Taller de proyectos

The increasingly lower rate of political participation by the young has led to the claim that young people are apathetic about politics (Phelps, 2012) and have chosen to indulge in other non-political activities (Stoker, 2012). This has been countered by many studies which have found that young people are not apathetic but are either alienated or have adopted new patterns of political participation (Dalton 2008; Henn and Foard, 2014a; Melo and Stockemer, 2014; Norris, 2003; Sloam, 2014). Alienation refers to the disenchantment young people feel towards politics, politicians and the political system. The alienation thesis suggests that young people are interested in the decisions that influence their lives, but due to the conduct of politicians and the organisation of political institutions, they choose not to participate in formal politics. Phelps (2012: 288) has termed the scholars who refute the apathy explanation as the ‘anti-apathy school’. Many of the theorists who write from within the anti-apathy paradigm have two objections to the apathy thesis: firstly, that it relies on the unsubstantiated claim that young people are not interested in politics – which we will discuss in this section - and, secondly, that it does not recognise other more unorthodox activities which young people are turning to which are also political in nature – which we will discuss in the next section (Dalton, 2008; Henn et al, 2002; Henn et al, 2005; McCaffrie and Marsh, 2013).

The anti-apathy school thesis is predicated on the belief that young people are interested in politics and are advocates of the democratic process. Conventional wisdom would suggest that young people are declining to engage with formal politics because they are apathetic about politics and have turned their attention elsewhere. Some commentators have even

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claimed that young people are ‘too stupid’ to understand the importance of political participation (Kirkup, 2015).

However, the assertion that young people are not interested in politics has been challenged across several studies. Some scholars have claimed that youth have become disenchanted with politics because of hegemonic neoliberal values in which inequality has increased, economics are depoliticised and politicians are consistently depicted as duplicitous and selfish (Adsett, 2003; Edwards, 2009; Hart and Henn, 2017; Hay and Stoker, 2009; Kyroglou and Henn, 2017). Indeed, young people possess the characteristics to become political agents and display attachment to democratic norms. Haug’s (2017) and van Deth et al’s (2011) investigations established that a large majority of prepubescent youth demonstrated some interest in politics and were able to converse about political topics. Chareka and Sears (2006:

532) stated that most young people investigated in their study ‘exhibited a fairly sophisticated understanding of voting and its place in the political system.’ Similarly, Cammaerts et al (2014) found most of their research participants had opinions on a variety of political topics. Indeed, many of Henn’s investigations (Henn et al, 2002; Henn et al, 2005; Henn and Foard, 2014a) have concluded that young people, for the most part, have an interest in politics. Not only do young people have interest in politics, but they also, in general, have faith in the democratic process (Busse et al, 2015; Cammaerts et al, 2014; Henn and Foard, 2014a; Mycock and Tonge, 2012). In addition, Henn and Foard (2014a) found that a majority of young people believed that elections meant that MPs are accountable to citizens and that the democratic process makes MPs listen and engage with voters’ concerns.

If young people are interested in political issues and have faith in the democratic process, then why has their turnout at elections dropped so dramatically? The primary reasons suggested by the anti-apathy school are that young people have turned away from formal politics because they doubt their ability to influence politicians or politics (Bastedo, 2015;

Chareka and Sears, 2006; Henn and Foard, 2014a; Sloam, 2007), politics is too complicated and obscure (Henn and Foard, 2014a), political parties have homogenous polices (Busse et al, 2015) which are not relevant to young people (Henn and Foard, 2014b; O’Toole, 2003) and

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formal politics is organised in a hierarchal and centralised fashion (Busse et al, 2015; Henn and Foard, 2014a; Holmes and Manning, 2013). Henn and Foard (2014a) found from their surveys that a majority of young people said that they have no ‘say in what the government does’ and there were not ‘enough opportunities for young people like me to influence political parties.’ The same investigation discovered that although young people were supportive of the democratic process in creating dialogue between the government and voters, many young people felt that elections did not ‘really change anything’ and were a

‘waste of time and money.’ Cammaerts et al (2014) also found that even though many younger people feel ignored and are disillusioned with their political representatives, they still wanted politicians to listen to (and act upon) their views.

Kimberlee (2002) has argued that the lack of efficacy young people feel is hardly surprising considering that most members of political parties are older and are therefore unrepresentative of the population. Indeed, there are not many young people who are politicians and youth wings of political parties do not, for the most part, influence the parliamentary political parties (Mycock and Tonge, 2012). Young people are also likely to feel that they don’t have the political knowledge to engage with politics correctly, that politics is shrouded in boring and unnecessary complexities, and that political discussions are often opaque (Henn and Foard, 2014a). Furthermore, young people have complained that there is little difference between the policies of major political parties which consolidates their lack of interest (Busse et al, 2015; Holmes and Manning, 2013; Manning and Holmes, 2013). This worry over the homogenous nature of political parties is compounded for young people by the sense that political parties are ignorant of their circumstances (Furlong and Cartmel, 2012;

Henn and Foard, 2014b; Sloam, 2013) and are too hierarchal, remote and centralised to be relevant to contemporary society (Busse et al, 2015; Henn and Foard, 2014a; Kimberlee, 2002).

The disillusionment young people display towards formal politics is underpinned by the belief that politicians should not be trusted, that politicians want power for its own sake and that politicians show little interest in the lives of ordinary people, particularly those who are young

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(Bastedo, 2015; Henn et al, 2007). Henn and Foard’s (2014a: 367) study found that young people believed that politics is ‘overly complex and populated by a professional political elite that is more concerned with pursuing its own narrow self-serving agenda than it is in championing the interests and issue concerns of young people.’

Even when the political decisions impact on young people, the younger generations are excluded from the debate which surrounds the decision-making. Poor youth employment is framed as the failure of young people to adopt the right skills, the rise in tuition fees from the perspective of the older taxpayer and the necessity of austerity measures so as to protect future generations (Furlong and Cartmel, 2012). Exclusions from the debates around issues which affect their lives have led young people to search for new ways to become involved in politics. There is a large body of evidence that supports the proposition that young people are interested in politics and believe in democracy, however, they are not happy with how politics functions and are sceptical about the intentions of politicians and the relevance of institutionalised politics to their lives.

Yet, the anti-apathy position does have opposition. Fox (2015) argues that calling recent youth cohorts alienated is a misnomer. Fox calls attention to the varied and imprecise definitions of political alienation and argues that a more precise, evidence-based understanding of the term is needed to explore the phenomenon. He suggests that the term should be based on powerlessness – where the individual does not feel they have the power to influence the political system; normlessness – where the individual does not trust the outcomes of political interactions; and meaninglessness – where there is a lack of understanding and knowledge by the individual of the political system. Tracing the millennials’ responses over their life course via the British Social Attitudes and British Election Study surveys, Fox brings attention to the fact that young people are notable for their lack of alienation from formal politics. In terms of their normlessness and meaninglessness responses, they are no different to older cohorts and millennials are the least alienated generation in terms of their self-perceived ability to influence the political process and their confidence in the political system. What distinguishes young people from their older contemporaries, however, is their high levels of

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apathy. Thus, according to Fox’s research, there is significant evidence that young people are not alienated but apathetic about electoral politics.

Nevertheless, there are issues with Fox’s research. For example, Fox (2015) measures millennials’ apathy by using responses to surveys which measure political interest.

Millennials’ reported lack of relative interest compared to other generations at a similar age leads him to declare that millennials are more apathetic than other generations. However, reducing millennials’ supposed apathy to their interest in politics could be argued to be conflating two different aspects of political participation. As many studies we have examined have concluded, young people are not interested in politics because they dislike their political representatives and the political system. Indeed, they often report an interest in democracy and decisions that affect their lives. It is unclear, then, why Fox’s quantitative findings should supersede the findings from several qualitative investigations reporting these findings (Almlund, 2018; Gordon and Taft, 2011; Henn and Foard, 2014a; O’Toole et al, 2003). If young people are claiming across multiple studies that their disenchantment towards politics is because of their unhappiness with the political system and their political representatives, then this evidence should not be discounted.

This section has focused on the first of the anti-apathy school’s arguments, namely, that young people are not apathetic about political matters, but, instead, feel alienated from the political process. The anti-apathy school has presented strong evidence from a variety of investigations that young people are interested in politics. Indeed, it’s not just that young people are interested in politics, but they have strong faith in the democratic system and believe that voting is as important as older people hold it to be. The anti-apathy school also provide a wide-body of evidence to account for why young people are not voting but report engagement with political issues and believe that the democratic process is important;

namely, that young people doubt their efficacy, find politics complicated and feel that political parties do not represent their views. This is further compounded by the feelings young people hold towards politicians. For most young people, politicians are only interested in gaining power, putting personal interests before responsibility to their constituents while ignoring or

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patronising young people. While we have highlighted one criticism with this position – the veracity of which is debateable – the evidence overwhelmingly suggests that youth are not apathetic about democratic participation or decisions that impact on their lives.