Broadening political participation: The impact of socialising practices on young people’s action repertoires
| Author | Valentina Holecz,Eva Fernández G. G.,Marco Giugni |
| DOI | 10.1177/02633957211041448 |
| Published date | 01 February 2022 |
| Date | 01 February 2022 |
| Subject Matter | Special Issue Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/02633957211041448
Politics
2022, Vol. 42(1) 58 –74
© The Author(s) 2021
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DOI: 10.1177/02633957211041448
journals.sagepub.com/home/pol
Broadening political
participation: The impact of
socialising practices on young
people’s action repertoires
Valentina Holecz ,
Eva Fernández G. G. and Marco Giugni
University of Geneva, Switzerland
Abstract
This study builds on the well-known civic voluntarism model of political participation. By doing this,
we contribute to a political sociology of participation by refining the role of socialisation in political
engagement. We suggest that the action repertoires of young people engaging in politics can be
narrower or broader owing to their previous embeddedness in certain social settings, which act as
spheres of socialising practices. We focus more specifically on three socialising spheres: educational
(schools), recreational (social clubs), and civic (community organizations). Our analysis, covering
nine European countries, largely confirms our expectations. We find that active engagement in
these spheres of socialising practices leads to a broader range of political activities in young people’s
action repertoires. This holds in particular for the civic sphere. The findings provide a fresh look at
the role played by socialising spheres, shifting the focus from the dichotomy between participation
versus non-participation to an analysis of the breadth of participation.
Keywords
European countries, political participation, socialising practices, youth, civic voluntarism model
Received: 11th June 2020; Revised version received: 29th June 2021; Accepted: 12th July 2021
Introduction
About a quarter of a century ago, the civic voluntarism model stressed the role of civic
skills as favouring political participation (Brady et al., 1995; Verba et al., 1995). In this
model, communication and organizational skills were seen as a crucial type of resource,
facilitating effective political engagement (Brady et al., 1995: 271). Such skills are
acquired in a variety of non-political institutional settings, such as the workplace, organi-
zations of various sorts, and churches. Although research has focused on the impact of
organizations in political participation (Brady et al., 1995; Miller, 1982; Putnam, 2000),
Corresponding author:
Valentina Holecz, University of Geneva, Uni-Mail, 1211 Genève 4, Switzerland.
Email: valentina.holecz@unige.ch
1041448POL0010.1177/02633957211041448PoliticsHolecz et al.
research-article2021
Special Issue Article
Holecz et al. 59
limited attention has been paid to assessing the impact and the importance of each of
these settings.
In this article, we follow the path traced by Brady, Schlozman, and Verba, who have
highlighted the role of the civic skills learned outside the political institutional setting, but
following a different approach. First, instead of looking at citizens’ participation in gen-
eral, we focus on a specific population, namely, young adults. Scholars have paid increas-
ing attention to young people’s political engagement in recent years (Garcia Albacete,
2014; Grasso, 2016; Pickard, 2019; Pickard and Bessant, 2017), perhaps also spurred in
part by the prevailing discourse about the supposed political apathy of the youngest sec-
tors of the population. Yet, we still know little about the impact of non-political institu-
tional settings on the political activities of this specific group of citizens. Young people
come across a variety of social settings, which serve as ‘schools of democracy’, and
where they are socialised to political life (Putnam, 2000). The democratic experiences
made by younger people in various social spheres are considered as an important predic-
tor of future political engagement (Maurissen, 2018). Young people who participate more
actively in various socialising spheres learn how democracy works and understand how
and by which means they can be heard. As the literature on civic culture shows, citizens
who engage politically create ties between each other as well as with the political institu-
tions, and build civic values and feelings of efficacy about their political engagement
(Almond and Verba, 1963; Putnam, 1993, 2000). Moreover, the more time someone
spends on political engagement, the more he or she feels entitled to actively take part in
the construction of a democratic society (Putnam, 1993, 2000). However, since younger
citizens are politically less experienced and suffer from a deficit of legitimacy to speak up
and to be listened to, they are often excluded from the political arenas, as compared with
older generations.
Second, in our study, we examine three social settings that we expect to have an impact
on youth participation: schools, social clubs, and community organizations. These three
social settings translate the expected role of three socialising spheres and related prac-
tices: the educational, the recreational, and the civic spheres. To be sure, there are many
other activities and places where socialisation to participation can take place and have an
impact on political engagement. As we said earlier, Brady et al. (1995) stress in particular
the workplace, voluntary organizations, and churches. In this article, we do not look at the
impact of the workplace or religious associations. We take for granted that they are source
of civic engagement. However, we believe that the declining participation in religious
associations has made them less important, while non-religious ones have become more
relevant as a source of political participation (Vermeer et al., 2016). Moreover, we con-
sider a place of worship as a proxy for community engagement. Finally, as we are study-
ing young people, there are higher chances that they are still in school and not in
workplaces.
Third, we start from the assumption that not all young people participate equally.
While this is quite an obvious assumption, which also points to the existence of politi-
cal inequality, scholarship on political participation has often ignored it. Young adults’
paths to political participation are different as they experience specific challenges and
obstacles they need to overcome depending on gender (Albanesi et al., 2012; Cicognani
et al., 2012; Gordon, 2008; Norris et al., 2004), migration background (Just, 2017;
Pachi and Barrett, 2014; Seif, 2010), and socio-economic status (Gaby, 2017;
Quintelier and Hooghe, 2013). As a result, some young adults participate occasionally
while others are more strongly committed, displaying a broader range of political
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