Youth wings, their leaders, and their members

Abstract

Despite being a feature of most political parties, youth wings have been largely overlooked within party organization scholarship. This is especially surprising given that significant proportions of elected representatives in most democracies have come through their party youth wings. When we look at youth wings, we are thus looking at ‘the party members and leaders of tomorrow’. By consequence, understanding who joins youth wings and how they view the ideology and positions of the organisations they join can help us understand how parties are evolving. To investigate this, the panel features papers presenting the results of recent studies of youth wings in Australia, Italy, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and the UK. Using a mixture of methods including original surveys and interviews, the papers focus on how youth wing members and elites place themselves ideologically in relation to their youth wings. The panel thus sheds light on the connections between parties and young people, along with contributing to research on contemporary political party organizations.

Title	Details
Younger and more radical? How youth wing members see themselves and their parties	View Paper Details
The radical youth? Studying Issue Congruence between Youth Politicians, Parliamentary Candidates and Voters in Norway	View Paper Details
Reformist and/not radical? The case of Young Greens, the youth and student wing of the Green Party of England and Wales	View Paper Details
Are the Europeans polarized? Levels and trends of ideological polarization in the 21st century	View Paper Details