Young People's Political Participation in Western Europe: Continuity or Generational Change?

Are young people today politically 'apathetic'? Or are they democratically 'mature' citizens? This book examines several types of involvement to reveal changes in young people's political participation in Europe in recent decades. It uses various concepts of 'age' to compare participation across countries and over time.

Gema García-Albacete explores why being young, or having been socialized at the beginning of the 21st century, may affect political participation. She also develops the conceptual and empirical tools that let us compare political participation and the life stage of youth in an equivalent way across countries and over time. The study finds that political participation has not experienced a radical generational change, and that young people's life stage - and the timing and circumstances of their transition to adulthood - influences how they relate to the political world.