Blog: The Future of Adolescents' Right to Vote and Political Participation (original) (raw)

A Voice, but not a Vote: A Youth Generation at Risk?

Children & Society, 2019

The aim of this paper is to address risks young people in the late 20th and 21st century are exposed to with regard to political participation. Based on qualitative data and ordinary language interviews with 27 Norwegian pupils in upper secondary school, we address how the construction of the political space is understood by young people themselves. By analysing how young people define political interest and engagement, the findings indicate that a gap exists in the perception of 'own' and 'institutionalised' political participation. This paper concludes that exploring the understanding of politics among the young may reduce vulnerability of this particular group in their democratic participation as well as facilitate their political empowerment.

How Old Is Old Enough to Vote. Youth Participation in Society

2003

According to a reductionist definition, a democratic society is a society that has its citizens participate in major collective decisions by granting the right to vote. Based on this perspective, young electors, who are supposed to be less likely to show up at the polling station, have regularly been the subject of a whole range of questions. We are interested here in a specific aspect of the general problem: allowing 16-year-olds to vote.

16 and 17 Year Olds Can Be Part of Our Democracy Even If They Do Not Have the Vote

2014

Ed Miliband has recently backed a call from Democratic Audit and a range of youth organisations to lower the voting age in the UK to 16. In this post, the latest in our series on youth participation in democracy, Andy Mycock and Jonathan Tonge make the point that votes at 16 will not be a panacea to the problem of youth disengagement, and suggest we need wider reform of a political system that has become increasingly insular, self-selecting, and unrepresentative.

From Denizen to Citizen: Contesting Representations of Young People and the Voting Age

Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 2020

The point of departure for this article is the failed attempt in Australia in 2018 to lower the voting age below 18. The focus is on citizenship and how particular representations of children and young people are used to justify not giving young people the vote. I draw on the theory of representations developed by Bourdieu (1992), Moscovici (1980) as well as Taylor's theory of misrecognition (1994) to highlight how particular representations are used in some arguments made by those opposing the enfranchisement of people under 18 years of age. Those representations emphasise alleged deficiencies in young people's political literacy, capacity for good judgement and experience due largely to a developmental stage in the life cycle they are said to occupy. In assessing these arguments, evidence is provided that demonstrates the various ways young people are being political and well able to engage in complex political processes and exercise good judgment. This raises various issues about how the political capabilities of young people are understood in a context characterized as a crisis of democracy.

The democracy challenge: young people and voter registration

Concept, 2000

In May 2009 at the height of the MP's expenses row, the Prime Minister (Brown 2009) talked about the need for „major constitutional reform‟ which included „the case for votes at 16‟. In March 2009 one of his cabinet colleagues, Ed Miliband, (Scottish Labour 2009) went ...