Lowering the Voting Age and Gender Quotas as Democratic Innovations for Youth Participation in Italy

Lowering the age of the voters in some countries is seen as one of the democratic innovations aimed at dealing with the crisis of political representation. Debate on this kind of innovation has been recently triggered in Italy, where former Prime Minister Enrico Letta proposed lowering the voting age to 16. His call was supported by PD chief Nicola Zingaretti and Luigi Di Maio, the leader of the other governing party, the anti-establishment 5-Star Movement. The 2017 electoral law introduced gender quotas in elections to the national parliament for the first time. The purpose of our article is to investigate the impact of gender quotas on voter choices in general election of 4 march 2018 and potential consequences of introduction of lowering the voting age for youth participation in Italy.