The Political Identification and Awareness of Young People

This paper addresses the concept of political awareness, it´s development, it´s role in political participation, and it´s theoretical and practical relationship to citizenship, in relation to how young students become politically aware. Research on political socialisation often shows that parents, friends, schools, and the social environment are important in shaping political awareness, but this issue is minimally examined. This paper investigates how the development of political awareness and political identification takes place: through which societal agents and institutions, in which ways, in which forms of interplay? These questions - and the “genesis” of adolescents´ political attitudes - are particularly interesting , because the persistence hypothesis holds that partisan attitudes are highly stable over long periods, and that core political predispositions tend to be highly stable through the life span (Sears & Funk 1999). The question of how citizens formulate political opinions has preoccupied professional students of public opinion for over half a century. However, we need to pay attention to the fact that the changing social and political landscape also changes the conditions of political learning (Abendschön 2013). To illustrate, social media opens new arenas and interest in public policies and democratic processes. This paper builds a case for the continuing theoretical and political significance of political identity and political awareness. In political science, political awareness in often seen - following a theoretical and intellectual tradition of A. Downs – as closely related to how people evaluate the performances of political parties and government. Social-psychological perspectives on political partisanship draw parallels to other types of identification. In addition, partisan attachments seem to form relatively early in adulthood. Political identity and partisan attachments relate to partisan attractiveness of young adults. However, the line of causality also flows in the opposite direction – and political identities and identifications often follow from a sense of belonging to certain parties or social groups. With the growing of commitment and belonging, the doctrines of such groups are gradually absorbed. Political identities are enduring, and do not simply come and go with certain political campaigns or elections cycles. Hence, they become important and persistent features of citizens´ self-conceptualizations (Green et al. 2002).