Youth and politics: The political involvement of the young prior to the crisis

Citizens’ trust in the political system and institutions in Greece was in systematic decline since the early 1990s and up to the crisis. At the same time, the young increasingly distanced themselves from politics, as both their political interest and their level of actual political involvement were much smaller compared to young people in previous eras and to their contemporaries in middle-age.

All empirical surveys of this period attest that Greek youth, as is the case with other young Europeans, is mainly individualistic, with limited socio-political concerns and reduced interest for and participation in political collectivities. In parallel, cynicism and a sense of futility as to the effectiveness of a possible political intervention seem to be on the increase. The general social, political and cultural conditions dictated a climate of complacency and disengagement, while young people mainly channelled their interests and their energy towards other directions, in distinct contrast to their parents’ generation. The crisis, a very strong factor for (re)socialisation, played a significant role as we will see. However, the December 2008 events caused surprise, precisely because they did not fit the collective characteristics typically assigned to the younger generations at that time. Something had already begun to change.

Young people and political generation

Although the young are not a homogenous social category, we could generalise when referring to them as an agent of political action, to the extent that there is an essential homogenising factor in the political expression of that group. This factor relates to historical instances, when this particular age group experienced significant socialisation events. As a result, young individuals of a specific generation have great similarities among them, mainly in their political understanding, but also in their political attitudes [1]. Furthermore, based on the theory of social representations (Moscovici 1984), we assume that members of the same generation share common representations of the world also because of the way they have been shaped as a generation through the media. These commonalities are extremely important, because they bring together a group of members of the same age category, who acquire specific communication codes and common ways of assessing and understanding the world (Potter 2005, p. 205).

In past decades, the social identity of successive cohorts of young people was shaped during their childhood and adolescence within an environment of disregard for politics and collectiveness, in a general atmosphere promoting privatisation and individualisation and a media framework that promoted and favoured specific lifestyles and standards of social and political involvement. This was systematically reflected in the comparatively low percentages of young people’s political participation. A phenomenon not exclusively related to the Greek political culture, despite its particularities, while at the European level, the change in the political characteristics of electorates is fully documented. Some authors connect this change to the appearance of post-materialist values after the war (Inglehart 1977, 1997) while others link it to the gradual consolidation of post-modern identity trends through which today’s youth expresses itself during the current phase of globalisation and capitalist growth (Gibbins 1989). The prevailing trend is that of a decline in all traditional forms of political participation and a parallel decline in party identification. In addition, the importance of class voting as well as the explanatory weight of ideological self-placement in voting behaviour have also declined. These trends are typically observed more in younger individuals, while “generation replacement” is ultimately proven to be a central driving force of political change (Hooghe 2004). This is why there is a growing interest in studying the political characteristics of the young.

It should be further noted that, when referring to the relationship “youth and politics”, the underlying assumption is that age has an impact on political behaviour and in particular on political participation, as is widely documented in research. However, our approach should take into account at least two parameters, which form the sociological dimensions of age and thus influence the definition of political behaviour: a) age as an expression of the political generation to which each subject belongs b) age as a position in the “cycle of life”, which implies different roles (Παντελίδου Μαλούτα 2012). Usually, research focuses on what influences the young, however we should not ignore the effect of the life cycle position, which varies among different societies according to their economic development, nor the class position and gender of same-age agents of political action. For example, unemployment drives many young individuals back to their family home, creating a condition that affects their world-view, while in general young women leave the family home later than young men etc.

In any case, young people get involved in the political process when they feel that political events affect them. The main differentiating factor from one generation to the next always has to do with what the members of each generation think that mainly concerns them. Specifically, it appears that although the Left-Right divide shaped electoral behaviour in many European societies until the 1990s (Van der Eijk & Franklin, 1996), its importance decreased along with the decline of class-related voting (Franklin, et al 1992). This is particularly evident among younger voters. Similarly, the young seem to be the main driving force behind the so-called “thematic vote” (Rose & Mc Allister 1986), that has replaced older, class or ideological, divides.

According to empirical political research findings, structural factors define vote orientation more for voters who were politically socialised prior to 1960, while self-placement on the Left-Right divide mostly influences the vote of those who were socialised until 1990 (Van de Brug 2010). Finally, there are indications that the thematic voting in Greece mostly concerns (young) voters socialised politically in their adolescence, after 2000.

Socialisation and re-socialisation of the young

The importance of each period’s socialisation messages as well as the early formative experiences of each political generation are crucial to the way in which each generation manages subsequent stimuli. The “concerns” of the young after the 1990s are more individualised and lifestyle-related, as opposed to their parents’ generation, who were mostly society-oriented (Παντελίδου Μαλούτα 2012). Until recently, all available data on age pointed to substantial changes in basic socialisation messages typifying different generations, due to the changes observed in the local and international social and cultural context as a result of globalisation and the integration of Greek society in supranational structures. This created various and often contradictory political socialisation messages, which in fact manifested themselves beyond political behaviour.

Indeed, the socio-political character of the young in the early 2000s had significantly changed compared to previous generations of young individuals. These changes are both quantitative (less political interest and limited political involvement) and ideological (much lower rates of a leftist identity), and they are linked to value changes. A 2006 research project comparing 1988 and 2006 data shows a young population with right-wing tendencies (decline in leftist identity between 18-29 year-olds from 37.1% in 1988 to 9.8% in 2006); more cynical and negative towards the political system (“whoever is in power always sees to his/her own interests”, 49% in 1988, 70.6% in 2006); with increased declaration of absolute political indifference (15.9% in 1988, 39.5% in 2006) and much lower participation, across all indicators [2]. Indeed, as shown in Table 2, young individuals appear to be more cynical during the first decade of the 2000 compared to the past and more cynical than older age groups. A reversal of the curve is thus observed.

 Table 1: Political interest (%)

Data source: Research projects Women’s Political Behaviour, National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) 1988; Research on Political Models and Political Behaviour, University of Athens 2006

Table 2: Perceptions of politics and politicians (% fully agree)

Data source: Research projects Women’s Political Behaviour, National Centre for Social Research (EKKE) 1988; Research on Political Models and Political Behaviour, University of Athens 2006