EMPOWERING A GENERATION: ADDRESSING THE DECLINE OF YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN CANADA

1. EMPOWERING A GENERATION: ADDRESSING THE DECLINE OF YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN CANADA Matt Edmonds

2. Research questions • What are the causes of the decline? • What are the potential consequences? • How can “political dropouts” be made active? • How can youth be motivated to become more involved? • How can young people’s political efficacy be improved?

3. Framework • Addressing youth at all levels of engagement • Looking at all forms of political participation • Focus on potential actions by political institutions • Three main avenues of approach • Decreasing costs of and barriers to participation • Enhancing long-term political interest (assets/currency) • Delivering short-term motivations to participate

4. Declining participation • Overall turnout down: from high of 79.4% in 1958 to 58.8% in 2008 • Youth turnout low: 43.8% vs. overall 62.8% in 2006 • Current young generation voting at lower rate than past young generations. • Youth party membership significantly decreasing.

5. Explaining the decline • Reported reasons for not voting (youth): • Lack of interest 16.1% • Political attitudes attributed to performance of politicians and parties 90.2% • Personal reasons incl. busy, apathetic, disillusioned 25.3% • Negativity 28.0% • Personal/Administrative 51.9% • Other 3.8% (Pammett and LeDuc 2003) • Why are young people are less likely to vote? • Not represented, age gap 40.4% • Lack of info/understanding/knowledge 33.9% • Uninterested/apathetic 31.3% • Too busy or mobile 3.3%

6. Explaining the decline • Life-cycle effects (busy, personal stake) • Poor experience with first voting opportunity • Generational shift to distrust hierarchical institutional arrangements • Absence of hardships leads to focus on “higher order” issues like environmentalism • Generational culture – need for instant gratification • Government is seen to be doing a “good enough job” in the modern day

7. The problem • Overall turnout decline attributed to youth involvement decline • Parties not renewing memberships • Less responsive governance • Future government accountability • Health of democracy

8. Iraqi youth vs. Cdn/US youth

9. Decreasing costs of participation • Election administration – easy voting • Registration – personal contact • Mail – simpler process needed • Advance voting – minimal gains in other countries • Proxy – demonstrated to enhance turnout; manipulation concerns • Online – currently unreliable for high-level elections, but Harvard is developing promising system

10. Decreasing costs of participation • Parties & mobilization agencies • Must innovate to connect with youth • Low-commitment options • Ask youth to participate, show the path • Mobilization efforts particularly important for youth with little knowledge/education • Create social networks – essential for mobile youth • Provide incentives and demonstrate payoffs – politics is a high-risk game, must sell returns • Connecting interest to action

11. Decreasing costs of participation • Access to information • Traditional news media poorly targets youth • Targets older demographic (who have money) • Most information too complex • Need for easily-accessible information at different “tiers” of complexity for youth with varying levels of political knowledge

12. Decreasing costs of participation • The “series of tubes,” a.k.a. the internet • “Web 2.0” or “the semantic web” • Dissemination of information – high exposure, context-appropriate • Parties and politicians • Social media links • Targeted ads – Facebook • Twitter – 140 characters max. • YouTube

13. Decreasing costs of participation • Peer-to-peer information sharing • Other youth provide the information filter for “tiers” • Personal source = greater attention • Blogs – 1.4 created per second • Online democratic participation • Obama’s change.gov issuesubmission and vote • Town hall questions onwhitehouse.gov

14. Increasing long-term assets • Education and political knowledge • #1 factor in effective youth participation • Civics classes should be mandatory • Deliver education as close as possible to first voting opportunity • Election simulations in schools • Satire in education?

15. Increasing long-term assets • Salience • Political parties and focus on youth issues • Big picture issues, firm stance • Problem with centric brokerage parties • Cynicism • Addressed through increases in political efficacy • Scandals and negative perceptions – better management • Penetration of the good and the bad through better information access

16. Increasing long-term assets • Parties • Raise profile of youth issues • Younger people in important positions • Increasing mobilization efforts between campaigns • Youth organizations • Winning the PR battle against anti-party attitudes

17. Increasing long-term assets • Political information • Constant easy access needed • Regular updates through socialnetworks • Social media provides filter

18. Increasing long-term assets • Families • Youth attitudes are largely learned from families • Not just youth, but individuals of all ages must be targeted • Engaging families as a whole; providing parents with resources

19. Increasing long-term assets • Political satire • Primary source of political information for thousands of youth • Increasingly serves newsfunction • Entertainment breaks the interest gap • Can increase cynicism • Not as prevalent in Canada as US • Multiple programs needed toreach broad youth audience

20. Short-term interest boosts • Catalyzing events • Elections on very divisive issues vs. “Harper’s tired of waiting for his majority” • Risk of increasing cynicism • Engaging narratives • Not necessarily of direct political relevance • Exciting stories connected to campaigns draw interest • First point of contact, not entire focus • Provides material for entry-level political satire

21. Short-term interest boosts • Parties • Campaign directly to youth • Take the risk and devote resources to low turnout group,or perpetuate the problem • Charismatic leaders extremely important vs.

22. Short-term interest boosts • Political information • During elections, make the most out of media’s focus on politics • Filtering essential – delivering resonant messages amongst a glut of election reporting • Institutions must deliver targeted messages through effective channels • Social media also fulfills this function • Political satire is accessible and also sticks to top issues; youth make up large chunk of target market

23. Short-term interest boosts • Post-election • “Honeymoon phase” of satisfaction with democratic process • Continue campaign-level mobilization • Transition from short-term to long-term interest and participation

24. Other issues • Dumbing down politics: long term harms? • Necessary to get youth into political sphere • Individuals will climb the ladder to higher tiers • Other means of increasing participation not investigated in this project: • Electoral system reform (PR, MMP) • Mandatory voting • Paying youth to vote

25. Civic Network Project • 1. Provide effective information and education • Meetings, events, podcasts, videos • 2. Connect citizens to action-based groups • Civic involvement matchmaking • 3. Develop and share project blueprint • How to repeat anywhere else • www.civicnetwork.ca

26. EMPOWERING A GENERATION: ADDRESSING THE DECLINE OF YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN CANADA Matt Edmonds