1. EMPOWERING A GENERATION: ADDRESSING THE DECLINE OF YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN CANADA Matt Edmonds

2. Research questions  What are the causes of the decline?  What are the potential consequences?  How can “political dropouts” be made active?  How can youth be motivated to become more involved?  How can young people’s political efficacy be improved?

3. Framework  Addressing youth at all levels of engagement  Looking at all forms of political participation  Focus on potential actions by political institutions  Three main avenues of approach  Decreasing costs of and barriers to participation  Enhancing long-term political interest (assets/currency)  Delivering short-term motivations to participate

4. Declining participation  Overall turnout down: from high of 79.4% in 1958 to 58.8% in 2008  Youth turnout low: 43.8% vs. overall 62.8% in 2006  Current young generation voting at lower rate than past young generations.  Youth party membership significantly decreasing.

5. Explaining the decline  Reported reasons for not voting (youth):  Lack of interest 16.1% Political attitudes attributed to performance of politicians and parties 90.2% Personal reasons incl. busy, apathetic, disillusioned 25.3%  Negativity 28.0%  Personal/Administrative 51.9%  Other 3.8% (Pammett and LeDuc 2003)  Why are young people are less likely to vote?  Not represented, age gap 40.4%  Lack of info/understanding/knowledg e 33.9%  Uninterested/apathetic 31.3%  Too busy or mobile 3.3%

6. Explaining the decline  Life-cycle effects (busy, personal stake)  Poor experience with first voting opportunity  Generational shift to distrust hierarchical institutional arrangements  Absence of hardships leads to focus on “higher order” issues like environmentalism  Generational culture – need for instant gratification  Government is seen to be doing a “good enough job” in the modern day

7. The problem  Overall turnout decline attributed to youth involvement decline  Parties not renewing memberships  Less responsive governance  Future government accountability  Health of democracy

8. Iraqi youth vs. Cdn/US youth

9. Decreasing costs of participation  Election administration – easy voting  Registration – personal contact  Mail – simpler process needed  Advance voting – minimal gains in other countries  Proxy – demonstrated to enhance turnout; manipulation concerns  Online – currently unreliable for high-level elections, but Harvard is developing promising system

10. Decreasing costs of participation  Parties & mobilization agencies  Must innovate to connect with youth  Low-commitment options  Ask youth to participate, show the path  Mobilization efforts particularly important for youth with little knowledge/education  Create social networks – essential for mobile youth  Provide incentives and demonstrate payoffs – politics is a high-risk game, must sell returns  Connecting interest to action

11. Decreasing costs of participation  Access to information  Traditional news media poorly targets youth  Targets older demographic (who have money)  Most information too complex  Need for easily-accessible information at different “tiers” of complexity for youth with varying levels of political knowledge

12. Decreasing costs of participation  The “series of tubes,” a.k.a. the internet  “Web 2.0” or “the semantic web”  Dissemination of information – high exposure, context- appropriate  Parties and politicians  Social media links  Targeted ads – Facebook  Twitter – 140 characters max.  YouTube

13. Decreasing costs of participation  Peer-to-peer information sharing  Other youth provide the information filter for “tiers”  Personal source = greater attention  Blogs – 1.4 created per second  Online democratic participation  Obama’s change.gov issue submission and vote  Town hall questions on whitehouse.gov

14. Increasing long-term assets  Education and political knowledge  #1 factor in effective youth participation  Civics classes should be mandatory  Deliver education as close as possible to first voting opportunity  Election simulations in schools  Satire in education?

15. Increasing long-term assets  Salience  Political parties and focus on youth issues  Big picture issues, firm stance  Problem with centric brokerage parties  Cynicism  Addressed through increases in political efficacy  Scandals and negative perceptions – better management  Penetration of the good and the bad through better information access

16. Increasing long-term assets  Parties  Raise profile of youth issues  Younger people in important positions  Increasing mobilization efforts between campaigns  Youth organizations  Winning the PR battle against anti-party attitudes

17. Increasing long-term assets  Political information  Constant easy access needed  Regular updates through social networks  Social media provides filter

18. Increasing long-term assets  Families  Youth attitudes are largely learned from families  Not just youth, but individuals of all ages must be targeted  Engaging families as a whole; providing parents with resources

19. Increasing long-term assets  Political satire  Primary source of political information for thousands of youth  Increasingly serves news function  Entertainment breaks the interest gap  Can increase cynicism  Not as prevalent in Canada as US  Multiple programs needed to reach broad youth audience

20. Short-term interest boosts  Catalyzing events  Elections on very divisive issues vs. “Harper’s tired of waiting for his majority”  Risk of increasing cynicism  Engaging narratives  Not necessarily of direct political relevance  Exciting stories connected to campaigns draw interest  First point of contact, not entire focus  Provides material for entry-level political satire

21. Short-term interest boosts  Parties  Campaign directly to youth  Take the risk and devote resources to low turnout group, or perpetuate the problem  Charismatic leaders extremely important vs.

22. Short-term interest boosts  Political information  During elections, make the most out of media’s focus on politics  Filtering essential – delivering resonant messages amongst a glut of election reporting  Institutions must deliver targeted messages through effective channels  Social media also fulfills this function  Political satire is accessible and also sticks to top issues; youth make up large chunk of target market

23. Short-term interest boosts  Post-election  “Honeymoon phase” of satisfaction with democratic process  Continue campaign-level mobilization  Transition from short-term to long-term interest and participation

24. Other issues  Dumbing down politics: long term harms?  Necessary to get youth into political sphere  Individuals will climb the ladder to higher tiers  Other means of increasing participation not investigated in this project:  Electoral system reform (PR, MMP)  Mandatory voting  Paying youth to vote

25. Civic Network Project  1. Provide effective information and education  Meetings, events, podcasts, videos  2. Connect citizens to action-based groups  Civic involvement matchmaking  3. Develop and share project blueprint  How to repeat anywhere else  www.civicnetwork.ca

26. EMPOWERING A GENERATION: ADDRESSING THE DECLINE OF YOUTH POLITICAL PARTICIPATION IN CANADA Matt Edmonds