Abstract
Young people participate less in institutionalized forms of political engagement than older citizens do and there has even been worries about young generations’ lesser attachment to democracy and their undemocratic attitudes. In order to provide young people the opportunity to influence decision-making, youth councils have been established in many countries around Europe. Youth councils are national representative bodies that exist to provide young people an outlet for institutionalized political participation. In addition to youth councils, other kinds of networks on youth issues, consisting mostly of adults that represent organizations and actors promoting youth welfare, have been established around Europe. The chapter examines different kinds of youth networks in Europe and examines how the members of youth networks perceive their influence. The following research questions are explored in the chapter: a) How politically influential are the youth networks in different parts of Europe according to the perception of their members? and b) Can differences in the perceived level of influence be explained by the members’ personal attributes or by varying institutional arrangements?
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Notes
- 1.
This is not always the case. For an extensive discussion on the presence of public sector representatives and public sector control over the councils, see Alarcón et al. (2020).
- 2.
For recent changes in the rules on the composition of the young people’s parliaments or youth councils, see Fossheim (2021).
- 3.
There are other countries where the youth council is appointed by the city council, that is, Flanders, Germany, Lithuania and Norway, but the council is politicized only in Croatia.
- 4.
There are municipal youth councils in Portugal, with members up to the age of 30 but unfortunately, they were not considered corresponding to the definition of institutionalized relations between the local state and society and were thus neither described (in Teles et al., 2021) nor surveyed.
- 5.
There are youth councils in only 15–21% of the Croatian municipalities (Koprić et al., 2021: 76).
- 6.
According to the country experts the composition of the Lithuanian youth councils is mainly based on young organizational representatives (Bučaité-Vilké & Lazauskiené, 2021: 250, see also Table 13.1), which is not, however, reflected in the responses from Lithuania (in Table 13.2). Nevertheless, the grouping used here is done mostly for illustrative purposes, which is why these matters should not pose a problem.
- 7.
Different versions of this regression analysis have been tested, for example, with the types of councils as independent variables and as regression analyses within each type. They do not change the overall picture, nor do they make the result clearer. Due to the big difference within the categories (i.e., between Finland and Norway or between Germany and Portugal) this also hides more than it shows. The regressions within the types are remarkably similar to the one in Table 13.5.
- 8.
Members of the networks in Croatia and Lithuania report to meet less often than the others (see Table 13.3), but since the number of responses is so low (and seem to be skewed considering member profile at least in Lithuania) it might be a premature conclusion. The results from Croatia and Lithuania are consequently not elaborated further in the discussions here.
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Henriksson, L., Huttunen, J. (2022). How Members of Youth Network in Europe Perceive Their Influence. In: Egner, B., Heinelt, H., Lysek, J., Silva, P., Teles, F. (eds) Perspectives on Local Governance Across Europe. Palgrave Studies in Sub-National Governance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-15000-5_13
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