Youth political involvement update: measuring the role of cause-oriented political interest in young people's activism

Abstract

In recent decades, a series of transformations have occurred that have changed young people's relationships with politics. In most Western countries, young people vote less and protest more. Survey research has detected this two-fold process in participation behaviour, but has failed to detect this same process in the field of political attitudes. In particular, the emergence of a specific dimension of psychological political involvement with a special impact on youth has gone unnoticed in survey-based research. Based on some recent qualitative studies, this research tries to identify and measure a specific dimension of interest in politics using a new question in a survey carried out in Catalonia in 2011. An interest directly oriented to political issues and causes – particularly those relevant in young people's everyday lives – is identified. The article also evaluates how traditional survey indicators of political involvement do capture, or not, this particular dimension of interest in politics. Finally, the new cause-oriented interest indicator is tested to analyse its impact on different types of participation in order to better understand patterns of activism in young people.

Keywords:

• political involvement
• young people
• interest in politics
• survey
• participation

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Agència Catalana de Joventut-Generalitat de Catalunya- under the Observatori Català de la Joventut Research Plan 2011 and 2012. I am grateful to Eva Anduiza, Marc Hooghe, Jordi Muñoz, Raul Tormos and the journal reviewers for their interesting comments and suggestions.

Notes

1. For a review of the literature and a discussion on the meaning of the expansion of protest as an ‘elite-challenging’ or a ‘repertoire-building’ process and its consequences on democracy, see Painter-Main (2014).

2. This model suggests that as people acquire adult responsibilities they acquire civic abilities, and their involvement in politics deepens. See for example, Strate et al. (1989), Verba and Nie (1972, 138–140) or Lane (1959, 216–219).

3. More information about the EPP’11 survey can be found on the Catalan Youth Observatory website: www.gencat.cat/joventut/observatori

4. The specific question wording is ‘I will read you a list of topics, and I need you to rate them on a scale from 0 to 10 depending on how much the topic interests you. 0 denotes minimum interest and 10, maximum interest’.

5. The factor analysis results are consistent when age is considered. The same analysis has been run by splitting respondents from 15- to 29-years old and those older. In both cases, three components appear and all the items fall under the same component like in the global analysis presented in Table 1.

6. The ratings are calculated with the Anderson–Rubin method, which generates a new variable with an average of 0 and a standard deviation of 1.

7. For a discussion of a classification of different forms of participation, see Verba, Nie, and Kim (1978), Barnes and Kaase (1979), Dalton (2002) or Teorell, Torcal, and Montero (2007).

8. In this same sense, Norris (2004) calls this type of participation ‘cause-oriented activism’.

9. A factor analysis was used to empirically validate the difference between representational participation and extra-representational participation, which confirmed the distribution of the participation actions. Detailed results of this analysis may be requested from the author.

10. This variable leaves a scale of 7 (0–6) values for representational participation and a scale of 9 (0–8) values for the variable of extra-representational activism.

11. The variable ‘political discussion’ was included even though it is not an attitude. It is a commonly used indicator in measuring psychological political involvement.

12. Feelings of grievance, dissatisfaction and critical attitudes towards the system and its institutions are considered to increase extra-representational political action (Farah, Barnes, and Huenis 1979; Fuchs and Klingemann 1995). Interestingly, however, results show that to a lesser extent, these critical attitudes also lead to representational participation. The context of the economic recession strengthens the link between critical attitudes and participation, particularly in countries where the crisis has had a greater impact (Sotiris 2010; Perugorria and Tejerina 2013). In those contexts, involved citizens are probably evaluating the political system more critically.

13. The results of the dependent variables used in this analysis also show young people's higher predisposition towards extra-representational participation compared with adults and their lower propensity to participate through representational forms. Young people's average score on representational participation scale (0–6) is of 1.00 and of 1.54 for those older than 29 years. On the other hand, on the extra-representational participation scale (0–8) young people's average score is 2.20 while the average score for adults is 1.58. An analysis of variance F-test shows that these differences are significant. It also must be said that these forms of participation are not mutually exclusive. In fact, there is a significant positive correlation between representational and extra-representational activism (Pearson correlation: 0.397 for young people and 0.447 for adults).

14. The figure shows the probability depending on the variation of direct interest in politics and the ‘youth’ variable. The constant values that were given to the rest of the variables correspond to their central trend: average in the case of interest in politics (5.58) and mode in the cases of internal political efficacy (no) and external political efficacy (no), political discussion (yes), party identification (yes) and satisfaction with how democracy works (yes).