The democratic credentials of youth parliaments. The case of the Belgian Jeugd Parlement Jeunesse

ABSTRACT

Youth parliaments have been conceived as means to reconnect young people with politics, give them a voice in public debates, and ultimately boost the legitimacy of parliaments as democratic institutions. However, to contribute to the overall quality of democracy, youth parliaments must also reflect certain democratic principles in their own organisation. This paper identifies five principles to assess the democratic credentials of youth parliaments: the quality of representation, quality of participation, openness of the agenda, meaningful impact, and enlightened understanding, and applies them to the Belgian Jeugd Parlement Jeunesse (JPJ). Our results show that the JPJ offers a safe space for open and respectful political discussion among youngsters, but faces difficulties in generating impact and guaranteeing representativeness among the participants. The latter limits the JPJ’s potential to close the widening gap between young people and politics.

KEYWORDS:

• Youth parliaments
• democracy
• democratic legitimacy
• political participation

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the organisers and participants of the Jeugd Parlement Jeunesse for their willingness to partake in this study.

Disclosure statement

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

Notes on contributors

Joke Matthieu is a PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. Her main research interests include democracy and democratic innovations, political socialisation, and citizenship education. She is currently preparing a PhD thesis on the democratic impact of citizenship education.

Julien Vrydagh is a PhD researcher at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and the UCLouvain. His research focuses on democratic innovations, political participation, and democracy. He is currently writing a PhD thesis on the political impact of mini-publics.

Didier Caluwaerts is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. His research focuses on democratic innovations, with a particular emphasis on deliberative democracy.

Silvia Erzeel is Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, where she teaches and conducts research on political participation and representation, political parties, and gender and social inequalities.

Notes

1 The following attitudinal scales were included: political trust (eight items; alpha = .897), political interest (one item), satisfaction with democracy (one item), trust in the other linguistic group (one item), and internal political efficacy (seven items; alpha = .872). For construction of the scales, see online technical appendix.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a ‘Small Research Grant’ from the Department of Political Science, Vrije Universiteit Brussel.