Learning Politics: Youth Councils as Schools of Democracy

• In Event: 4322 - Section on Political Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 08. Democracy and Democratization

Abstract

Declining interest in the institutions of representative democracy is forcing us to reshape our democratic practices. Youth participation has been lauded as one such change that could strengthen democratic values and active citizenship among young people. In Finland municipalities are required by law to offer minors opportunities to participate in public decision-making and this requirement is mostly fulfilled through municipal youth councils.

On one hand these youth councils are touted as a means of invoking active citizenship among young people and giving them the skills and means to influence local politics. On the other, they are criticized for creating an illusion of youth participation, while in fact their political and economic influence is slim. The opposites of engaging, quality deliberation with visible results and that of tokenistic exploitation that results in cynicism and disillusionment are tangled in a veritable Gordian knot. Heuristic models, best-case scenarios, of qualitative participation have been offered by those underlining the importance of procedural legitimacy in the organization of participation. Others choose to highlight the more fickle notion of equality in opportunity, raising the issue of how privilege in terms of social and cultural capital affects possibilities to participate
This paper is based on a longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork in one of the oldest and biggest youth councils in Finland. The study looks into the process of becoming (or not) of city youth representatives, the democratic merits of the system, and the patterns of interaction and use of political power.

Author

• Georg Boldt, University of Tampere