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PSA 67th Annual International Conference 10-12 April 2017 Glasgow DRAFT PAPER Youth political participation in Europe: a cross national analysis Magdelina Kitanova Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK Abstract. Youth political disengagement continues to be a major issue facing contemporary democracies that needs to be better understood. The traditional conception of participation in politics became outdated and new questions should be explored. While, most scholars have analysed the issue of political engagement among young people in a single country only, this paper adds contribution to a comparative research on young people’s engagement in politics. In this paper, I outline an empirical analysis relating to the understanding of youth participation across Europe. I analyse the socio-demographic and contextual predictors of formal and informal political participation among young people using survey analysis across 28 European countries. I argue that socio-demographic factors and contextual factors are crucial predictors when it comes to formal and informal political participation among young people in Europe with variations across democracies. The results indicate that while

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Page 1: DRAFT PAPER Youth political participation in Europe: a ... · DRAFT PAPER Youth political participation in Europe: a cross national analysis Magdelina Kitanova Department of Politics

PSA 67th Annual International Conference

10-12 April 2017

Glasgow

DRAFT PAPER

Youth political participation in Europe: a cross national analysis

Magdelina Kitanova

Department of Politics & International Relations, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

Abstract. Youth political disengagement continues to be a major issue facing

contemporary democracies that needs to be better understood. The traditional

conception of participation in politics became outdated and new questions should be

explored. While, most scholars have analysed the issue of political engagement among

young people in a single country only, this paper adds contribution to a comparative

research on young people’s engagement in politics. In this paper, I outline an

empirical analysis relating to the understanding of youth participation across Europe. I

analyse the socio-demographic and contextual predictors of formal and informal

political participation among young people using survey analysis across 28 European

countries. I argue that socio-demographic factors and contextual factors are crucial

predictors when it comes to formal and informal political participation among young

people in Europe with variations across democracies. The results indicate that while

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age, social and educational factors (at individual level) matter, individuals living in

different countries (for example advanced and new democracies) who have specific

characteristics mater, and this structures patterns of participation among young

people in Europe. Although some scholars and previous studies suggest and find some

evidence that new democracies are not that politically active as advanced

democracies (Letki, 2003; Bernhagen and Marsh, 2007), the results in this paper

indicated the opposite for some of the EU countries. The findings, for both formal and

informal political participation, raise fresh concerns about the levels of young

people’s engagement in politics in advanced and new democracies.

Keywords: youth; political participation; Europe; comparative study

Participation in political activities is in crisis, especially when it comes to

young people and politics. Youth disengagement is still a major issue facing British

democracy (see Norris, 2003; Farthing, 2010; Furlong and Cartmel, 2012; Henn and

Foard, 2012; Hay, 2007). This is a vital challenge facing not only Britain but other

contemporary democracies as well, which is re-shaping electoral politics and the

relationship between citizens and parties. Today, the youth are increasingly

disengaged and disconnected from the traditional political processes in Europe,

especially when it comes to voting (European Commission, 2001; Council of Europe,

2010). However, there may be a variation in levels of political engagement across

Europe, which is analysed (Ministry of Justice, 2007). Moreover, young people are not

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only disengaged but it also looks like they are apathetic and even alienated from

traditional forms of politics (Stoker, 2006; Hay, 2007).

In the recent decades, there has been a decline in political engagement in

most European Union countries (Pharr and Putnam, 2000; Torcal and Montero, 2006;

Norris, 2011; Papadopoulous, 2013; Allen and Birch, 2015). The 2015 UK General

Election is an exact example of that with young people’s turnout of 43%, and more

than 25% of the young people remained not registered to vote. Contradictorily, in the

Scottish Independence Referendum when the 16 and 17 year olds were given the

opportunity to cast their vote, the results showed that 89% of all citizens aged 16 to

17 in Scotland registered to vote, which indicates an exceptional case. For example,

results from an EU funded MYPLACE survey in 14 European countries revealed that 42%

of the respondents aged 16 to 24 reported to have interest in politics (Tatalovic,

2015). Thus, it can be argued that the youth are not a politically apathetic generation

but might be disengaged from the traditional political system and formal political

participation.

Consequently, political participation became more than just traditional

political activities such as voting. It adopted diverse activities such as people being

members of different organisations, participating in a cultural organistion or

activities, signing petitions, contacting politicians, protesting, etc (Bourne, 2010).

With the changing nature of political actions, new forms of political participation

have emerged and it is claimed that the youth engage more in politics through the

new political activities as young people nowadays are very different from their

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parents’ generation (Norris, 2003;Spannring et al, 2008; Kestila-Kekkonen, 2009;

Bauman, 2011; Sloam, 2016).

One research area that requires better theorising and testing is what are the

predictors of youth engagement in Europe, especially differentiating between formal

and informal political activities. Therefore, the research questions addressed in this

paper are: What are the socio-demographic factors and contextual predictors of

political participation among young people? Is political participation among young

people determined by socio-demographic factors or by contextual factors, or is it

universal in any democracy? What is the relationship between these predictors and

formal and informal modes of participation among young people?

This paper seeks to address the variations of youth participation across Europe.

It proceeds in four sections. First, I set up theoretical expectations of youth political

participation. Second, I introduce a new data set of Eurobarometer survey (No. 375)

on young people aged 15 to 30 from 28 European countries asked about their forms of

political participation. Third, regression analysis of socio-demographic and contextual

factors and formal and informal participation is applied controlling for countries to

establish relationships and differences between age groups. In the fourth and fifth

section, the analyses reveal that while social and educational factors (at individual

level) matter, individuals living in different countries (for example advanced and new

democracies) which have specific demographic characteristics mater, and this

structures patterns of participation among young people in Europe, with variations

within each EU country and with mostly distinctive differences in levels of

participation in formal versus informal politics.

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Young people’s engagement in politics

There is a debate about youth participation falling in crisis (Putnam, 2000;

Stoker. 2006; Fieldhouse et al, 2007). Many studies reveal that there is a tremendous

and worrying decline in young people’s participation in politics, especially when it

comes to voting. Yet, some of the recent studies show that young people are not

apathetic and disengaged, but they have turned to alternative forms of political

engagement such as protesting, demonstrating, being part of organisations, signing

petitions, volunteering, and engaging online (Norris, 2003; Spannring et al, 2008;

Sloam, 2016).

The youth are often seen as ‘disengaged’, ‘alienated’, and apathetic when it

comes to political engagement. Fieldhouse et al (2007) presents one of the original

substantial theoretical statements on this line of arguments based on the declining

turnout of young people. Indeed, there is tremendous value in repeated studies on

youth disengagement in single countries such as Britain. The British Social Attitudes

report (2015) also revealed an important statement about the declining youth turnout

as in 2013 only 57% of the respondents felt they have the duty to vote compared to

76% in 1987. For example, it can be clearly recognised that there has been a long-

term decline in young people’s involvement in elections in most of the European

Union countries (O’ Toole et al, 2003). These results are in sync with the conventional

wisdom that youth are disengaged from the political system (Wring, Henn and

Weinsten, 1999).

Controversy, in important work, Norris (2002; 2003) highlights active youth

engagement in respect to alternative forms of political participation and supports the

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recent theoretical claim that young people are not ebbed away in apathy but they are

choosing other forms of politics that are not traditional and seem more meaningful to

them (Spannring et al, 2008; Sloam, 2013). When it comes to the ‘non traditional’

forms of participation, young people are more likely to get involved than their

parents and grandparents (Norris, 2003). These theoretical expectations are forming

the new generation of research on young people’s participation in politics. One

organising idea here is that young people feel excluded from the traditional political

system (O’ Toole, Marsh and Jones, 2003) resulting in recent changes in the way they

can engage in politics (Harries, Wyn and Younes, 2010; Henn and Foard, 2012; Sloam,

2013).

Despite the growing interest in youth political participation, relatively little

scholarly attention has been paid to differences in youth participation across

countries (Norris, 2003; Spannring, 2008; Dalton, 2009; Sloam, 2013; 2016). There is

not enough research on how young people’s participation in politics varies between

countries. In this paper I identify a conceptualisation that socio-demographic and

contextual factors are crucial to youth engagement drawn from different theoretical

traditions of research that focus attention on these predictors.

The role of age, social class, education and gender is widely acknowledged

(Verba et al, 1995; Stolle and Hooghe, 2009; Vecchione and Caprara, 2009; Cainzos

and Voces, 2010). Social class and educational history appear to be crucial predictors

of political engagement (Tenn, 2007; Sloam, 2012; Holmes and Manning, 2013).

Especially, when it comes to young participation in politics, education and social class

have most bearing on young people’s political engagement (Henn and Foard, 2014).

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Remarkably, another line of argument that is prominent is that the length of time a

person has been in full-time education appears to have huge impact on political

participation (Flanagan et al, 2012). However, there is a little research on such

patterns in young people’s political engagement, therefore I test if the above

mentioned findings hold when it comes to youth participation in Europe in formal and

informal politics.

The idea that contextual factors can cause differences in youth participation is

studied in recent years (Fieldhouse, Tannmer, and Russel, 2007; Grimm and

Pilkington, 2015; Soler-i-Marti and Ferrer-Fons, 2015; Sloam, 2016). Political context

matters when it comes to engagement in politics (Grasso, 2016). It is plausible to

suggest that growing up in a certain context and environment would make young

people become politically engaged or disengaged depending on their cultural settings

(Snell, 2010). Therefore, it is important to contextualise young people’s politics

(Torney-Purta, 2008) and a main expectation of this paper is that there will be

potential differences between democracies in terms of youth political involvement.

An existing argument in the literature that is prominent is that participation will be

lower in post-communist countries compared to established democracies when it

comes to traditional politics (Barnes, 2004; Bernhagen and Marsh, 2007; Letki, 2013),

which is tested in this paper.

The above discussions offer a mixed set of expectations and explanations of

youth engagement in politics. On one hand, we would expect young people to be

disengaged and alienated from the traditional forms of politics. Equally, there is an

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expectation that young people may be active in new forms of political activities. My

expectation on these theoretical claims is summarised in the following hypothesis:

H1: Young people engage more in informal versus formal politics.

Theoretical arguments claim that socio-demographic factors have a significant

influence on political participation (Parry et al.,1992; Brady, 1995; Verba et al, 1995;

Stolle and Hooghe, 2009; Vecchione and Caprara, 2009; Cainzos and Voces, 2010;

Henn and Foard, 2014). In order to test whether this is the case among young people

from different EU countries, the following hypotheses are proposed:

H2: Higher levels of education are associated with higher levels of youth

engagement.

H3: Higher socio-economic status is associated with higher levels of youth

engagement.

In order to test the assumption that people engage more in advanced

democracies controlling for young people, the following hypothesis is proposed:

H4: Young people are more engaged in advanced democracies compared to new

democracies.

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Finally, I test an expectation that in newly established democracies, young

people would be more active in new forms of political participation compared to

advanced democracies. I, therefore, propose the following hypothesis:

H5: Young people are more engaged with informal politics in new

democracies compared to in advanced democracies.

Researchers typically have analysed youth participation on a national level, but

have not considered the cross-national level. There are expectations that

participation varies between individual countries and between a diverse range of

political activities (Sloam, 2016). However, the current existing studies of youth

participation say little about the potential differences between countries and

individuals. Therefore, my novel theoretical and empirical contribution will be to

argue that while social and educational factors (at individual level) matter,

individuals living in different countries (e.g. advanced and new democracies) which

have specific demographic characteristics mater, and this will structure patterns of

participation among young people.

Data and Methods

This paper draws upon data from the Eurobarometer (2013, No. 375)

comparative survey on youth engagement: a dataset consisting of 13,427 respondents

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across 27 members of EU countries and Croatia1, allowing a cross-national comparison

of young people’s predictors of political engagement. The dataset contains only young

respondents which is the targeted age cohort of this study, consisting of 13,427

respondents aged 15 to 30. The survey’s aim was to analyse young EU citizens’

participation in society, organisations, political parties, and participation in elections

at local, regional and national level. The limitation of this data is that it does not

represent the full population. Clearly, it would have been preferable to study and

analyse a broader range of age groups, but the data available from the Eurobarometer

survey does allow us to compare how people differ in terms of diverse age groups and

compare and contrast for instance 18 year olds with 30 year olds, and allow for a

meaningful comparison for the purpose of this study and the testing of the

hypotheses.

Survey questions and variables

The existing secondary data from the Eurobarometer 375 survey was used as

different questions we asked related to young people’s participation in politics,

allowing to grasp whether or not their socio-demographic and contextual

characteristics are potential measures of engagement.

Firstly, the Eurobarometer 375 survey employed individual questions including

introductory questions related to age, gender, and nationality. The socio-demographic

characteristics of the respondents were measured through questions regarding at

what age the respondents left school, their highest level of education, and their

                                                                                                               1  When  the  survey  was  carried  out,  Croatia  was  not  a  member  of  the  European  Union;  it  became  a  member  on  1st  July  2013.  

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current occupation. There is no cross-national standard question about social class,

which is a limitation as it would have allowed testing the theoretical claims reviewed

in this paper. Clearly, as the data is from a study of young people, the ‘occupation’

question is not necessarily most accurate for determining social class patterns of a

respondent, as the majority of answers to this question are ‘still in education’, but all

of the answers to the “What is your occupation?” question were grouped in different

categories formulating the social class independent variable as explained later in the

following paragraphs. It is important to acknowledge that there is no income

question, which prohibits the use of an income measure in the analysis. However,

with age, education and social class included in the analysis, the lack of income

measure does not constitute a significant problem within the confines of the

Eurobarometer data and the age groups.

The Eurobarometer survey asked about young people’s participation in a range

of activities with questions related to both formal and informal modes of political

participation. However, some of the questions regarding political participation were

not used as determinants for the dependent variables due to the structure of the

questions being Likert scale. The survey questions used to construct the dependent

variables of this study are categorised as formal vs. informal activities in Table 1. To

assess and test the hypotheses, three dependent variables were formulated related to

political participation including formal, informal, and general (informal + formal)

political participation. All dependent variables are derived using a binary measure of

whether or not someone had participated in a particular activity from the

Eurobarometer 375 questionnaire (see Table 1). The variable “formal” reflects

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whether a person has participated in traditional political activities, where in this

paper, a formal political activity means voting and being a member of a political

party; respectively, the variable “informal” reflects engagement in informal political

activities, where in this paper “informal” political activities are viewed as being a

member of different organisations (listed below). For the purpose of comparative

analyses, an additional dependent variable of general political participation was

constructed that considers whether or not overall participation varies combining the

above-mentioned two dependent variables.

Derived variables: Original indicators:

Formal political participation

Has voted in past three years Has participated in a political party

Informal political participation

Has participated in: Community organisation Youth club, leisure-time club or any kind of youth organisation A cultural organisation A political organisation or a political party A local organisation aimed at improving your local community An organisation active in the domain of climate change/environmental issues An organisation promoting human rights or global development Any other non-governmental organisation

Table 1 Coding for dependent variables

The influences of socio-demographic characteristics are often considered as

important explanatory variables for political engagement in previous studies (Ten,

2007; Furlong and Cartmel, 2012; Holmes and Manning, 2013). However, there is by

comparison, little research evidences that offer conclusions on socio-demographic

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factors as crucial predictors of youth engagement in politics (Flanagen et al, 2012;

Henn and Foard, 2014), and especially acknowledging differences between

engagement in both formal and informal political activities. Therefore, I examine

whether socio-demographic factors are crucial in structuring youth political

participation in both formal and informal politics. To test for the effect of socio-

demographic factors on youth participation, separate variables are composed. I

include a categorical variable for education that indexes whether or not respondents

are still in education and when have they left school. In order to consider the effects

of social class on youth participation, I created a social class variable recoded as a

categorical one including values for lower class, middle class, higher class,

respondents who are not working, and respondents who are still in education. The

data for this variable was mapped with the NS-SEC (National Statistics Socio-economic

Classification) Analytic classes and the ABC1 demographic (Demographic

classifications in the UK).

I also include new and old democracy variables in order to test whether age of

democracy is influential and a predictor when it comes to youth participation in EU

countries and test the assumption that youth political participation varies within

different democracies and individual countries. Countries that fall under the category

of “new democracy” were identified using Dunn’s (2005) and Muhlberger and Paine’s

(1993) studies where new democracies are considered to be EU countries that became

democracies post 1988, which includes 11 countries (past communist countries and

countries that used to belong to the Soviet Union). As advanced democracies are

considered EU countries that became democracies post-1945 and pre-1988, which

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includes 17 countries. In the literature, those classified as emerging democracies in

Europe in 1970 (Portugal, and Spain) are now classified as established ones for the

purpose of this study, they feature in the “advanced democracy” category.

Analysis

It is suggested that youth participation varies across countries, thus a person

from country A with socio-demographic characteristics A1 A2 and A3 might actively

participate in formal politics, but a person from country B with the same socio-

demographic characteristics might be actively engaged in informal activities and

totally disengaged from the traditional forms of participation. To determine what

shapes youth engagement in formal and informal political participation, and to

identify the crucial predictors associated with youth engagement in politics, a binary

logistic regression is applied.

The theoretical arguments reviewed in this study suggest that socio-

demographic factors such as gender, age, education and social class have an impact

on the political participation of an individual (Verba et al, 1995; Stolle and Hooghe,

2009; Cainzos and Voces, 2010; Henn and Foard, 2014). The statistical analyses of the

data test whether or not these theoretical claims hold in regards to the

Eurobarometer 375 survey data including a series of already defined categorical

variables in the regression analysis. In addition, the theoretical model of this study

suggests that there is a significant relationship between contextual factors and young

people’s political participation. It is proposed that age of democracy has a crucial

impact on young people’s engagement in politics in different European countries,

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which is tested using binary regression and models are run for general, formal and

informal political participation and assess whether or not there are differences in

young people’s participations’ predictors when it comes to formal and informal

political participation (Lieberman, 2005). The binary regression also tests what

predicts political engagement among young people by employing different socio-

demographic and contextual factors and analysing the relationship between them and

the dependent variables.

Results: Young people’s engagement in politics and socio-demographic

determinants

The decline of youth participation in politics has been discussed above. Several

authors suggested that young people are disengaged and alienated from the

traditional forms of political participation (Russell, 2004; Stoker, 2006; Hay, 2007).

However, a descriptive bar chart that demonstrates the Eurobarometer data in terms

of level of participation across EU countries reveals that youth participation in politics

varies across countries (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1 Level of participation across EU countries

Although, the descriptive analyses show various levels of youth participation

across countries, it is important to check if this refers to engagement in traditional

forms of politics or in informal political activities as numerous authors have claimed

that Generation Y are not apathetic but have orientated towards new forms of

political engagement (Norris, 2003; Spannring et al, 2008; Sloam, 2013). Therefore,

binary regression is used to investigate and explore the differences across different

forms of youth political engagement. Moreover, the regression analysis allows

developing models that assess what are the determinants for formal, informal and

general political engagement among young people in the EU countries. The regression

models also explain why some individuals are more politically engaged than others by

looking at country-level factors as determinants for engagement.

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Firstly, I look at political participation in different activities as a function of

age and run a descriptive analysis to determine what does the data tell us initially

about young people’s participation in formal and informal political activities.

It is important to note that general descriptive analysis suggested that the

respondents from the Eurobarometer study participate more in formal politics than in

informal with 60% compared to 54%. One feature of this data set is that it only

includes respondents aged 15 to 30 which can be viewed as limitation because it does

not provide an opportunity for comparison across the age groups of the whole

population. However, it is possible to differentiate between younger and older

respondents in the sample, therefore a new variable “age” was created to

differentiate young people age with one category being “15 to 23 year olds” and

another one being “24 to 30 year olds”. I run a descriptive analysis to check whether

or not there are variations in young people’s engagement depending on their age and

as seen in Figure 2, the results indicate that the “15 to 23” age group engage more in

informal politics than respondents aged 24 to 30 (58% compared to 49%). Not

surprisingly, the respondents aged 24 to 30 engage more in formal politics than

respondents aged 15 to 23 (78% compared to 44%).

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Figure 2 Proportion of respondents from different age group participating in formal

compared to informal politics

 

Socio-demographic predictors of political engagement among young people

In line with earlier studies (Verba et al, 1995; Stolle and Hooghe, 2009;

Vecchione and Caprara, 2009; Cainzos and Voces, 2010), a common trend that

emerged is that socio-demographic factors are important predictors of political

engagement. To test these theoretical claims and to either reject or confirm H1, H2

and H3, I modeled participation using binary logistic regression as a function of age,

social class, and education, controlling for countries.

As the descriptive analysis above suggests, there are some important differences

within age groups when it comes to different levels and forms of political

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participation of the youth. Therefore, the models are firstly presented with a reduced

set of variables, which allows to observe what is the effect of adding “age” to the

models as it is expected that age makes a significant difference to participation.

Table 2 Formal Political Participation: Age Base Regression Model controlling for countries

As Table 2 suggests, the base model featuring only “age” as a predictor of

youth engagement reveals that respondents aged 24 to 30 are nearly 5 times more

likely to participate in formal political activities than the reference category (young

people aged 15 to 23); and they are 28% less likely to get involved in informal political

participation than respondents aged 15 to 23. As expected, age is statistically

significantly associated with higher levels of participation in traditional political

activities than older cohorts. Table 2 indicates that there is an inverse relationship

between age and informal politics because as a respondent gets older, the odds of

them participating in informal political activities decreases which suggests that the

younger a person is, the more likely they are to be involved in informal political

activities which confirms Hypothesis 1.

 Variables  

Formal  Political  

Participation  

Informal  Political  Participation  

Coef   Coef  

Age  (15-­‐23)  

Age  (24-­‐30)  

Reference  

4.752**  

Reference  

0.719**  

*  p<0.05        **  p<0.01  

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To check if this finding is still robust once I control for other socio-demographic

factors, social class and education are added to the regression models. It is suggested

and expected that participation equals to a function of age plus a series of socio-

demographic predictors controlling for countries, where Model 1 refers to formal

political participation which includes voting and being member of a political party;

and Model 2 refers to informal participation in politics consisting of participation in

different organisations (defined earlier in this paper); and Model 3 refers to general

political participation (see Table 3). Focusing on the socio-demographic predictors,

the following paragraph reveals the results from the binary logistic regressions

commenting on how much does education matter and how much does social class

matters when it comes to predicting young people’s engagement in formal and

informal political activities in EU countries (see Table 3). In all of the three regression

models, I control for country fixed effects, the results are reported in Table 3 but the

full regression analyses are available in supplemental materials (Appendix).

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Table  3  Regression  models'  results:  Model  1  (general  participation),  Model  2  (formal  participation),  Model  3  (informal  

participation  

Political Participation

Variables Model 1

General Political Participation

Model 2 Formal

Political Participation

Model 3 Informal Political

Participation

Age (15-23) Reference Reference Reference

Age (24-30) 1.855**

(0.108)

2.924**

(0.143)

0.914

(0.043)

Education : left education

at 18 or before Reference Reference Reference

Left education at 19 or

above

2.094**

(0.155)

2.297**

(0.155)

1.344**

(0.086)

Still in education 1.813**

(0.173)

1.276**

(0.109)

1.880*

(0.156)

Lower social class Reference Reference Reference

Middle social class 1.079

(0.089)

1.330**

(0.094)

1.044

(0.064)

Higher social class 1.383**

(0.155)

1.511**

(0.142)

1.465**

(0.113)

Still in education 0.956

(0.090)

0.757**

(0.060)

1.140

(0.088)

Not Working 0. 731**

(0.058)

0.869*

(0.062)

0.683*

(0.045)

Cons 3.127532

(0.505)

0.759

(0.097)

1.189

(0.142)

*p<0.05 **p<0.01

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The results from the regression suggest that both education and social class

have a positive and significant effect in all modes of participation as seen in Table 3.

This characterization supports the findings from earlier studies (Verba et al, 1995;

Stolle and Hooghe, 2009; Vecchione and Caprara, 2009; Cainzos and Voces, 2010;

Henn and Foard, 2014).

Education

Education plays a crucial role in determining political participation. Having left

education at 19 or above leads to an increase of around 2.3 in the odds of

participating in formal political activities than a person who has left school at 18 or

below. These findings denote an important distinction that the longer a person has

stayed in education; the more likely they are to engage in formal political activities.

In order to compare this finding with informal political participation, I look at Model 2

that suggests that a person who left education at 19 or above is 34% more likely to

participate in informal politics than someone who left education at 18 or below.

Moreover, if a person is still in education, they are 81% more likely to take part in

political participation than a respondent who left school at 18 or above. In order to

differentiate between different forms of political participation and the socio-

demographic predictors, it is important to note that the regression analysis reveal the

effect of a respondent still being in education is stronger on informal politics than

formal politics (88% and 27%, respectively).

Education as a social predictor of general, formal and informal political

engagement appears to be statistically significant (p<0.01). These results provide

strong support for the expectation summarised in the second Hypothesis (H2) that

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higher levels of education are associated with higher levels of youth engagement.

Social class

The analysis of the Eurobarometer data using binary regression, reported in

Table 4 and 5 reveal that there are some statistically significant variations in effects

of social class across formal and informal participation of the youth. The odds of a

non-working person to be involved in any form of political activity decreases by 27% in

comparison to a lower class person. The analyses for formal and informal participation

suggest similar result and imply that respondents who are not working are less likely

to participate in formal and informal politics. To be more specific, the odds of a

respondent who is not working to participate in formal politics decreases by 13% in

comparison to a lower class respondent; moreover, a respondent who is not working is

32% less likely to engage in informal politics than a lower class respondent, with these

results from the general and informal political participation models being statistically

significant at the 1% level (p<0.01).

Respondents from higher class are significantly more likely to participate in

politics than their counterparts from a lower social class (to be exact, a respondent

from a higher social class is about 40% more likely to participate in politics than a

respondent from a lower class). This implies that, as predicted, higher social class is

associated with higher levels of youth engagement confirming Hypothesis 3 (H3).

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Results: Young people’s engagement in democracies

For the purpose of this study, each of the 28 EU countries from the data set

was classified as either new or advanced democracy where democracies established

before 1988 were classified as “advanced” and the post-communist countries were

recorded as “new”. To test whether contextual predictors are significant to youth

participation in politics, two new dichotomous variables are derived: new democracy

and old democracy that were included in the regression models; and then the model

suggested that participation is defined as a function of age and the other socio-

demographic predictors plus age of democracy, controlling for countries. Therefore,

the effect of age of democracy on youth engagement is presented in Table 4, where

age of democracy variable is added to the regression models.

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Political Participation

Variables Model 1

General Political Participation

Model 2 Formal

Political Participation

Model 3 Informal Political

Participation

Age (15-23) Reference Reference Reference

Age (24-30) 1.855**

(0.108)

2.924**

(0.143)

0.914

(0.043)

Education : left education

at 18 or before Reference Reference Reference

Left education at 19 or

above

2.094**

(0.155)

2.297**

(0.155)

1.344**

(0.086)

Still in education 1.813***

(0.174)

1.276***

(0.109)

1.880***

(0.156)

Lower social class Reference Reference Reference

Middle social class 1.079

(0.089)

1.330**

(0.094)

1.044

(0.064)

Higher social class 1.383**

(0.155)

1.511**

(0.142)

1.465**

(0.113)

Still in education 0.956

(0.091)

0.757***

(0.060)

1.140*

(0.088)

Not Working 0.731**

(0.058)

0.869*

(0.062)

0.683**

(0.045)

Old democracy Reference Reference Reference

New Democracy 0.527**

(0.093)

1.107

(0.161)

0.377**

(0.050)

Cons 3.127532

(0.505)

0.75852

(0.097)

1.1891

(0.142)

*p<0.05 **p<0.01

Table  4  Regression  models'  results:  Model  1  (general  participation),  Model  2  (formal  participation),  Model  3  (informal  

participation

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In comparison to the previous regression models, it is obvious that there is only

change in the odds ratios of countries that are classified as new democracies which

predicts that age of democracy is a predictor of youth participation across EU

countries.

The existing literature predicts that contextual factors are crucial and cause

differences in young people’s engagement in politics (Fieldhouse, Tannmer, and

Russel, 2007; Grimm and Pilkington, 2015; Soler-i-Marti and Ferrer-Fons, 2015;

Grasso, 2016; Sloam, 2016). In line with that, the results of the regression models

featuring the age of democracy variables, suggest that political engagement among

young people varies within different ages of democracies. Young Europeans who live

in one of the newly established democracy are 47% less likely to be politically

engaged than a person in an established democracy. Tellingly, this characterisation

supports the findings from earlier studies that participation is lower is post-communist

countries compared to established democracies (Bernhagen and Marsh, 2007; Letki,

2013). This broadly confirms H4 that predicts that the youth are more politically

engaged in established democracies. However, this pattern is not a uniform one as

the results from the regression models controlling for countries reveal that there are

some statistically significant variations in levels of youth engagement across different

established democracies. For instance, the results indicate that political engagement

is low in the UK, which is also evident in previous studies reporting that the

Generation Y in Britain is very disengaged from politics, especially when it comes to

traditional forms of politics (Russell, 2004; Henn, 2012). Young people in Britain are

51% less likely to vote or be a member of a political party compared to respondents

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from the reference category (France). The UK respondents have lowest levels of

participation in politics across the EU countries together with Cyprus, Hungary, and

Lithuania, being about 50% less likely to participate in politics in comparison to

France. Respondents from new democracies are 62% less likely to engage in informal

politics than respondents from advanced democracies, which does not uphold the

assumptions proposed in H5 and contradictory to H5 suggest that young people are

more engaged in informal politics in advanced democracies compared to new

democracies.

As results reveal, youth engagement in politics varies significantly across the

different European countries and across forms of participation and age of democracy.

It is interesting to note that countries with low levels of engagement in formal politics

(Germany, Luxemburg, Denmark, Ireland, Sweden, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Bulgaria

with odds ratios below 1) have higher level of engagement in informal politics (with

odds ratios over 12). It appears that countries with high ratios of youth participation in

formal activities (Belgium, Netherland, Latvia) also have very high ratios of

participation in informal activities (ranging from 1.3 up to 1.7).

Although some scholars and previous studies suggest and find some evidence

that new democracies are not that politically active as advanced democracies (Letki,

2003; Bernhagen and Marsh, 2007), the results from the regression analysis indicates

the opposite for some of the countries. For instance, a respondent from Latvia is 1.4

times more likely to participate in general politics than a respondent from France.

                                                                                                               2  All  of  the  countries’  odds  ratios  are  in  relation  to  the  reference  category:  France.    

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Conclusion

Youth participation matters and the problem of youth disengagement continues

to be a major issue facing contemporary democracies. We need to understand what

determines young people’s engagement in politics. Most scholars have analysed the

issue of political engagement among young people in a single country only, but this

study adds contribution to a comparative research on young people’s engagement in

politics.

The overarching aim of this study was to investigate the determinants of

political participation among young people, and to explore the relationship between

socio-demographic factors, contextual factors and formal and informal political

participation. The results of the binary regression represented a sample of 13,427

young respondents from 28 different European countries.

Referring back to the research questions posed at the beginning, the regression

results suggested that the socio-demographic factors that predict political

participation among young people are age, education and social class, which is in

consistent with the previous studies (Vecchione and Caprara, 2009; Stolle and

Hooghe, 2009; Henn and Foard, 2014). In terms of the contextual predictors of

political participation among young people, there are differences between countries

and especially new and old democracies. It is suggested based on the binary

regression results that political participation among young people is determined by

the socio-demographic characteristics of an individual as well as the contextual

characteristics of the country they live in. The regression models suggest that

political participation among young people is not universal in any democracy but

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varies within different types of democracy and individual countries. In addition, the

results from the regression models indicate that there are statistically significant

differences in the relationships between the socio-demographic and contextual

predictors in formal and informal modes of political participation among young

people.

Overall, the study found out that respondents who are aged 15 to 23 are more

likely to participate in informal politics, and engage more in politics in advanced

democracies. The analyses also reveal a strong a statistically and substantially

importance that a higher social class and a higher education are associated with

higher political participation. Respondents from higher social class participate more in

politics than respondents from lower social class. Respondents who are not working

are less likely to engage in any form of politics than respondents who are in

education. And respondents who are still in education are more engaged in informal

versus formal politics.

Some of the main findings suggested that a respondent who is aged 24 to 30 is

2.9 times more likely to participate in formal politics than a respondent aged 18 to 23

which indicates that the older the person is, the more likely they are to vote and

participate in any kind of formal politics. The regression results also suggested that

the longer a person has stayed in education, the more likely they are to participate in

formal politics which is consistent with previous studies’ findings (Henn and Foard,

2014; Flanagan et al, 2012). Moreover, if a person is still in education, they are more

likely to engage in any form of political participation (a respondent who is still in

education is 81% more likely to be politically engaged than a respondent who has left

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education at 18 or below). And a respondent from a higher social class is 1.4 times

more likely to participate in any form of politics than a respondent who is from a

lower social class.

Although some scholars and previous studies suggest and find some evidence

that new democracies are not that politically active as advanced democracies (Letki,

2003; Bernhagen and Marsh, 2007), the results from the regression analysis indicates

the opposite for some of the countries. For instance, a respondent from Latvia is 1.4

times more likely to participate in politics than a respondent from France. However,

voting is a habit and respondents who live in advanced democracies engage more in

formal politics than respondents from new democracies.

The results from the regression models suggest that a young person from a EU

country with the following characteristics: aged 24 to 30, left school at 19 or above,

have a higher social class and live in a country that is an advanced democracy is more

likely to participate in formal politics.

This paper leads to questions for future research on the topic of youth

participation that may include countries outside Europe which will allow a superior

and more sustainable comparison to be made; as well as include older people in order

to compare different types of political participation and analyse further age as a

determinant.

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Appendix

Political Participation (without “newdemocracy” variable)

Variables General Political

Participation

Formal

Political

Participation

Informal

Political

Participation

Age (15-23) Reference Reference Reference

Age (24-30) 1.855**

(0.108)

2.924**

(0.143)

0.914

(0.043)

Education : left education

at 18 or before Reference Reference Reference

Left education at 19 or

above

2.094**

(0.155)

2.297**

(0.155)

1.344**

(0.086)

Still in education 1.813**

(0.173)

1.276**

(0.109)

1.880*

(0.156)

Lower social class Reference Reference Reference

Middle social class 1.079

(0.089)

1.330**

(0.094)

1.044

(0.064)

Higher social class 1.383**

(0.155)

1.511**

(0.142)

1.465**

(0.113)

Still in education 0.956

(0.090)

0.757**

(0.060)

1.140

(0.088)

Not Working 0. 731**

(0.058)

0.869*

(0.062)

0.683*

(0.045)

France Reference Reference Reference

Belgium 1.197

(0.240)

1.787**

(0.268)

1.165

(0.158)

Netherlands 1.565

(0.329)*

1.136

(0.163)

1.730**

(0.248)

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Germany 0.647*

(0.116)

0.769

(0.109)

1.041

(0.140)

Italy 0.781

(0.145)

1.643**

(0.249)

0.505**

(0.067)

Luxemburg 0.663*

(0.135)

0.580**

(0.095)

1.355

(0.217)

Denmark 1.120

(0.218)

0.922

(0.130)

1.242

(0.171)

Ireland 1.356

(0.278)

0.783

(0.112)

1.841**

(0.263)

United Kingdom 0.484**

(0.084)

0.291**

(0.042)

0.957

(0.128)

Greece 0.741

(0.137)

1.154

(0.169)

0.565**

(0.074)

Spain 0.846

(0.158)

0.958

(0.138)

0.906

(0.120)

Portugal 0.512**

(0.090)

0.591**

(0.085)

0.788

(0.104)

Finland 0.673*

(0.123)

1.095

(0.158)

0.740*

(0.098)

Sweden 0.709

(0.130)

0.629**

(0.090)

1.245

(0.172)

Austria 0.732

(0.134)

1.205

(0.175)

0.941

(0.125)

Cyprus 0.365**

(0.069)

0.895

(0.148)

0.275**

(0.043)

Czech Republic 0.535**

(0.096)

0.838

(0.122)

0.617**

(0.081)

Estonia 0.334**

(0.057)

0.474**

(0.068)

0.362**

(0.048)

Hungary 0.222**

(0.037)

0.302**

(0.044)

0.355**

(0.047)

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Latvia 0.747

(0.139)

1.156

(0.171)

0.505**

(0.066)

Lithuania 0.302**

(0.052)

0.490**

(0.071)

0.311**

(0.042)

Malta 2.476**

(0.671)

3.130**

(0.571)

0.598**

(0.091)

Poland 0.328**

(0.056)

0.597**

(0.087)

0.356**

(0.048)

Slovakia 0.498**

(0.883)

0.578**

(0.083)

0.657**

(0.086)

Slovenia 0.612**

(0.111)

1.116

(0.164)

0.572**

(0.075)

Bulgaria 0.385**

(0.067)

0.639**

(0.092)

0.382**

(0.051)

Romania 0.531**

(0.093)

1.004

(0.145)

0.352**

(0.047)

Croatia 0.527**

(0.093)

1.107

(0.161)

0.377**

(0.050)

Cons 3.127532

(0.505)

0.759

(0.097)

1.189

(0.142)

*p<0.05 **p<0.01

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Political Participation (with “newdemocracy” variable

Variables General Political

Participation

Formal

Political

Participation

Informal

Political

Participation

Age (15-23) Reference Reference Reference

Age (24-30) 1.855**

(0.108)

2.924**

(0.143)

0.914

(0.043)

Education : left education

at 18 or before Reference Reference Reference

Left education at 19 or

above

2.094**

(0.155)

2.297**

(0.155)

1.344**

(0.086)

Still in education 1.813***

(0.174)

1.276***

(0.109)

1.880***

(0.156)

Lower social class Reference Reference Reference

Middle social class 1.079

(0.089)

1.330**

(0.094)

1.044

(0.064)

Higher social class 1.383**

(0.155)

1.511**

(0.142)

1.465**

(0.113)

Still in education 0.956

(0.091)

0.757***

(0.060)

1.140*

(0.088)

Not Working 0.731**

(0.058)

0.869*

(0.062)

0.683**

(0.045)

Old democracy Reference Reference Reference

New Democracy 0.527**

(0.093)

1.107

(0.161)

0.377**

(0.050)

France Reference Reference Reference

Belgium 1.197

(0.241)

1.787**

(0.268)

1.165

(0.158)

Netherlands 1.565**

(0.329)

1.136

(0.163)

1.730**

(0.248)

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Germany 0.647*

(0.116)

0.769

(0.109)

1.040

(0.140)

Italy 0.781

(0.146)

1.643**

(0.249)

0.505**

(0.067)

Luxemburg 0.663*

(0.136)

0.580**

(0.095)

1.355

(0.217)

Denmark 1.120

(0.219)

0.922

(0.130)

1.241

(0.171)

Ireland 1.356

(0.279)

0.783

(0.112)

1.841**

(0.263)

United Kingdom 0.484**

(0.084)

0.291**

(0.042)

0.957

(0.128)

Greece 0.741

(0.137)

1.154

(0.169)

0.565**

(0.074)

Spain 0.846

(0.159)

0.958

(0.138)

0.906

(0.120)

Portugal 0.512**

(0.090)

0.590**

(0.085)

0.788

(0.104)

Finland 0.673*

(0.124)

1.095

(0.158)

0.740*

(0.098)

Sweden 0.709

(0.130)

0.629**

(0.090)

1.245

(0.172)

Austria 0.732

(0.134)

1.205

(0.175)

0.941

(0.125)

Cyprus 0.365**

(0.069)

0.895

(0.148)

0.275**

(0.043)

Czech Republic 1.015

(0.163)

0.757

(0.110)

1.640**

(0.215)

Estonia 0.633**

(0.096)

0.428**

(0.062)

0.962

(0.127)

Hungary 0.421**

(0.062)

0.273**

(0.039)

0.942

(0.125)

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Latvia 1.417*

(0.239)

1.045

(0.155)

1.342*

(0.176)

Lithuania 0.572**

(0.087)

0.443**

(0.064)

0.825

(0.111)

Malta 2.476**

(0.672)

3.130**

(0.571)

0.598**

(0.091)

Poland 0.623**

(0.095)

0.539**

(0.079)

0.945

(0.127)

Slovakia 0.944

(0.149)

0.522**

(0.075)

1.744**

(0.227)

Slovenia 1.160

(0.191)

1.009

(0.148)

1.519**

(0.199)

Bulgaria 0.730*

(0.112)

0.577**

(0.083)

1.015

(0.135)

Romania 1.008

(0.157)

0.908

(0.131)

0.934

(0.124)

Croatia Omitted Omitted Omitted

Cons 3.127532

(0.505)

0.75852

(0.097)

1.1891

(0.142)

*p<0.05 **p<0.01