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This book analyses the various ways and the extent to which young people participate in politics, focusing primarily on the UK and including cross-national comparisons where relevant. It covers topics including: what is meant by political participation; youth political participation on a pan-European basis; new social media and youth political participation; whether the voting age should be lowered to 16; youth participation at the local level; and young women and political participation. Written in a lively and engaging style, the book provides a detailed investigation into the extent to which young people in the twenty-first century are interested and participate in politics. The author has included interviews with many young people, as well as with academics and specialists in the field. The book's greatest contribution is to the debate surrounding whether or not the voting age should be lowered to 16 - a timely and thought-provoking analysis.--

This book provides an innovative theoretical and empirical exploration of the political participation and democratic capability of people living in authoritarian states. Merging perspectives from sociology and political science, the book demonstrates that despite autocratic restrictions on opposition, there is often still leeway for people to express themselves as political agents and to develop democratic capability. The first two chapters problematise political participation and develop an interdisciplinary three-domain framework that allows for critical engagement with and appreciation of the contexts and varied ways in which participatory activities occur. This framework is applied to analyse six country case studies: Singapore, Jordan, Belarus, Cuba, Nigeria, and Vietnam. Drawing on a range of data sources and different analytical entry points, the book investigates the substantive opportunities people have in exercising political agency and the implications for democratic capability. The book concludes by summarising the emergent themes and examining the potential of applying this method of inquiry in other political contexts. Encompassing both governmental and societal practices, the book offers insights into state-society relations and their role in constructing political values and goals for participation, which people negotiate and mediate to inform their choices, modes, and forms of civic engagement. These insights present a broad approach towards the study of participation, with relevance for understanding political participation in various societies under non-democratic and democratic rule alike. This book will be useful for researchers and students interested in political dynamics and intersections with economic, cultural, and social aspects of development. It will also be beneficial for practitioners interested in participatory actions and social change

The papers in this collection, written by a cross-regional group of experts, provide insights into the causes of declining levels of citizen participation and other distinct forms of civic activism in Europe and explore a range of factors contributing to apathy and eventually disengagement from vital political processes and institutions. At the same time, this volume examines informal or unconventional types of civic engagement and political participation corresponding to the rapid advances in culture, technology and social networking. The volume is divided into three interrelated parts: Part I consists of critical essays in the form of theoretical approaches to analysing weakening political participation and citizen estrangement; Part II is dedicated to an exploration of the role and deployment of technologically advanced media, such as the internet, as determinants of changing patterns of political participationist behaviour. Finally, Part III presents findings of empirical research on the issue of political participation. Combining theoretical and empirical perspectives, the book contributes towards a better understanding of the disquieting trend of voter apathy and disenchantment with politics in the context of the ongoing process of European integration, and offers a variety of analytical tools for decoding both the emergence of alternative conceptualizations of citizenship and other forms of meaningful civic and political engagement.

This handbook provides a comprehensive treatment of the various mechanisms African Americans have used to participate in American political affairs from the colonial era to the present. African American participation in U.S. electoral politics as voters, candidates, and officeholders is at an all-time high. However, political activism by the nation's longest standing minority has been practiced throughout history, even in the colonial and slavery eras of disenfranchisement and institutionalized oppression. With contributions by many of the field's experts, this concise, provocative volume explores the evolution and current status of African American political action. Focusing on distinct types of activity (protest politics, grassroots movements, electoral politics, political office holding), it charts the unique development of African Americans as they progressed from slaves to citizens to wielders of ever-growing influence. As the book vividly demonstrates, African American efforts to act on their own political behalf didn't begin in the 60s.; Even in the colonial and slavery eras, people of color courageously launched petitions, instigated job actions on plantations, and staged full-blown revolts, creating a legacy of activism that expanded through the Abolition movement, Reconstruction, the Jim Crow era, the post-WWII civil rights movement, and up to the present.

Traditional general population surveys are unable to provide in-depth data about political activists because those citizens who participate in forms of action such as youth parties and protests constitute rare populations. Even when political participation is measured, it is decontextualized, which means that the survey answers respondents give in relation to their political participation are likely to be ecologically invalid. In other words, they are not generalizable to the particular context of the real-life setting of political participation because the questions are asked outside of that context. Moreover, traditional surveys ask respondents whether they have participated in a range of political actions, but very few are able to capture the issue of a demonstration (e.g., a climate march or a right-wing demonstration) and youth-specific forms of political participation such as youth councils and political parties youth wings are not included in general population surveys. The latter are sometimes covered in youth-specific surveys, but these are rare. In this case study, we outline a method for systematically surveying hard-to-reach political activists in a contextualized way. We focus on how to use surveys to catch protesters and young activists in the act of political participation. We describe an original method developed to robustly survey street demonstrations and explain how we adapted it to survey young participants at political events. We will reflect on the adaptations that we made to the methodology to capture young participants at political events as well as their effectiveness. The central theme is to illustrate the possibility and value of "catching" people as they are doing political participation. This enables a more sophisticated analysis of political activists than analysis of existing secondary datasets because the sample sizes of people engaging in these relatively rare behaviors are significantly larger, and the data are much more nuanced.

This comprehensive reference examines the history and importance of youth participation in politics, suggests reasons for their disengagement, and discusses efforts to increase the interest of young voters in the political process--a process in which they could be a controlling factor.

An examination of the increasing influence of 37 million Latino/a Americans on US electoral and social movements. Latino/a Americans hold the potentially largest swing vote in US elections and are a growing influence on the nation's politics.

Chapter 1: Introduction -- Chapter 2: Motivations: What Motivates Muslim Women to Participate in Politics? -- Chapter 3: Opportunities: Where do the Opportunities for Muslim Women's Participation in Politics Lie? -- Chapter 4: Barriers: What Limits Muslim Women's Political Participation? -- Chapter 5: Conclusions.