Engaging the Young? The Citizens’ Initiative in Finland

The political involvement of young citizens has long been a matter of concern in established democracies. Although several studies show that young citizens do participate in new non-institutionalized forms of political participation, they eschew formal political activities. Hence, even if they are not necessarily passive, the participation of young citizens cannot necessarily ensure that their preferences are channelled into formal political decision-making. It is imperative that young citizens have possibilities to make their voices heard to ensure the long-term viability of democracy. When the traditional forms of political participation do not appeal to young citizens, it is therefore imperative to create novel channels that are able to mobilize the younger segments of the demos. Various types of direct democracy offer a possible solution since previous studies show that younger citizens prefer such kinds of involvement over representative structures. However, few studies have examined whether such participatory innovations succeed in mobilizing young citizens. Furthermore, it is important to examine whether such innovations succeed in mobilizing young citizens who would otherwise be passive to ascertain that they help boost democratic inclusiveness. In this paper, we therefore examine whether the Finnish citizens’ initiative, which was introduced in 2012, has succeeded in mobilizing young citizens. This kind of citizens’ initiative is a soft form of direct democracy that does not grant citizens the ultimate decision-making powers, but vest them with agenda-setting powers that allow them to influence political outcomes. While previous studies have showed that the initiative has become a popular tool among Finns, the impact on younger citizens remains unclear. Furthermore, we examine what factors can help explain the involvement of younger citizens and whether the explanatory powers of these differ for younger citizens. This allows us to explore whether the citizens’ initiative mobilizes young citizens who would otherwise be politically passive. This is necessary if the citizens’ initiative is to close the gap in political participation between older and younger citizens. We use the Finnish national election study from 2015 (FNES2015) to examine the research questions. This is a cross-sectional representative survey (n=1602) collected following parliamentary elections in April 2015. The survey includes indicators on both use of the citizens’ initiative and key socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics, which allows us to examine the research questions at hand.