Young people and politics in Eastern and Western Europe

Abstract: This paper considers the kind of political engagement among young people in Eastern and Western Europe, based upon a sub-sample of 16-25 year olds from the World Values Survey 1995-1997 (N=7740). By taking a broad view of politics to include political involvement, political action, civil and political participation, democratic mindedness, the role of "new politics" and faith in the political system, it is found that young people are both interested and active in politics. The paper considers how these different aspects of politics are associated together along with the regional and demographic variations. The analysis shows that young people are not generally disengaged from politics (as many have claimed) and that those who are most engaged are those with more education, with higher social class and who are male rather than female. The exception is with environmental politics where women are both more active and more concerned than men. The analysis also found that in general, young people in Eastern Europe are less engaged in politics than those from Western Europe, including both conventional and unconventional political activity. Finally we draw up a typology of the different kinds of political profiles of young people and from this we argue that young people are not disengaged from politics, but rather that their involvement in politics takes a variety of different forms. Furthermore this analysis suggests that we need to look at "lifestyle" politics as an important field of political action rather than only traditional political engagement such as voting or joining political parties.;