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Active, Passive, Standby? ‐ Types of Political Activity and Its Correlates in Youth

Marta Miklikowska, Umea University, Katharina Eckstein, University of Jena; Katarzyna Jasko, Jagiellonian University; Jan Serek, Masaryk University

Young people's active involvement in the public sphere is the foundation of a vital democracy. Most research to date, however, has concentrated on the question whether young people are actively engaged or not. Recent studies suggested to go beyond this dichotomy and to distinguish between active (politically engaged and interested), passive (not engaged and not interested) and standby citizens (interested, but not politically engaged). But what keeps young people from becoming politically engaged? And how stable are distinct forms of political passivity and activity across time? The present study will draw on a subsample of the pan-European Project "Constructing Active Citizenship Among European Youth ("Catch-E-yoU"). Young people from Germany, Sweden, Czech Republic, and Italy were surveyed at two time points (nR 2093; 47.4% female; Mage 16.7). Person-centered statistical approaches will be used to identify subgroups of young people depending on their level of political interest and engagement. Longitudinal latent profile analyses will then be applied to examine stability and change among the groups over the course of one year (Research Question 1). In addition, it will be examined whether the identified subgroups differ across the four European countries and are related to youth's socio-demographic characteristics (i.e., age, gender, immigrant background, SES; Research Question 2). The third and final research will investigate to what extent youth's dissatisfaction with the political system, political sorrows, and political alienation predicts group membership and changes thereof. The study will contribute to identify factors that keep young people from becoming politically engaged. We will discuss in detail, in how far a more politicized and polarized environment provides opportunities to reach out to young people who are more likely to abstain from politics, but also to lose some young people who may further withdraw from the political domain.

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