Involving young people in democracy
New Democratic Audit e-collection: Should the UK lower the voting age to 16?
Today Democratic Audit releases a new e-collection of pieces which debate the merits of whether to lower the UK’s age of enfranchisement from 18 to 16. Featuring expert contributions from campaigners, academics, and politicians, our aim is to heighten the level debate on this proposal. In introducing the report, the co-editors of the report, Richard […]
Young ethnic minority people are citizens to be engaged in politics, not a problem group
As part of our series on youth participation, in this post Therese O’Toole considers how young people from ethnic minorities engage in politics. She argues that this group is not more likely to be disaffected from politics, only from mainstream forms of politics, and tend to engage in more ‘DIY’ forms of activism. Traditional institutions need to respond to […]
20 things we learned about democracy in June 2014
June 2014 proved to be another eventful month for democracy, with revelations about security, surveillance, Scottish independence, and the European Parliament and local elections. Here, Sean Kippin rounds up 20 interesting nuggets of information which made themselves known this month. Similar Posts20 things we learned about democracy in January 2015Interview part 2: Tim Bale on Ed […]
Young women face gender-specific challenges that limit their political participation
Young women aged 18-24 are likely less to take part in elections than their male counterparts. As part of our new series on youth participation, Jacqui Briggs explores the reasons for this, showing how women face specific barriers because of their gender and are under-represented throughout the system. She argues that politicians need to address […]
David Blunkett: Introducing Citizenship education was the easy bit. We need to do more to encourage schools to support youth participation
The previous Labour government added Citizenship to the National Curriculum in England in 2002. Last week on Democrat Audit David Kerr discussed how its prominence has fallen in more recent and called for more robust monitoring of provision. In this post David Blunkett MP, Education Secretary under Labour, discusses the importance of Citizenship and how its […]
We need renewed political commitment to citizenship education and ongoing monitoring of its provision in schools
Citizenship was added to the National Curriculum in England twelve years ago. As part of our series on youth participation in politics, David Kerr discusses how citizenship has fallen in prominence in recent years as schools have faced other pressures and teaching requirements have been relaxed. He argues for ongoing monitoring of the provision of citizenship education. Similar […]
Electoral turnout for young people peaks immediately after their enfranchisement, then falls sharply
It is established that young people tend to vote less than older generations, particularly in Britain. However, less well understood are the differences in turnout among young people. Based on elections in Finland and Denmark, Yosef Bhatti, Kasper M Hansen, and Hanna Wass have shown that turnout is highest when young people can vote immediately after being […]
The Government needs to implement Youth Citizenship Commission proposals to turn schools into ‘sites of democracy’
As part of our series on youth participation, Andy Mycock and Jonathan Tonge consider the progress made in the five years since the Youth Citizenship Commission made a series of recommendations to government. They find that many of its proposals have been adopted, although without much fanfare. One area where there has been little change is in the […]
Allow young people to set the political agenda by giving youth parliaments the power to call referendums
In the latest post from our series on youth participation, Gerry Stoker challenges the idea that the innocence and political inexperience of young people is a problem we need to solve. Instead, he argues that young people have a less fixed view of politics and are more willing to believe it could be better. He […]
20 things we learned about democracy in May 2014
Our election special last week highlighted the key insights arising from the European and local election campaigns. In this post Democratic Audit rounds up the things we learned about democracy this month from other sources, as well as the fallout from those election results. We take in lessons from India, Australia, Canada, the United States and […]
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