Young Citizens and Political Participation in a Digital Society

Addressing the Democratic Disconnect

P. Collin

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137348838
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Drawing on diverse theoretical perspectives, this book examines questions of youth citizenship and participation by exploring their meanings in policy, practice and youth experience. It examines young people's participation in non-government and youth-led organisations, and asks what can be done to bridge the democratic disconnect.

1

Conceptualising Young Citizens

Questions of youth participation are fundamentally about citizenship. Yet, both the statutory and discursive markers of youth citizenship in the UK and Australia are ambiguous and young people receive mixed messages about their rights, responsibilities and opportunities to exercise citizenship. In the context of an apparent decline in formal political engagement in advanced democracies, increased dissatisfaction with the institutions and mechanisms of democracy and limited development of democratic society and polity associated with social and economic inequality, there has been a renewed interest in theorising citizenship (for example, Turner, 1990). This has led to: claims that citizenship should play an independent normative role in political theory; renewed emphasis on the Aristotelian ‘good citizen’; and renewed emphasis on concepts of ‘active citizenship’ and ‘responsible citizenship’ in theory and public policy (for example, Kymlicka and Norman, 1994; Marsh et al., 2007: 33; Stokes, 2002: 24). As such, policy and research in the area of youth citizenship take place in the context of broader debates on democracy, the role of citizens, forms of participation and the ways in which these are being configured in a networked society. How are these to be read in the context of changes in modern nation states as a result of globalisation and changing systems of governance at the local and national levels? What kinds of political identities and civic cultures might be emerging under the conditions of late modernity and are these evident among young people? How are youthful political identities influenced by policies aimed at young people which are opening up new opportunities to connect into policy networks? How might institutions and traditional political elites respond to meet the emerging expectations and civic cultures of young citizens?

Normative ideas about what constitute ‘good’ or ‘active’ citizens vary amongst different democratic theories. So too is there variance in the policies and approaches to youth participation. This chapter begins by exploring how participation is conceptualised in citizenship theory and in relation to young people. It then considers new understandings and ways of researching youthful political participation in the context of digital media and builds a framework for studying managed, top-down youth participation policies alongside the ‘bottom-up’ networked, collaborative and often youth-driven activities associated with many youth-serving and youth-led NGOs.

The participation of ‘good’ citizens

The question of what youth political participation is – or should be – how it can be fostered and what relationship it has to the state and other social institutions and actors depends on which theory of citizenship is drawn upon. While citizenship is a highly contested concept, the literature can be broadly summarised according to how different theories grant citizenship status and what participatory acts are thought to be indicative of a ‘good’ citizen, according to the relative emphasis that they place on ‘rights’, ‘responsibilities’ and ‘difference’.

‘Good citizenship’ as the exercise of rights

Social policy in advanced democracies typically reflects liberal conceptualisations of citizenship whereby young people are constructed as apprentice citizens emphasising the need to socialise young people for ‘minimal’ (Evans, 1995: 16), or ‘thin’ citizenship (Marsh et al., 2007). As liberal theory views democracy primarily as an institutional arrangement designed to protect the legal and political rights of individuals (from arbitrary or oppressive acts by government or individuals), ‘rights’ are privileged as the regulating mechanism of democracy (Habermas, 1996; Stokes, 2002). These rights are pursued in the ‘public sphere’ by individuals acting autonomously and according to relatively narrow definitions of the ‘politics’, arenas and targets of political action. The ‘good young citizen’ successfully transitions to adulthood by achieving educational and employment status, becoming an economically independent and productive member of society who is law abiding and votes in elections. Socialisation is typically assessed by measuring young people’s participation in political parties, voting in elections, political attitudes and literacy (Civics Expert Group, 1994; Lean, 1996; Martin, 2012). The normative construction of the citizen-as-adult and universalist assumptions embedded in liberal construction of rights has prompted re-visioning of what Moosa-Mitha calls ‘children’s ... rights to belong as “differently equal” members of society, outside the private/public dichotomy that results in marginalizing children’s interests and needs as “private” as reflected in adultist norms and social practices of the public culture’ (Moosa-Mitha, 2005: 386). This conception of rights necessarily requires recognition of processes of marginalisation and exclusion along with a wider range of practices that constitute political and civic culture. Nevertheless, scholarly and official accounts of youth political participation persist in diagnosing the lack of conventional engagement by young people as failure of socialisation processes and argue that young people must build ‘capacities’, skills and political literacy to engage in normative political participation. This point will be returned to when considering new understandings and ways of researching youth political participation below.

‘Good citizenship’ as the exercise of duties

In the context of an apparent failure of political socialisation and the resulting decline in engagement with traditional political agencies (such as political parties, unions, voter enrolment) theoretical approaches that emphasise ‘duty’ as the key component of citizenship have experienced a renaissance. These can be somewhat crudely grouped under the label ‘duty-based’ although there are important distinctions between civic republicanism, communitarianism and neo-conservatism. Like liberal accounts, duty-based notions of citizenship emphasise participation in the public sphere, and in existing political institutions and processes (Stokes, 2002: 34). However, they prioritise the ‘common good’ over private interests, and civic virtue, common values and ethics in public decision-making, these accounts contest narrow, purely legalistic approaches to citizenship.

For duty-based conceptions of citizenship, participation in the community plays a critical role in the socialising of democratic norms and values, particularly reason and deliberation (Etzioni, 1995), and civic virtue (Van Gunsteren, 1998). While widely critiqued, particularly in relation to Putnam’s interpretation of civil society organisations and the reasons for their decline (Putnam, 1993, 2000), duty-based perspectives have had significant influence on youth policy. This is particularly evident in the widespread use of ‘active’ citizenship and public decision making through involvement in civil society groups and contribution to the common good as policy goals for youth.

These notions of ‘active citizenship’ call on young people to respond to their ‘responsibilities’ to participate in adult-defined, pro-social activities principally as a way to improve welfare, well-being and ‘train’ young people for (norm-consistent) participation in the broader public arena. Young people are, therefore, viewed as apprentice citizens for whom a wider range of participatory acts including volunteering, are not expressions of citizenship, but a method for socialisation. While this provides a ‘maximal interpretation of citizenship’ (Evans, 1995: 16) such conceptions retain the central role of the state and maintain focus on civil and legal status, rights and responsibilities, promote law-abiding behaviour and an active commitment to the community through service.

‘Good citizenship’ as the articulation of difference

In contrast to duty-based notions of citizenship – which also value active participation and hold citizens to be sovereign – ‘difference-based’ interpretations are inclusive and transformative and are, thus, particularly relevant for advancing questions of youth citizenship and participation. Difference-based interpretations derive from radical and interpretivist theory. Radical – or critical realist – interpretations emphasise the way that structured inequality (such as age, class, gender and ethnicity) impacts on citizenship. The experience of inclusion and resistance to exclusion is what defines citizenship (Lister, 1997). By comparison, post-structural and post-modern views see citizenship as problematic precisely because both the substance (forms of participation) and the arenas (public and private) by which citizenship is articulated are contested. It is the way patterns of inclusion and exclusion reflect unequal power relations that make citizenship an always contested notion. Such conceptions of citizenship frame the approach taken in this book because they contest several assumptions embedded in both rights-based and duty-based perspectives that limit recognition of young people’s citizenship and participation in democracy.

The first is a rejection of ‘equal citizenship’ in favour of ‘differentiated citizenship’ – that is, citizenship predicated on difference (Kymlicka and Norman, 1994: 370; Young, 1989). Marxist, feminist and anti-racist approaches take different positions on how (dis)advantage operates, but all argue that inequalities undermine the fundamental principle of democratic participation: the opportunity to exercise rights and obligations (Young, 1989: 251). The second challenge concerns the way, structural inequalities and processes of exclusion and resistance cut across the classical dichotomy between public and private sphere. Mouffe (1992: 237), revisions the private/public dichotomy as the civil condition by which activity is always private but is articulated publicly through the conditions and rules of democratic organisation. From this perspective, a lack of youth engagement with traditionally accepted democratic arenas (political parties, elections, petitions or protests) is seen as collective alienation from public power and decision-making. Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) argue this can also be construed as a conscious ‘anti-politics’ further challenging conventional understandings of participation and non-participation. For difference-centred theorists, access to the rights promoted by liberals and opportunity to respond to the obligations emphasised by republicans are mutually dependent.

A third challenge is to the idea that political identity develops in a logical and linear fashion and that it is ‘fixed’. According to Mouffe (1993), political identity is constituted through an assemblage of subject positions, social relations, participation and membership in communities and collective forms of identification. In other words, citizenship is produced by actions, forms of association and identities whose self-reflexive and emergent practices shape and change models of citizenship and forms of participation. This ‘difference-based’ notion emphasises a ‘thick’ conception of citizenship where citizens look beyond the state to other arenas and actors as they define and act on matters of concern. Participation as the articulation of difference can extend to children and young people and encompass actions previously seen primarily in terms of entertainment or even ‘silly’ cultural expression (Hartley, 2010) such as participating in a flash-mob for climate change or sharing a video of the spectacle online. Difference-centred models of citizenship and participation must also be considered in the context of theories on late modernity and network society which contend that citizens are increasingly participating in networks which traverse old divisions between the state and civil society.

Participation in late modernity

The effects of processes of continuity and change in the economic, cultural and political contexts of nation states and citizens also influence views on the form and substance of political and civic participation. Some authors suggest that the rise of globalisation, restructuring of labour markets, rapid exchange of information via the internet and other digital technologies, the decline of the welfare state and the replacement of hierarchies with markets signal the beginning of a new era in which structural analysis, for example of gender or class, no longer explains social change (for example, Baudrillard, 1988; Lyotard, 1984). For others, the dominance of capitalism and the rise of neo-liberal ideology in the 1980s and 1990s represent the final and ultimate form of social and political organisation whereby citizens act as individualised, rational, economic agents with minimal intervention by a reduced state (Fukuyama, 1992). However more influential in youth studies and political sociology is the individualisation thesis as developed by Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002).

The theory of individualisation hinges on the idea that transformations in contemporary society are characterised by the breakdown of key social institutions such as family and work. Beck (1992) and Giddens (1991) argue that the unpredictability and uncertainty associated with changes in these institutions can no longer be managed through increased rationality and scientific knowledge. As new institutional logics emerge in response to rapid change and increased complexity, it is the rights and responsibilities of individuals that are mobilised to manage the consequences of social processes and structures. This ‘risk society’ is accompanied by a ‘freedom paradigm’ that shapes the ways in which young people think about – and experience democracy (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002).

Beck and Beck-Gernsheim (2002) argue that the ‘freedom paradigm’ emphasises self-directed participation and organisation in the context of old social and political structures and modes of communication. At the same time, political elites, institutions and communicative regimes often exclude young people, are unresponsive to their concerns and cannot – or will not – manage the uncertainty and risk associated with complex political problems of late modernity and globalisation (Beck and Beck-Gernsheim, 2002). Dissatisfaction with state and elite responses are combined with other experiences of exclusion and control (Marsh et al., 2007) and new ideas about politics and participation informing young people’s views and actions. In the context of a freedom paradigm that emphasises (but does not guarantee) choice and agency, young people are not ‘the problem’. Rather, their disengagement from traditional institutions and processes, participation in new social movements, new organisations and even non-participation (for example non-enrolment or spoiling a vote) is a reflection of the way they experience and respond to the ‘freedoms’ of a risk society (Marsh et al., 2007; Farthing, 2010). Thus, studies of democratic participation must start with young people’s views and experiences. This involves paying attention to the way young people construct identities.

As old institutional arrangements fail to deal with pervasive risk, individuals are increasingly required to be reflexive and negotiate the uncertainties in their everyday lives although social policy and structural factors continue to shape life chances. Furlong and Cartmel (1997: 112–113) have demonstrated that despite a weakening of collective social identities (individualisation) and increased opportunities for personal responsibility young people’s lives continue to be shaped by structural forces such as gender and class which affect the distribution of risks, choices and freedoms. They refer to this as ‘the epistemological fallacy of late modernity’ in which young people take personal responsibility for collective problems (Furlong and Cartmel, 1997: 114). Epitomised by mutual obligation policies this fallacy might also be observed in more recent empowerment policies emphasising youth social action and appealing to young people’s self-reflexive individualism as a resource for managing economic insecurity and social fragmentation.

Networks, governance and participation

One of the characteristics of the approaches to citizenship and participation examined above is that they privilege the role of the state in the development and articulation of citizenship (although difference-centred approaches hold the relationship between the citizen and the state to be contested, indeed often in conflict). However, the rise of networks as an alternative organising principle in society (Castells, 2001) has prompted a rethinking of how networked forms of power and communications shape the ways people think about and respond to politics. Such debates are particularly pertinent to a discussion of youth participation in two respects. Firstly, dynamics of a network society exert force on established institutions and processes of governance, altering the actors and contours of policy processes. Secondly, online and networked media are transforming sociality, political identity and communication.

As domestic and global arrangements have become ever more complex, new modes of problem solving and decision making emerge to address the inability of states alone to address complex policy problems. Governments, leaders and managers have had to involve diverse people, communities and organisations in the production and implementation of public policy (Bang, 2004). Many of the organisations emerging in this new ‘participatory space’ address the needs and interests of people who have traditionally experienced marginalisation and exclusion, such as young people. These organisations are often characterised by internal participatory practices and cultures, and wide networks of political association. Networks are therefore thought to be energising old institutions and stimulating new forms of public participation (Considine, 2005).

Theories of ‘network governance’ (Considine, 2005; Rhodes, 1997), or ‘culture governance’ (Bang, 2004), argue that policy networks have changed, expanding from functional networks in government departments to include other actors from the private and voluntary sectors involved in new forms of social and political association. Governance, as a process of social and political communication, is creating ‘partnerships, joint ventures and team building between elites and sub-elites from public, private and voluntary organisations’ (Bang, 2003: 242). For example, the ‘Third Way’ politics of the UK expanded the opportunities for non-state actors and organisations to participate in the development and delivery of public policy. In the Australian context, contracting of businesses, charities, community groups and social enterprises to deliver social services and a smorgasbord of summits, roundtables, advisory boards, steering committees, commissioned consultations and research, have given expression to a more expansive mode of agenda-setting and policy making. Such experiments have been conducted in a wide range of policy areas relevant to the lives of young people including infrastructure and transport, health, education and welfare as well as the narrower articulation of youth affairs.

The extent to which network governance is actually taking place and the level at which new policy networks have an impact on policy process is a source of great debate. Theoretically, the prospects for network governance are promising in that they can foster more functional and deliberative representation, encourage participatory democracy and engage actors who might otherwise remain on the margins of institutional politics. Yet, empirical research finds that, in practice, the deliberative and participatory potential of network governance is at best ‘limited’ (Hendriks, 2008: 1010) and at worst, appropriated through processes of ‘meta-governance’ that surreptitiously reassert hierarchical forms of authority and control. For example, Fawcett et al. (2011) have argued that the limited influence of the Australia 2020 Summit¹ on Australian public policy revealed the ways in which the discourse of network governance and participation were used to craft a public perception of more open and inclusive government whilst legitimising policy decisions that had already been taken. Similar charges have been levelled at mechanisms for youth participation (Bo’sher, 2006). Most significantly, these debates highlight that in general the rhetoric and practice of participatory governance has failed to keep pace with the transformations in digital media practices. The increasingly social, peer-to-peer and open systems technology of social network sites (SNS), public publishing and virtual gaming environments are transforming the everyday practices of people, thus changing their expectations and hopes for socio-political expression.

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: Young People, Participation and Digital Media
• 1  Conceptualising Young Citizens
• 2  Cultivating Good Citizens
• 3  Civic Organisations in Context
• 4  Youth Perspectives on Participation
• 5  Mediated Participation
• 6  Addressing the Democratic Disconnect
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index