Generations and Political Change

The political attitudes and behaviours of younger people differ substantially from those who are older. Younger citizens are more supportive of European unification than older ones and more likely to have voted ‘remain’ in the UK’s Brexit referendum. They are more willing to support measures to protect the environment and to reduce global warming than older generations, and more likely to vote for Green parties. Moreover, young people are at the forefront of progressive movements worldwide, such as Extinction Rebellion and Black Lives Matter. One would thus expect to see major political changes when these new generations do eventually replace earlier generations. Scholars since Inglehart (1977) have seen generational replacement as one of the most important drivers of social and political change. However, the differences we observe now could also be simply a life-cycle effect. If that were the case, today’s active, progressive youngsters would become more conservative and passive as they grow older. Generational replacement would, in that case, not lead to any meaningful political changes. To assess whether generations do indeed systematically differ from each other, one needs to disentangle age, period and cohort (APC) effects. Over the past two decades, the field has shown a renewed interest in political socialization in the area of turnout and other forms of mobilization (e.g., Dinas 2012; Franklin 2004; Grasso 2014; Marien et al. 2010), political attitudes (e.g., Grasso et al. 2017; Neundorf 2010; Down & Wilson 2013), party choice (e.g., Dassonneville 2013; Goerres 2008; Maggini 2016; Tilley and Evans 2014) and the drivers of party choice (e.g., Gougou and Mayer 2013; Van der Brug 2010; Van der Brug & Rekker 2021; Wagner & Kritzinger 2012). This Workshop aims to bring together a diverse group of scholars working in the field of political socialization and political behaviour. Papers should be empirical and focus on political socialization in a broad sense. They should be written in the format of journal articles, and preferably have that length. Papers might contain a variety of dependent variables (focusing on political behaviours or attitudes), and we hope to attract studies that are diverse in geographical focus. Studies may focus on micro-level mechanisms of political socialization, such as the role of socializing agents, like parents, teachers or (social) media. They may also focus on macro-level political changes as a result of generational differences. We particularly welcome studies that manage to distinguish between life-cycle (age) effects and generational differences.