Bringing Politics to Young People: The Role of Deliberation in Cultivating Citizenship and Civic Engagement among Young People

Declining levels of voter turnout, growing levels of distrust in parties and politics, and the success of politicians such as Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen are democratically alarming. Though, the growing gap between our future generations and politics is even more problematic as younger people seem especially vulnerable to political disengagement and estrangement. Many countries and scholars react on these trends with citizenship education, because schools seem to be ideally suited to cultivate democratic citizenship and civic engagement among all layers of the population. However, citizenship education is foremost designed to develop citizens who are able to function in a representative democracy which is a vote-centric approach. Although it is important that citizens vote on the most suitable candidates, this research departs from the idea of deliberative democracy which considers a frequent and reasoned discussion on political issues between citizens crucial for a viable and strong democracy. Research on deliberative mini- publics has shown that these discussions improve a person’s civic knowledge, attitudes and engagement. Hence, through deliberation we could develop better citizens. This paper will link citizenship education to the positive effects of democratic deliberation on citizenship and civic engagement. To study these effects, we will conduct experiments with sixteen-year-old Flemish students from general secondary education and vocational secondary education. The experimental design of this research varies in regular teacher-centered citizenship education and democratic deliberation. This enables us to measure the differences between both approaches. The topic of both the citizenship education and the deliberation will be on migration issues. This research will generate valuable findings for the academic literature as well as policy recommendations.