 33% did so in the last election in 2019. By contrast, 57% of adults aged 65–74 participated in the election in 1999 (54% in 2003), and 62% did so in the last election in 2019. Again, a clear generational gap that has been consistent over time. Finally, looking at data from Japan, the turnout of people aged 20–24 was 35.3% in 2012 and 30.69% in 2017. These numbers, however, were significantly higher for individuals aged 65–69 (77.15% in 2012 and 73.35% in 2017), 70–74 (76.47% in 2012 and 74.13% in 2017), and 75–79 (71.02% in 2012 and 70.26% in 2017). This suggests a huge generational gap when it comes to participation in national elections in those countries, and there is no clear indication the gap has decreased over the years.

Voter Turnout in National Elections and Young Adults Social Media Use over Time, USA.

Source for voting: U.S. Census Bureau, Current Population Survey, Source for social media use: Pew Research Center, 2021.

So overall, these aggregate data deliver a clear message for these four countries, none of which has witnessed huge protest movements outside traditional party politics. Young adults are significantly less likely to vote in national elections compared to older generations, and it seems this gap has not decreased over the past decades, as one would expect from the enthusiastic voices in research on social media use and political participation.

In fact, the findings appear somewhat paradox: The social media use has increased from zero to almost 100% in the last two decades, which should, considering the effect sizes observed in previous research, also become visible at the aggregate level. So, on the one hand, we learn from previous research that social media significantly fosters political participation, online and offline (e.g., Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ), on the other hand, we don’t see a higher turnout compared to older generations, who are much less likely to use social media compared to their younger counterparts. And even if they did, we would expect an increase in turnout for this group as well, which has not been the case. This phenomenon can be called the Social Media Political Participation Paradox . In short, at the aggregate level, it appears as if social media has not changed a thing, although social science research suggests quite the opposite.

3.2 Explaining the Paradox

Of course, on the methodological the most obvious explanation is ecological fallacy. We can’t derive any assumptions on individual level effects when looking at aggregate level data. Ultimately, no causal claims can be made, nor can we say anything about intraindividual change or processes. There may also be simultaneous, competing processes, and third variables cannot be controlled at all. Yet what we learn is that there is a generational gap in participation at the aggregate level which is, by and large, rather substantial. So at best, the data reported above can be understood as anecdotal evidence . Yet on theoretical grounds, the findings could inspire us to elaborate on why social media use may not automatically lead to strong shifts in institutionalized forms of political participation.

Several reasons can be found for this in the literature. On the theoretical side, the recent Social Media Political Participation model ( Knoll et al. 2020 ) holds that social media can foster participation only when a chain of subsequent conditions are met. According to this model, young adults have to be (intentionally or incidentally) exposed to political content on social media, they need to appraise political content on social media as relevant (as compared to other content that is simultaneously present), there needs to be a discrepancy between a current state and a future, desired state, they need to believe that a participation goal is attainable, and this goal must then be dominant in a real behavioral situation, in which other behavioral goals may be present as well (see Knoll et al. 2020 ). If one of the conditions is not met, social media use may not increase offline forms of political participation, according to the model. This model can explain why participation efforts of young adults are often short-lived, they can rise to substantial amounts during times of protest, but remain low in times of national elections. It would suffice if one of the appraisals is negative, as for instance, when other goals appear to be more important in an behavioral situation. Obviously, typical self-report survey studies cannot fully grasp the process described in the model because the behavioral situation is hardly taken into account in the typical research designs and the processes can hardly be measured in retrospect.

Second, it has been argued that social media is more likely to impact non-institutionalized forms of participation, rather than institutionalized ones ( Sloam 2014 ). That is, social media may engage young people politically, but that doesn’t necessarily make them more likely to participate in elections. In other words, social media can have the potential to engage, but such engagement may be short-lived, conditional, and bound to specific topics such as environmental engagement, animal rights, or social protest.

Third, and more importantly, when looking at the democratically relevant effects of social media use, scholars rarely consider (or control) non-political, entertainment-oriented content ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ). Non-political, entertainment-oriented content can be information on lifestyles, products, leisure, sports, or social relationships on social media (see Hanitzsch and Vos 2018 ). Yet when we estimate the effects of political social media use without at least controlling non-political forms, we may end up with erroneous conclusions about the mobilizing potential of social media. Political contents and entertainment-oriented contents are simultaneously present on social media. A typical newsfeed completely mixes both.

As expressed by Boulianne and Theocharis (2020) , “purely social-, entertainment-, and leisure-oriented activities carried out on digital media do not necessarily mobilize individuals for civic or political action.” (p. 114) Entertainment-oriented use of social media may serve the purpose to create an “emotional relief generated by temporarily recreating or recessing from daily routines” ( Buzeta et al. 2020 , p. 81). When compared to political social media use, entertainment-oriented use accounts for a large proportion of everyday Internet use, especially among adolescents ( Büchi et al. 2016 ). For instance, in a recent over time experiment using behavioral browsing data, Wojcieszak et al. (2021) found that news websites comprised only 3.54% of the browsing behavior. The authors conclude that “news content is nearly unnoticeable in the context of overall information and communication ecology of most individuals” (p. 8).

Despite the relevance of non-political content on social media, scholars have hardly looked at the relationship of entertainment-oriented use of social media and political participation ( Skoric et al. 2016 ). As one rare exception, Kahne and Bowyer (2018) , observed that non-political content can serve as a gateway to various forms of civic and political participation. Yet other studies found no such gateway effects. In a cross-sectional study conducted in the Netherlands, Bakker and de Vreese (2011) observed non-political social media use had negative consequences for political participation. Additionally, data collected by Chan et al. (2012) suggest that the effect of Weibo use on the willingness to express one’s political views was weakened when entertainment motives prevailed. An experiment by Theocharis and Lowe (2016) even suggests negative consequences of Facebook use for participation because it can distract from politics. So taken together, only a few studies looked into the effects of non-political social media use on participation, some suggest that entertainment activities on social media may serve as a gateway to participation ( Kahne and Bowyer 2018 ), others speak of distraction from politics ( Bakker and de Vreese 2011 ; Boukes 2019 ; Chan et al. 2012 ; Theocharis and Lowe 2016 ).

Besides adding entertainment-oriented exposure as a predictor, it is also important to understand how entertainment-oriented and political uses of social media interact. If we accept both types of uses as separate dimensions, we arrive at four different types of audience members: “the Avoiders” (political use: low and entertainment-oriented use: high), “the Inactive” (political use: low and entertainment-oriented use: low), “the Distracted” (political use: high and entertainment-oriented use: high), and “the Focused” (political use: high and entertainment-oriented use: low). This typology of ideal groups is depicted in Figure 3 (see Matthes et al. 2021 ).

A typology of users based on the two dimensions entertainment-oriented use and political use of social media.

For the purposes of the present paper, the theoretically most relevant group are “the Distracted”. I use this term because I theorize that high loads of entertainment content may potentially distract the processing of political content. There are several theoretical reasons for that. As suggested by the priming literature ( Higgins 1996 ), the accessibility of concepts can drive cognitions and behaviors. Thus, when young adults evaluate the importance of concepts, they do not use all of the information they have available in memory. Instead, they often rely highly accessible information ( Iyengar and Kinder 1987 ). Here, accessibility refers to the ease or speed with which available information can be retrieved from memory. Information that is recently and frequency activated, is more likely to be temporary accessible ( Arendt and Matthes 2014 ). At the same time, of course, individuals’ cognitions are also driven by their basic political and social orientations which are be chronically accessible. But the influence of chronically accessible concepts can be weakened when individuals are frequently and recently exposed to other considerations. When, for instance, people are exposed to entertainment-oriented content, these non-political considerations become cognitively accessible. That is, when young adults are permanently confronted with non-political content, as for instance, about friends, family, movies, or sports, this content gets situated at the top of the head, making it more cognitively accessible when making judgments about political matters, including engagement.

That means, non-political content on social media competes with (and may even impede) the accessibility of political content. The Social Media Political Participation model ( Knoll et al. 2020 ) holds that political content on social media can only affect offline political participation when the content is appraised as relevant. However, when young adults are primarily exposed to non-political content, this may shift the perceived relevance of political considerations. In other words, when there is an abundance of entertaining, non-political news, the current political issues may appear less severe, and therefore, also less personally relevant. As a consequence, young adults may engage less with political content, which is a prerequisite to political participation. By the same token, the model holds that the goal to vote needs to be dominant in a real behavioral situation. When other goals are present as well, such as visiting friends or going shopping, then young adults will only cast their vote when this goal is dominant, that is, more important than other goals. So again, the argument is that non-political content on social media can shift the appraisal of goals.

What is more, we know from entertainment research that particularly hedonic entertainment content has a high absorption potential, and based on that, it can interfere with the cognitive elaboration of political content, “because it absorbs attentional resources to a degree that interferes with further elaboration” ( Bartsch and Schneider 2014 , p. 376). Also, on a perceptual level, non-political content is often perceived as more eye-catching as compared to political content. The reason is that the former typically relates to close ties such as friends and family and it is often associated with immediate positive gratifications.

Moreover, not all individuals may be exposed to political and non-political content on social media simultaneously. “The Avoiders”, albeit high in general social media use, may try to bypass exposure to political content, as for instance when an “individual exposes him- or herself to a limited amount of news because other content has more appeal to him or her, many algorithms will make future content decisions in favor of other content, e.g., entertainment, and give news stories a lower priority” ( Skovsgaard and Andersen 2020 , p. 466). Young adults interested in non-political contents may curate their newsfeed on SNS platforms in ways which exposes them to high degrees of entertainment-oriented content with low likelihood of exposure to political contents. This may lead to low-effort, feel-good types of engagement at best, making high-effort, offline political participation less likely.

But still, but even for news avoiders, scholars have argued that social media has the potential to foster participation because people can be accidentally exposed to political information in their newsfeeds. So even though young adults may not want to see political information, they may see it based on their social environments and networks ( Matthes et al. 2020 ). This exposure to political information may then lead to learning, and ultimately, participation. While scholars agree on the importance of incidental exposure for participatory outcomes, they have, at the same time, entirely ignored the opposite logic: Social media also exposed individuals accidentally to non-political information. Such incidental exposure to non-political content “can have important effects on political outcomes such as learning or participation. The more people are confronted with non-political content (without actively looking for it), the more they are potentially distracted from their primary political processing goal” ( Matthes et al. 2020 , pp. 1137–1038). So as much as incidental exposure to political content can engage, so can incidental exposure to non-political content distract and disengage. Unfortunately, while there are dozens of studies on the former phenomenon, we lack studies on the latter.

3.3 Testing the Paradox

The paradox described here is situated at the aggregate level. However, additional evidence is needed to explain why this paradox occurs. For this, it is therefore important to look at the outcomes of entertainment-oriented content at the individual level. That is, we should not only model political media use as a predictor of participatory outcomes, but simultaneously access (or at least control) exposure to non-political content. These two dimensions can then not only be used as focal predictors, they may also interact in a regression model (see Figure 3 ). High levels of entertainment-oriented non-political content on social media may have a “vampire” effect, when young adults are simultaneously exposed to political content on social media as well. Some young adults, those with high levels of political interest and sophistication, may primarily be exposed to political content on social media, which in fact, can be theorized to increase levels of online and offline political participation ( Knoll et al. 2020 ). These conjectures suggest that social media use, as a generic category, is of limited use in global research on digital media.

A similar argument can be made for the measurement of political participation. Oftentimes, scholars create participation indices by averaging several, distinct acts, such as wearing buttons of a party, sharing personal political experiences on social media, signing a petition, or voting in an election (see for a discussion, Theocharis and van Deth 2018 ). These measures blur the differences between institutionalized and non-institutionalized forms of participation. Differentiating between these forms beyond the classic online versus offline notion, however, is crucial to understand the political consequences of social media use.

In addition to that, it is important to note that the typical survey approach used in political communication scholarship has its limitations as well. The reason is that self-report measures of social media use are largely biased ( Scharkow 2019 ). Also, typical experiments use forced-exposure settings, which cannot be compared to news reception situations in the real world ( Wojcieszak et al. 2021 ) Thus, to empirically examine the paradox, future studies need to rely on more naturalistic settings, such as web-tracking data or mobile experience sampling. With such measures, we can more precisely estimate the amount of exposure to political and non-political content.

4 Conclusion

With the emergence of social media, great hopes have been expressed across the globe that young adults may reengage into traditional politics, directly due to the various activities happening on social media, and indirectly by shaping low-effort forms of online-engagement in the first place, which is then assumed to shape offline participation in a second step. In fact, the available evidence clearly suggests that social media use, particularly political one, has an impact on offline forms of participation ( Boulianne and Theocharis 2020 ). However, aggregate level data from Germany, the U.S., Switzerland, and Japan indicate that generational gaps between younger and older adults have not or only marginally decreased. Although there was an unprecedented up rise of social media use over the past decades (including an increase in political uses), voter turnout did not change significantly, and was substantially lower as compared to the older generation. At the same time, the entire body of research on social media and political participation would suggest an increase in participatory activities of young adults. In explaining this paradox, this paper pointed to the potentially distracting functions of social media, mainly due to non-political, entertainment-oriented content. Such content can make non-political information more accessible, ultimately impeding the processing and salience of political considerations, dampening the activation and execution of participatory goals. In order to test these conjectures, future research needs to carefully distinguish several types of content on social media, on several platforms and channels, and access motivations, gratifications of usage as well as contents. This may lead to a more nuanced picture about the social media based political engagement of young adults, particularly when it comes to the democratically most relevant outcome: voting in an election.

Article Note: This article underwent single-blind peer review.

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National Policy

Youth in Politics: Why it’s Important and Why You Should Get Involved

The contemporary political climate in America holds immense tension, yielded by Donald Trump and Joe Biden. Common discussion in the day-to-day lives of citizens includes Black Lives Matter, climate change, racism, and a multitude of other deep-rooted issues. Despite the current relevance of these topics, each issue is rooted within the foundations of American government- an aspect we are all affected by.

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Jenna Rowen-Delson

June 21, 2021

Inquiry-driven, this article reflects personal views, aiming to enrich problem-related discourse.

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We may not be physically present at protests nor directly affected by a new bill, but each decision within politics acts as the first part of a chain reaction. Each decision trickles down into daily life- perhaps in the taxes of your school that changes procedures; your favorite restaurant that closes earlier; and numerous other lifestyle changes.

Given the current polarity of American politics, these issues and decisions are often overlooked by teenagers. The threat of being deemed ignorant or unintelligent by peers weighs heavily on us all, with the notion that our voices are irrelevant. This could not be further from the truth, in the most literal sense. In some states, you can pre-register to vote at 16 years old. This ability was studied by Anthony Fowler at the University of Chicago, who found that allowing future voters to pre-register increases both registration and turnout by 2.1 percentage points. Waiting to care for politics until you turn 18 means a lack of understanding, a lack of knowledge, and subsequently a lack of ability to make political choices that are important to you.

 By informing yourself early on, you can be better prepared to vote for candidates who have the same priorities as you, whether that be climate change, gun control, or abortion, etc. You can encourage others around you to do the same. Use your voice by casting your vote. 

An article by Lexi Anderson of Pratt Institute encompasses this notion quite well. Understanding politics is, “a definitive way to navigate your own moral and ideological compass.” Informing yourself can only act to your benefit.

This year, the national turnout for young voters was estimated to be 52-55%. This is compared to the 2016 presidential election, where there was a 42-44% estimate.

So in 2016, less than half of citizens ages 18 to 29 voted in 2016’s presidential election. That’s compared to 71% of those 65+. How sad is it that the very generation whose future will be affected by those being elected into office, isn’t even voting? We are letting a generation that won’t have to deal with the effects of their actions make decisions that will affect our generation’s futures. 

Many times, young people complain about how policies don’t represent what they want. Is that really a surprise? Not only do young people have a lower voter turnout and lower political participation, but the average age of House Members at the beginning of the 116th Congress was 57.6years, and that number increases to 62.9 years for Senators. 

You can’t expect older politicians to be able to address and fulfill all young people’s needs. But by participating in politics at a young age, you have the opportunity to make a change.

One of the most important things young voters should know before getting involved in politics is that your voice matters. Even if you can’t vote, there are many things you can do. These include signing petitions, registering others to vote, and contacting those representing you. Start a political club in your community, help inform others, or help a local campaign. The possibilities are endless.

I had the amazing opportunity to talk to former presidential candidate Andrew Yang about his thoughts a few weeks ago on a Zoom call Q&A session with some other young people interested in politics.

My question: “How can we encourage more young people to get interested in politics or at least be willing to learn?”

Yang: “That’s a great point and this is something I’m passionate about. That’s one of the reasons I got a Tiktok.” (You can follow Andrew Yang on Tiktok @officialandrewyang).

 “We have to make politics interesting for young people because if you’re 15, 16, and I just talk to you about something future-oriented and boring then it’s like, ‘well that sucks.’ So I think we should meet people where they are honest. You have to try and make politics fun and alive. And our politicians are bad at that. So I don’t blame young people. I blame our politicians, frankly.”

Yang then went on to say, “I would love to lower the voting age to 16, myself. Because then every American high school becomes like voter central. And then instead of saying ‘hey it’s in the abstract…’ There are so many good reasons to lower the voting age to 16.”

 “One, everyone registers, because you’re in high school, and, you know, it’s pretty easy to find you. You’re all in the same place. The younger you are the first time you vote, the more likely you are to vote the entire time. Policies would skew towards young people more because right now old people vote and young people less so. You can pay taxes starting at 16 so why can you not know where your taxes go. You can start driving at 16 so how can you be trusted with a car and not a vote? So there are all these great reasons to lower the voting age to 16.”

“In the meantime, I would try to get people interested by saying, ‘look, there’s something that’s going to be very pressing for you eventually so might as well get started on it.’ The other thing I say is you might not be able to vote, but you can bug a voter. You can get one person to vote and then it’s like you voted!”

Andrew Yang brought up several great points in his response, all of which I agree with. Politics, a lot of the time, can seem uninteresting to our generation. With the rise of social media, many politicians have used platforms like Instagram and Tiktok to engage with young voters.

Some of these include Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez on Instagram, with 8.2 million followers. Jon Ossoff, candidate for the US Senate has recently been using Tiktok to win over young voters down in Georgia, and get them to vote in the runoff election on January 5th.

With an abundance of politics-oriented social media accounts and the flow of information so readily available through social media, it is extremely easy for youth to inform themselves. If you want to learn about a particular issue but don’t want to read an entire lengthy article, there are various videos online that break each issue down. 

There isn’t just one way to get involved in politics, there are so many different ways to acquire information and get involved. Our democracy was created to give the people what they want. For our government to best reflect the needs and wants of citizens, it is up to us to get involved and make a change. Young people hold valuable information and the knowledge to make the changes that previous generations have not.

Works Cited

https://www.usa.gov/voter-registration-age-requirements

https://circle.tufts.edu/latest-research/election-week-2020#youth-voter-turnout-increased-in-2020

https://www.edsurge.com/news/2020-10-13-young-people-care-about-elections-they-just-don-t-always-show-up-to-vote-here-s-how-education-can-help

https://www.bridgealliance.us/7_ways_for_teens_to_get_involved_in_politics

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/08/upshot/youth-voting-2020-election.html

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/political-participation-importance/participating-will-expand-your-knowledge-and-relationships

https://fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R45583.pdf

https://studybreaks.com/thoughts/5-reasons-political-aware/

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Jenna Rowen-Delson is a high school sophomore with a strong interest in politics and a passion for youth involvement in politics.

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One of Asia’s most important diplomatic wars is being waged somewhere else entirely: the South Pacific. Taiwan is on the defensive as China gradually wins over its allies with economic aid, while the United States concerns itself with the struggle’s implications for its own position in the region.

Indonesia: Diversity, Natural Wealth, and a Leader's Commitment to an Inclusive Future

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Youth, politics, and participation in a changing world

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• 10.1177/1440783317705733

T1 - Youth, politics, and participation in a changing world

AU - Pruitt, Lesley

N2 - What options do young people have for enacting social and political change? Can traditional politics redeem itself in the eyes of youth? Can political leaders hear young people? Do they listen? What alternative avenues for politics might young people pursue or propose? What are their respective prospects and challenges? These are some key questions that arise when readingYoung Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society, by Philippa Collin, Running from Office, by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, and Youth and Generation by Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn. In this review essay, these books are critically analysed alongside existing relevant literature to explore the ways young people today engage with politics and political participation, including how this reflects commonalities but also differences with previous social generations. Such work lends itself to an argument for reflecting on the state of democracy and young people’s actual and perceived roles as citizens.

AB - What options do young people have for enacting social and political change? Can traditional politics redeem itself in the eyes of youth? Can political leaders hear young people? Do they listen? What alternative avenues for politics might young people pursue or propose? What are their respective prospects and challenges? These are some key questions that arise when readingYoung Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society, by Philippa Collin, Running from Office, by Jennifer Lawless and Richard Fox, and Youth and Generation by Dan Woodman and Johanna Wyn. In this review essay, these books are critically analysed alongside existing relevant literature to explore the ways young people today engage with politics and political participation, including how this reflects commonalities but also differences with previous social generations. Such work lends itself to an argument for reflecting on the state of democracy and young people’s actual and perceived roles as citizens.

KW - change

KW - continuity

KW - democracy

KW - participation

KW - politics

U2 - 10.1177/1440783317705733

DO - 10.1177/1440783317705733

M3 - Article

SN - 1440-7833

JO - Journal of Sociology

JF - Journal of Sociology

Texas appeals court blocks state from probing transgender kids’ parents

A Texas appeals court on Friday upheld a lower court’s injunction blocking the state from investigating parents who provide their transgender children with gender-affirming medical treatments, which Gov. Greg Abbott has called abusive.

Abbott, a Republican, had ordered the state Department of Family Protective Services to carry out child abuse investigations into families whose children were receiving puberty-blocking treatments in February 2022.

A month later, a district court judge imposed a statewide  temporary injunction  on such investigations, saying the probes endangered children and their families.

The appeals court in Austin upheld the district court judge’s injunction in a pair of rulings on Friday, delivering a victory to LGBTQ groups, medical professionals and civil liberties advocates opposing moves by conservative politicians in  dozens of states  to criminalize the provision of gender-affirming treatments for trans youth.

“This is a much-needed victory for trans youth and those who love and support them,” the American Civil Liberties Union said on X on Friday.

Representatives for Abbott and the DFPS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The ACLU and Lambda Legal challenged Abbott’s order on behalf of the family of a 16-year-old transgender girl targeted for investigation.

The child had taken puberty-delaying medications and hormone therapy. Her mother was a DFPS employee and was put on paid administrative leave after asking what Abbott’s directive would mean for her family.

In 2022, the district court judge said the governor’s order could cause “irreparable injury” to families, given the stigma attached to being targets of a child abuse investigation, as well as the loss of livelihood.

Texas restricted gender-affirming care for youth in 2023, making it one of more than a dozen states that currently bars young transgender people from receiving certain puberty-blockers and hormone therapies, according to the Human Rights Campaign.

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The Link Between the Resurrection and Elections

I went to a funeral recently. It was an old friend and former colleague . The big "C," diagnosed six years ago. He outlived the first diagnosis by five years but eventually it caught up. Splendid service, lovely music, fine sermon, many poignant moments. I met dozens of people I hadn’t seen for years. All as it should be.

Except for one thing. The service was billed as a "resurrection" celebration. The printed service paper said so. The preacher said so. Some of the hymns said so. But the resurrection itself—a new bodily life in God’s eventual new creation—was conspicuous by its all-but-absence. And that’s a problem. Not only because most people in our culture don’t know what "resurrection" means , but because they don’t know why it matters .

Resurrection matters because what you ultimately hope for affects the person you are right now. More particularly, it matters because people who really believe in resurrection have a different approach to all of life—including politics. Including issues of justice and mercy, at all levels. Including, dare I say, voting and elections. This affects all of us.

Read More: The Hidden History of Those Who Wrote the Christian Story

So what does "resurrection" mean? Most people today assume that it’s a fancy way of saying "life after death." That’s certainly what I would have picked up from that funeral service. But "resurrection" never meant "life after death," or "going to heaven." Plenty of people in Jesus’ day believed in "life after death," in some form, but were still shocked by talk of "resurrection." That’s because "resurrection" always meant people who had been physically dead coming back to a new life—a new bodily life. Whatever we might mean by "life after death" (the Bible actually says very little about that), "resurrection" is a further stage. It’s life after "life after death." Wherever Jesus was after his horrible death, he wasn’t raised again until the third day. "Resurrection" is the final stage in a two-stage post-mortem journey. With that, a new world is born, full of possibilities.

Jesus’ risen body was the first element in God’s long-promised "new creation." A little bit of God’s new world, coming forward from the ultimate future into our surprised and unready present time. And launching the project of new creation that continues to this day.

Most people in our world, including most churchgoers, have never heard this explained. This robs us, as individuals, of our ultimate hope, leaving us with "pie in the sky when you die," which was never the original Christian vision. In particular, it robs us of the motivation to work for God’s new creation in the present. And that means public life—justice, politics, voting—and all that goes with them.

Read More: The Bible’s Most Misunderstood Verse

Here's the point: Jesus’ resurrection doesn’t mean, "He’s gone to heaven, so we can go there too" (though you might be forgiven for thinking it meant that, granted the many sermons both at funerals and at Easter). It means, "In Jesus, God has launched his plan to remake creation as a whole, and if you are a follower of Jesus you get to be part of that right now." What God did for Jesus, close up and personal, is what he plans to do for the whole world. And the project is already under way.

How does this work? One way of putting it is to say that God intends to put the whole world right in the end. This will be a great act of total new creation, for which Jesus’ resurrection is the advance model. In the present time, though, God puts people right—women, men, children—by bringing them to faith in Jesus and shaping their lives by his spirit. And he does this so that they can, here and now, become "putting-right" people for the world. In the future, God will put the world right; in the present, God does put people right.

And the "put-right" people are called to be "putting-right" people, Sermon-on-the-Mount people, lovers of justice and peace, in and for God’s world. They are to be signs of the new creation which began with Jesus’ resurrection. They are to produce, here and now, further signs of that new world. The church as a whole, and every member, is called to become a small working model of new creation.

And that new creation includes (what we call) social reform. Check out the relevant biblical passages. The Psalms sketch the ideal society: in Psalm 72, the No.1 priority for God’s chosen king is to look after the weak, the poor and the helpless. The prophets add their dramatic pictures, as in Isaiah 11 where the wolf and the lamb will lie down together. (They tried that in a zoo in California, and it worked fine provided they put in a new lamb each day.) Already in Jesus’ day some Jewish teachers were interpreting Isaiah’s picture of the peaceable world in terms of warring nations finding reconciliation. Jesus announced that the time had come for this new way of peace. St Paul picked up that theme, seeing the church as, by definition, a multicultural, multi-ethnic society, without social class or gender hierarchy, as a sign and foretaste of the coming new creation of justice and peace.

The tragedy in the western churches is that, by misunderstanding "resurrection," both the "conservatives" and the "liberals" have robbed themselves of the whole message. The conservatives, eager to tell people how to go to heaven, regard any attempt to improve the present world as a distraction, not realizing that with Jesus’ resurrection the new creation has already been launched. The liberals, having long been taught that science has disproved Jesus’ resurrection, dismiss its importance and pursue their own vision of social improvement.

Hence the unholy stand-off: liberal Christians saying "justice and peace" but denying resurrection; conservative Christians saying "resurrection" but meaning "going to heaven." The problem is that trying to get the result (social justice) without the resource (Jesus’ resurrection) is building on sand. Just as a "heaven " that is not "a new creation" is vacuous (and unbiblical), a liberal agenda that is not rooted in the resurrection is rudderless. The 18th-century Enlightenment tried that experiment (reform without resurrection), and it clearly hasn’t worked. No: it is because God raised Jesus from the dead that ultimate new creation is promised, and present new creation becomes possible.

A true understanding of new creation, instead, starts with the Easter message about Jesus’ new bodily life, and the powerful gift of his spirit. It flows out into creative, healing, and restorative work in God’s world—including, of course, political and public life. That insight slices through our present culture wars, where bits of half-remembered "religion" get muddled up with bits of half-understood "politics." It’s time to reset the terms, both of debate and of action. Get resurrection right and political priorities, including wise voting, will rearrange themselves.

That is the hope. And, in the New Testament, "hope" doesn’t mean "optimism" or "always look on the bright side." It means Jesus.

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Conservatives Are Getting Comfortable Talking Openly About a National Abortion Ban

After this week’s oral argument, few court watchers believe the Supreme Court is now ready to limit the Food and Drug Administration’s authority to approve mifepristone , a drug used in more than half of all abortions , as opponents of abortion sought. At oral argument in FDA v. Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine , it did not appear that the plaintiff doctors persuaded the court that the law inflicted injuries that would give them standing to sue. The reason for the justices’ skepticism is not hard to find. The doctors built their case on a mountain of remote possibilities. Patients might suffer complications from mifepristone—a drug with an impressively low complication rate—and might seek treatment at emergency rooms, where the plaintiffs may happen to practice, when the plaintiffs might not be able to find another physician willing to intervene. And all of that might mean that the plaintiffs would have to act in violation of their conscience. But then again, it might not. That’s why this case seems dead on arrival: The justices seemed unwilling to engage in the sort of rank speculation the plaintiffs have in mind. If this chain of hypotheticals is enough, anyone can bring a constitutional challenge to any drug approval or any law.

But the case was also a vehicle for advancing ever more expansive conscience-based arguments that have become common currency among Christian conservatives—claims of the kind we have seen in well-known cases like the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision recognizing conscience objections to the contraceptive mandate of the Affordable Care Act or even last year’s ruling in 303 Creative v. Elenis that allowed a conservative Christian graphic designer to refuse to make custom websites for same-sex weddings.

Today, those with conscience-based objections seek more than to pray or dress in conformity with religious belief. They object to laws providing Americans access to health care or freedom from discrimination. Compliance with these laws, they claim, would make the objector complicit in the assertedly sinful conduct of others.

Objectors bringing this new generation of complicity-based conscience claims invite courts to deny other Americans the protections of the law. In the FDA case, the plaintiffs do not even seek an exemption from the law; through an expansive standing claim, the doctors claim the only way the court could protect their conscience is to strike down FDA approvals providing all Americans access to medication abortion. Simply having mifepristone on the market, they argue, risks making them complicit in abortion.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson zeroed in on the problems with this argument. She observed that Erin Hawley, the attorney for the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, had identified a “broad” and “narrow” idea of conscience. The “narrow” reading was straightforward: “participating in a procedure.” This reading had problems of its own: In fact, no doctor was obliged to prescribe mifepristone, and in any event, federal law provides doctors conscience protections.

Yet Hawley didn’t think complicity ended there. Jackson seemed confused. Did Hawley mean that a handful of other doctors who participated in post-abortion procedures, such as the removal of tissue, were also complicit? Or was Hawley asking the court to recognize the complicity claims of someone who worked in an emergency room where abortions took place, or handed an abortion provider a water bottle?

Jackson spotlighted a defining feature of “conscience-war” claims that one of us (Reva Siegel), writing with Douglas NeJaime, has identified : Conservatives assert ever-expanding complicity-based conscience claims, urging the government to accommodate their claims without making any provision for other Americans who would lose the protection of law. Appealing to the value of conscience obscures the material and dignitary harm that accommodating the objection inflicts on others.

Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar stressed this point: While the plaintiffs could not say their conscience had been or would be harmed, their claim to conscience obscured harm done to a variety of other parties. That includes the FDA, which had its own scientific judgments displaced, and the pharmaceutical industry, which relies on the FDA approval process to ensure some sort of uniform industry standards. First and foremost, it includes, as Prelogar noted, “women who need access to medication abortion .”

Conscience claims have been alluring to conservatives because, like colorblindness, they allow conservatives to speak as a “minority,” and to assert traditional family values as individual freedom claims. But there is a telling shift. When groups like Alliance Defending Freedom asserted complicity-based conscience claims at the time of Hobby Lobby , they worried about losing in a Supreme Court that was far less conservative—and about alienating a Republican Party that still prioritized electability rather than ideological purity.

By contrast, in Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, ADF talked not only about protecting women or safeguarding conscience; it made claims around the Comstock Act, a symbol of Victorian sexual morality focused not on protecting fetal life but on discouraging illicit sex , that ADF seeks to reinvent as a de facto national abortion ban. ADF argued that FDA could not have had the authority to approve telehealth abortions in 2021 because the Comstock Act bars the mailing of abortion pills—and indeed, any abortion-related item. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito both seemed interested in transforming the 1873 Comstock Act into an abortion ban that American voters would never choose to enact. Alito seemed shy about mentioning Comstock by name, instead referring to the hard-to-recognize number in the U.S. Code. Thomas was not so reserved, all but telling attorneys for Danco, the maker of the name-brand mifepristone, that the Comstock Act barred the mailing of the drug.

The very fact that ADF wants to talk about the Comstock Act is remarkable. It seems unwise to hitch the anti-abortion movement’s star to a 19 th -century anti-vice movement known for “Comstockery”: censoring political speech, undermining democratic norms, and condemning any form of sex not intended for procreation .

Voters have already rejected state abortion bans. Just imagine what most Americans would make of it if an already unpopular Supreme Court interpreted a law from 1873 as a sweeping, punitive zombie abortion ban. But worrying about the public’s reaction assumes the movement is seeking to persuade voters rather than simply looking for ways to use power to enforce traditional family values and punish those who become pregnant or might provide them medical care. Anti-abortion groups are planning to revive enforcement of the Comstock Act if Donald Trump wins the presidency , claiming they would not need Congress to act .

The argument in the mifepristone case was a potent reminder of why conservatives have gravitated to conscience claims—and demonstrated the hidden harms that these claims can inflict on other Americans. But the conversation at the Supreme Court this week also suggested that conservatives are preparing to express the values underlying complicity-based conscience claims more openly. As it gains power, members of the anti-abortion movement seem increasingly ready to take off the mask.

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Biden Is Breaking Campaign Rule No. 1. And It Just Might Work.

By Felicia Wong

Ms. Wong is the president and chief executive of Roosevelt Forward, a progressive advocacy organization.

Should we have trillionaires? Should we even have billionaires? According to at least one recent analysis , the economy is on track to mint its first trillionaire — that is 1,000 billion — within a decade. Such staggering accumulations of wealth are made possible in large part by the fact that America’s federal tax burden is so comparatively light. After a long period of seeming to venerate the 1 percent, or the 1 percent of 1 percent of 1 percent, American sentiment is swinging hard against this imbalance.

Now President Biden, behind in many polls and with an economy that is objectively strong but politically unpopular, is hoping to boost his re-election bid with a policy idea that would once have been almost unthinkable: For this portion of the population, at least, he is vowing — almost gleefully — to raise taxes.

Even for a popular president, this would seem like a huge risk. For a Democrat with low job approval ratings and precarious poll numbers on his handling of the economy, it’s a shocking rebuke to conventional wisdom — and practically an invitation to critics to call him a tax-and-spend liberal. But on the politics as well as the policy, Mr. Biden is making the right call. Economic ideas that were once dead on arrival are now gaining traction on both the left and the right. The moment has arrived for changes in the tax code — and maybe beyond.

For at least the past half-century, raising taxes has been the third rail of American politics. Ronald Reagan rode the wave of the late-1970s tax revolt into the Oval Office. I was a kid in California then, and I remember how fierce the anti-tax sentiment was. Howard Jarvis and his followers, mostly older white property owners, pushed for the ballot initiative known as Proposition 13 because they were, in their words, mad as hell that their rising taxes would help educate immigrant families. The anti-taxers won by a nearly two-to-one ratio.

Time magazine put Mr. Jarvis on its cover and called Prop. 13 the “most radical slash in property taxes since Depression days.” The movement devastated schools and social services. But it was political gold and spread nationwide.

During his first year as president, Mr. Reagan cut the highest personal income tax rate from 70 percent to 50 percent. He cut taxes for low-income Americans, too, decreased the maximum capital gains rate from 28 percent to 20 percent and cut corporate taxes. These tax cuts caused such deficits that Mr. Reagan had to reverse some of them during the rest of his time in office, but that is not how history remembers his presidency. By the end of his second term, the top individual rate was only 33 percent.

Anti-tax activists made cutting taxes an explicit political litmus test . In 1988, George H.W. Bush famously pledged, “Read my lips: no new taxes.” Twenty-five years later, Barack Obama modestly raised taxes on the highest-earning Americans, but he kept quiet about it, instead touting middle-class tax cuts that, he said, left middle-income families with a lower tax rate than at “almost any other period in the last 60 years.”

Fast-forward to Mr. Biden, who is making $5 trillion in tax increases central to his re-election campaign. During his State of the Union speech this month, he even made fun of Republicans for favoring cuts. Getting the rich to pay their share is right up there with getting greedy companies to stop charging you junk fees and, he said, shrinking your Snickers bars .

What explains the pivot? The president is following the money. Over the past decade and even more since the pandemic, wealth concentration has shot up astonishingly. Elon Musk was worth about $25 billion in 2020 and at the end of 2023 was worth almost 10 times that. In 1990 there were nearly 70 American billionaires . Today there are nearly 700. To what earthly end are we encouraging trillionaires?

The trend toward extreme inequality has fueled tremendous populist outrage, like the tax revolt in reverse. It may have been the Bernie Sanders left that started the “billionaires are a policy failure” meme, but poll after poll shows that two-thirds to three-quarters of Americans want higher taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

It isn’t all outrage, though. A lot of it is common sense. As one of the wealthy nations with the lowest tax rates, the United States has put off investing in our families and children. This deferred maintenance is costly: Our child care, health care, family leave and higher education systems are, as a result, among the most expensive and least accessible in the world. Making these arenas a priority is affordable and effective, and they have waited far too long.

Raising high-end taxes can be good for business, too. In the 1960s, George Romney, Mitt’s father, regularly turned down his bonuses from his auto executive job, perhaps in part because his marginal tax rate would have been about 90 percent. It made more sense for companies then to invest excess profits back into their businesses rather than in C.E.O. pay packages. Today, C.E.O. pay at the largest companies has skyrocketed while businesses have invested less in research , physical plant and other capital assets.

“Tax and spend” wasn’t always an epithet. Reagan Republicans and 1970s-era right-wing populists weaponized the label every chance they got. “You could be talking about the Mets versus the Dodgers,” the former U.S. Representative Steve Israel of New York recalled , “and good Republican operatives would be able to weave in tax-and-spend.”

But the term, as Mr. Biden and his team clearly know, no longer stings in quite the same way, especially not if taxes are linked to a vision that would make Americans’ lives less anxiety-ridden and more stable. Donald Trump’s hallmark legislative achievement, the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, which cut more than $1 trillion in taxes — mostly for the wealthy and corporations — has major provisions that are set to expire next year. A partisan battle will ensue. Mr. Biden’s 2024 push on taxes is a shot across that bow. Can we imagine an even bigger shift on taxation than the one Mr. Biden is making?

Could we get past the sense that taxes are what the government takes and toward an idea of taxes as a means of patriotism, a kitty we all pay into to build something for community use: a school, a library, a road, a college, a hospital? What if taxation could bring us all together? It’s not that wild an idea. As the political scientist Vanessa Williamson notes, both liberal and conservative Americans view paying taxes as a moral duty. Just think of the pride with which people refer to themselves as taxpayers.

Of course, taxes are a civic good only if the tax rules are perceived as being fair. Which is why Mr. Biden’s calculated risk could pay many dividends come November.

Felicia Wong is the president and chief executive of Roosevelt Forward, the advocacy partner of the progressive think tank the Roosevelt Institute.

The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips . And here’s our email: [email protected] .

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