Youth, Political Socialisation and Political Generations
This chapter explains how childhood foundations are typically laid for longer term 'careers' as politically engaged and active citizens, or as disengaged adults. Youth is then the life stage during which individuals are first able to become aware of what different political parties stand for, and the issues that matter most to them. Some then begin to build active careers in politics. Others become reliable supporters in elections of their preferred political parties. Others exit childhood unconcerned and remain politically apathetic as they move into adulthood. Some are politically aware and concerned, but decide that none of the existing parties represent their own views. If there are sufficient numbers (who may be only a few as a percentage of their cohorts) they may become the vanguard of a new political generation. The chapter explains how the youth of the 1920s and 1930s supplied the vanguard who reconstituted post 1945 European politics. Cohorts born between 1945 and 1955, the baby boomers, became another vanguard group. The surprising feature of political history in Western Europe since then is that there has been no subsequent vanguard and no new political generation. Rather, successive cohorts have each been less engaged politically than their predecessors. The chapter concludes by considering the likelihood of the periodic outbursts of protest in Europe's new (post 1989) democracies and in the older democracies signifying the formation of another new political generation which might mobilise in different ways than all its predecessors.