To Örebro University

This study examines whether youth’s goals for their future societal engagement affect their future political activities. We hypothesized, first, that youth’s political interest would be a central predictor of their future political activities and, second, that their goals for future societal engagement would moderate their political interest. The greatest future political activity would be among youth who were both politically interested and had set high goals. A community sample of about 400 16-year-olds (Mage=16.62, SD=0.71, 50.8% females) was followed over four years. The theory of planned behavior was applied. Different types of political action were predicted: offline political activities, online political activities, membership of a political/civic organization, and taking a stance in public for a party pre and post voting in a national election. Age-16 political interest significantly predicted all age-20 political activities, except for being a member of political/civic organizations and actual voting. In line with the second hypothesis, significant interactions were found between political interest and setting societal goals for all the future political activities except voting. It was concluded that youth’s early-developed agency in setting goals for their societal engagement has widespread predictive utility for their political activities over a lengthy period. 

Since politically interested adolescents do not necessarily present humanistic, environmental and democratic values, this study addresses the hitherto ignored role that how these basic human values play in politically interested adolescents’political values, attitudes and behaviors. A cluster analysis of 857 Swedish upper-secondary students (50.8% girls, Mage = 16.62, SD = 0.71) identified politically interested adolescents who attached high levels of importance to others’welfare and politically interested adolescents who attached low levels of importance. They differed on most comparative measures: environmental values, inclusive attitudes towards immigrants, support of democratic principles, trust in social movements, and readiness to step in if something jeopardizes the welfare of others. The conclusion is that the value of attaching high importance to others’ welfare or not transforms youth’s political interest into diverse attitudes and behaviors. The cluster group of politically interested adolescents who attached low importance to others’ welfare largely consisted of males.

The chapter focuses specifically on civic engagement as a distinct mode of political activity among citizens in contemporary democracies. In the first section, we review existing definitions of “civic engagement” in the literature, noting in particular the lack of common notions of what it entails, as well as the critique against too wide or all-encompassing definitions. In the second section, we develop a conceptual discussion about civic engagement and political participation, and suggest a thin notion of civic engagement that may be measured in a straightforward way in empirical studies. In the third section, we turn to an overview of recent empirical works on civic engagement, highlighting key findings and suggesting avenues for further research.

Medborgarnas frivilliga deltagande i politiken uppfattas som centralt för en levande demokrati. Baserat på fler än 300 färska studier visar den här rapporten att ungas politiska deltagande blivit allt svårare att definiera och avgränsa. Ett skäl är att ungdomar hela tiden utvecklar nya vägar för att försöka påverka, som reaktion på sociala, samhälleliga, teknologiska och politiska förändringar. Ett annat är att vissa handlingar motiveras av traditionella medborgarplikter, medan andra utformas mer utifrån en strävan efter ett individualiserat och uttrycksfullt självförverkligande.

This study examines the conditions that make adolescents open to their parents’ attempts at political socialization. Based on a reformulation of the perceptual accuracy argument, that parents’ messages are filtered through correct perceptions of these messages by adolescents, the study suggests that adolescents who accurately recognize their parents’ high political sophistication are particularly likely to attend to and be open to their parents’ political communication. This proposition was tested using cluster analysis of a sample of 505 Swedish upper-secondary students and their parents (51% girls;Mage = 16.56, SD = 0.67). The analysis yielded two clusters where adolescents correctly identified (26%) and failed to correctly identify (22%) their parents’ high political sophistication, and three clusters where both parents and adolescents reported low or medium parental political sophistication (10%, 11%, and 32%). In confirmation of the hypothesis, members of the cluster group of adolescents who correctly recognized their parents’ high political sophistication were particularly aware of parents’ political socialization attempts and receptive to parents’ political communication. Moreover, these youth considered their parents’ political views as important and, accordingly, seemed to perceive their parents as political role models.

Studies on youth participation tend to characterize youth as either active and trustful or as passive and alienated. This cross-national and longitudinal study examines patterns of citizenship orientations characterized by both manifest and latent involvement differentiated by one’s position toward institutional politics (trustful or distrustful) among 1,914 adolescents from five European countries (53.5% female; M_age = 16.27). Demographic and proximal contextual correlates associated with different orientations at a 1-year interval were also assessed. Latent profile analysis identified four groups of citizenship orientations among adolescents: engaged trustful, engaged distrustful, unengaged trustful, and unengaged distrustful. Differences of membership likelihood were found for background characteristics (gender and family income), school characteristics (track, democratic climate, student participation, and its perceived quality), family, and peer norms of participation.