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Introduction
In Western societies, younger voters have been the Achilles' heel of conventional political participation. Decades of data gathering in the OECD have shown that 'voter turnout tends to increase monotonically with age' (OECD, 2006, p. 102). In fact, 'getting the young vote' is one of the herculean tasks of politicians, seldom achieving substantial rates of success. While young adults are a base that is unlikely to participate in conventional ways (for example Flinders et al , 2009), it is less clear if young adults generally participate less in the political process, or if they are engaged in different - perhaps more unconventional - forms of political action. Furthermore, a perhaps excessive fascination with the unconventional engagement of the younger generations, and the conventional voting patterns of the elderly (for example Goerres, 2009), has resulted in a dearth of studies that take into account how adults between the ages of 34 and 65 engage politically. In this study, we seek to paint a broader picture of political engagement by comparing all age groups in terms of conventional and unconventional forms of participation.
Focusing on the United Kingdom, Germany and France, we evaluate the influence of age on three forms of political engagement: voting, demonstrating and petitioning. Applying logistic regression techniques on data from the European Social Survey (ESS), we discover that young adults shy away from voting, but are the thrust behind participation levels in demonstrations. For our third dependent variable, petitioning, we find that the relationship between age and this form of political engagement is curvilinear, that is, it is most preponderant among adults aged 34-65, but then also decreases significantly with age.
This article is organized as follows: we start by defining conventional and unconventional political participation, and justifying our case selection. This definitional section is followed by a discussion of the relevant literature addressing the relationship between age and political involvement. Building on the empirical findings of our predecessors, we then discuss the eight control variables included in this analysis. Finally, we present the data and methods, discussing our results and elaborating on how they inform the political participation literature. In the final part of the article, we summarize our main findings and suggest avenues for future research.
Defining Political Participation
Political...