DOI: 10.5553/RP/048647002013055001004

Res PublicaAccess_open

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Participeren jongeren anders?

Een contextspecifiek antwoord op basis van het Belgische Oosterweelreferendum

Keywords political participation, young, New Politics, referendum, context
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Peter Thijssen, "Participeren jongeren anders?", Res Publica, 1, (2013):61-84

    According to the advocates of the New Politics thesis youngsters are generally less interested in general elections, but are rather attracted by citizen-initiated referendums that are inspired by ecological, elite-challenging and pro-social motives. However, other scholars contend that the age-related differences that characterize participation in general elections are more or less universal because what really matters is how much is at stake. Yet, maybe a middle ground can be found between both perspectives if one explicitly takes into account the conditional nature of the New Politics theoretical framework. Based on exit-poll data regarding participation and vote choice in a Belgian citizen-initiated referendum in three different local contexts we test these conditional hypotheses. Our findings reveal that consistent with the New Politics thesis youngsters participate more and prefer pro-ecology, elite-challenging, and pro-social issue-frames, but only in ‘low stakes-contexts’ where no NIMBY-interests are at play.

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