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Challenges to Democratic Citizenship in Adolescence: Precursors and Effects of Populist Attitudes and Political Activity

Katharina Eckstein, University of Jena

This symposium focuses on youth`s political attitudes and behaviors, as adolescence is a formative period in life for political development. A special focus will be set on populist attitudes. Besides the consideration of precursors (media, socio-demographic factors), the symposium will also address the interplay between populist attitudes and different indicators of active and democratic citizenship. All presentations will draw on large-scale-data sets and apply state-of the art-statistical methods (e.g., multilevel-modeling, latent transition analyses, structural equation modeling) to test their hypotheses. The first paper, presented by Astrid Körner, Katharina Eckstein, and Peter Noack aims at gaining a better understanding of what characterizes populist attitudes among German youth. Besides the question whether different facets of populist attitudes usually found among adult samples can identified in middle adolescence as well, effects on political attitudes and behaviors will be assessed. The second paper, presented by Anna-Maria Mayer and Philipp Jugert, will examine the role of media. By implementing an intensive longitudinal design (online daily diaries with 10 measurement points among German adolescents), daily and lagged associations between media valence and emotions towards the European Union (EU) mediated by populistic attitudes will be analyzed. The third paper, presented by Marta Miklikowska, Katharina Eckstein, Katarzyna Jasko, and Jan Šerek, will take a person-centred approach to identify distinct groups of youths depending on their level of political interest and level of political activism (i.e., active, passive, and standby citizens). In addition, a special focus will be placed on the role of political trust and satisfaction with the political system in explaining stability and change in activity groups across time.

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