The Tide Raising All Boats? Political Inequality at 16-17 in Scotland and RUK

• In Event: Electoral Participation

Abstract

The Scottish independence referendum of 2014 saw the voting age reduced to 16 initially for this particular decision only. Following the experience in the referendum, which was widely evaluated as positive, the Scottish Parliament voted unanimously to reduce the voting age to 16 for all future Scottish elections (including both local and national votes). This situation provides researchers with a unique opportunity to study early enfranchisement in a natural quasi-experimental setting: One part of the UK has seen the voting age reduced, while the rest (England, Wales and Northern Ireland) have not. Using a unique representative survey of 16-17 year olds in Scotland and the rest of the UK we were able to compare young people’s political attitudes ahead of the 2015 UK general election. In the context of a UK-wide election rather than the very specific context of the Scottish referendum in 2014 we analyse whether differences could be observed between the newly enfranchised Scottish 16-17 year olds and their peers elsewhere in the UK.

In previous research we were able to demonstrate that levels of electoral and non-electoral political participation as well as civic attitudes were at significantly higher levels amongst Scottish young people compared to their peers elsewhere. Most of these findings proved to be robust even when taking into account proxy measures for the importance of the specific Scottish independence referendum effect and socialising influences (such as news exposure, parental engagement and civic education in schools). We did not previously investigate, however, whether these differences were simply average changes (with an increase in levels in Scotland across all strata at equivalent levels) or whether there were also distributional differences.

This paper investigates this particular issue. It asks whether patterns of social class and the use of different information sources impact electoral and non-electoral political participation of 16-17 year olds differently in Scotland compared to the rest of the UK. We examine if the classic finding that higher social class is associated with greater political participation and acquisition of political information continues to hold in Scotland following the lowering of the voting age. Our research shows that this commonly found relationship still applies in the rest of the UK, but has been broken down for 16-17 year olds in Scotland ahead of the 2015 general election with no significant differences between different social classes in this age group.

We investigate why this is the case and analyse how far the differences can be attributed to a general “Scotland effect” and if this effect has to do with the earlier enfranchisement or the referendum experience or the greater prominence of particular Scottish structures that are conducive to reducing participation inequalities (such as civic education). The results contribute new insights to the debate about inequalities in youth participation and how to achieve wider reach of efforts to increase political engagement of young people. They also highlight potentially fruitful avenues for further investigation.

Authors

• Jan Eichhorn, University of Edinburgh

• Christine Huebner, The University of Edinburgh