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Although many scholars are convinced of the apparent civic disengagement of youth, others suggest that civic participation of young people is stable and increasingly expressed through non-institutionalized forms of practicing politics. This book makes a key contribution to this discussion by asking whether the "decline or shift" paradigm is sufficient in understanding political participation of the youth. It argues that we need to move beyond this framework and develop a renewed reflection on the meaning of "civic and political engagement". It asks crucial questions such as: How can the young be educated into assuming civic and political responsibility? Why and how do young people engage in social and political action? How do the principal mediating institutions (education, media and the family) contribute to new or different forms of youth civic engagement? This text contains contributions from acknowledged specialists such as Constance Flanagan, Mark Elchardus, Marc Hooghe and Bert Klandermans and will be of key interest to students and scholars of youth and young citizens, civic & political involvement, European politics, youth studies, sociology, political participation and electoral behaviour. --

In recent years, list systems of proportional representation around the world have undergone important electoral reforms. Changes have included the opening of closed lists, guarantees for more demographic variation on ballot lists, the organization of new sub-local elections and the initiation of common lists. Traditional political parties have tended to endorse these reforms, thinking presumably that these reforms would strengthen their positions in the electoral struggle against new contending parties. Meanwhile, scholars have noted that these plans might backfire if instead of strengthening party unity these party-supported reforms enhance the position of individual candidates to the detriment of a given party as a whole. Yet the idea that these types of electoral reforms increase candidate-centred voting has not been tested. Specifically, it is unclear to what extent citizens' preferential votes are motivated by individual candidate attributes as opposed to party allegiance. Do electoral reforms enhance the relative influence of candidate-based attributes such as gender on voter preferences, thus diminishing the relative influence of party-based attributes such as ballot position? Our analysis of the Belgian district council elections of 2000 and 2006 reveals that although voters may be more inclined to vote for individual candidates they are no less relying on partisan clues. Adapted from the source document.

This article focuses on the theory of solidarity presented by Émile Durkheim in The Division of Labour in Society ([1893] 1969). Despite its popularity, the distinction between mechanical and organic solidarity has received a lot of criticism. Durkheim allegedly was unable to demonstrate the superior integrating force of modern organic solidarity, while this was his central thesis at the time. A second critique challenges his macrostructural point of view. However, by confronting Durkheim's classical theory with contemporary work, notably Honneth's theory of recognition, we can deduce a reformulated framework that is less vulnerable to the afore-mentioned critiques. On the one hand, we specify mechanical and organic solidarity as a dialectical synthesis of both internalized universalistic principles and particularistic emotional orientations. On the other, we incorporate the foregoing typology in a cyclical model that implies interacting processes of inclusion and individualization.

The present article discusses the value of anonymous political discussions for everyone who is interested in public opinion, researchers, politicians and journalists. Anonymity is stated to be an essential component, since a lot of disadvantages of conventional opinion polls expose rather the opinion of the masses, rather than that of the public, and are thus less relevant. Compared with a hare freezing in the spotlight, many respondents to political surveys repeat loudly expressed opinions. The authors claim that polls should be connected to moments of informing of the public, and discussing with them, following the alternative of "deliberative polling" described by Fishkin. References. O. van Zijl

Together with the city council elections, the citizens of Antwerp elected on 8 October 2006 for the second time their district councils. This new decentralized political level is primarily initiated to restore the confidence of the citizens in the city (and district) government(s). By analyzing the results of the city & the district elections we try to find indications whether citizens feel closer to their new district governments or not. Firstly district elections resulted definitely not in less blank votes. Secondly, the number of list votes is higher on the district elections than on the city elections, while we would have expected a higher number of preferential votes. Thirdly, we see that the differences between the electoral results of the city elections & the district elections are becoming more pronounced. Although this last result seems to support the legitimacy of the decentralized district they merely reflect changes in the logic of the city elections. Mainly as a result of media coverage the city elections were direct elections of the mayor. Therefore voters used the district elections to vote for their preferred political party. This was not always possible at city level, because some parties did not have an eligible candidate for mayor. Generally spoken, we can conclude that the district elections do not give much proof of a closer connection between the citizens & the city government. Tables, Appendixes. Adapted from the source document.