Are Young People Turning Away from Democracy? A Comparative Study of Youth Disengagement in Advanced Democracies
Creators: name: Chowdhury, Intifar
Publisher: name: The Australian National University
Year: 2023

description: In light of the dramatic decline in electoral turnout in advanced democracies, youth disengagement has surfaced as a salient concern. Despite being better-educated, younger cohorts appear to be less committed to democracy than their older counterparts. Previous research has examined this youth disengagement puzzle to warn that younger generations are also culpable for rejecting the foundational values of democracy as they turn away from traditional democratic processes. A more optimistic camp has suggested that youth support for democratic ideals is unchanged as they move away from traditional institutions. Considering both sides of the debate, this study asks the questions: are young people turning away from democracy? If so, why? To investigate whether young people are turning away from the principles and/or processes of democracy, I use survey data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES, 1996-2016) for a comprehensive empirical inquiry on which of the three time effects- age, period or cohort (APC)- drives youth disengagement in 35 Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries. I employ hierarchical modelling techniques and other quantitative methods to isolate the highly collinear APC effects and test a number of theories regarding the effects of various individual and context-level factors on youth democratic engagement. My study finds that younger generations are moving away from traditional democratic practices, such as voting and party alignment, but their commitment to key democratic principles remain comparable to older generations. It confirms that the changing social context is characterised by long-term societal transformations that accumulate modernisation resources across generations, facilitating youth withdrawal from traditional democratic processes. Looking into various micro and macro-level components of modernisation, this study elucidates the impacts of the decline in religion, increase in media use and institutional design factors on youth generational disengagement. It reveals that traditional institutions have not evolved to cater for newer generations with different cognitive resources, abilities and concerns. Overall, this research a) provides a methodologically sound clarification of the exact nature of the youth disengagement problem by accounting for competing time effects; b) makes a theoretical contribution by showing how gradual decline in engagement is a product of continuous process of societal transformations across generations, rather than a one-off generational feature; and, c) provides nuanced results of how disengagement can be sensitive to the micro and macro environment of the youth. In doing so, it cautions that youth disengagement is a clear symptom (not a cause) of democratic distress; and, wrongly holding an already marginalised group culpable for rejecting the foundational values of democracy may further push the future custodians away from the political system.