Fact or Fluff? The Impact of Youth Quotas on the Electoral Behaviour and Attitudes of Young People

ABSTRACT

Globally, youth quotas have become increasingly popular, yet, we know little about the impacts of quotas on young people’s behaviour and attitudes. This study runs a series of multilevel regressions predicting attitudes and behaviour, across 35 countries in Africa that have and have not adopted youth quotas. Results show youth quotas do not improve youth voter participation and are circumscribed in their ability to positively impact attitudes. Thus, the implementation of quotas alone is not enough to improve relations between youth and government.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• quotas
• youth
• elections

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Rwanda also has youth quotas but is not included in this analysis because survey data does not exist.

2 Polity scores from 2018 are used in this analysis. Please see appendix for histogram displaying polity scores across all thirty-five countries.

3 Please see appendix for operationalisation of variables.

4 See note 2.

5 I asked respondents a series of true and false questions that tested their knowledge regarding the quotas and the municipal elections. Respondents were asked these questions a mere two weeks after the 2018 local elections took place. Table A7 in the appendix shows the responses to two questions that specifically ask about youth related topics in these elections. If the respondent answered true to either of these questions, I infer that they were aware of the efforts to increase youth political participation and were knowledgeable about the level of involvement of youth running as candidates in the elections.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Kirstie Lynn Dobbs

Kirstie Lynn Dobbs is a full-time lecturer in the Department of Political Science and Public Policy and in the Early College Program at Merrimack College in North Andover, United States. Her research focuses on the civic engagement of youth with a regional focus on the Middle East and North Africa. Her work has been published in a number of journals including the British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Democratization, and the Journal of North African Studies.