Tuning in to formal politics: Mock elections at school and the intention of electoral participation among first time voters in Norway
| Author | Julie Ane Odegaard Borge |
| DOI | 10.1177/0263395716674730 |
| Date | 01 May 2017 |
| Published date | 01 May 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
research-article2016
Article
Politics
2017, Vol. 37(2) 201 –214
Tuning in to formal politics:
© The Author(s) 2016
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Mock elections at school and
https://doi.org/10.1177/0263395716674730
DOI: 10.1177/0263395716674730
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the intention of electoral
participation among first
time voters in Norway
Julie Ane Odegaard Borge
Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
Abstract
The aim of this study is to investigate the relation between political education in schools and
the willingness of students to vote in parliamentary elections. Empirically tested through the
case of mock elections at schools in Norway shortly before the 2013 parliamentary election, the
multivariate logistic regression analyses of the data show a strong connection between voting in
mock elections at school and students’ willingness to vote, even after controlling for background
factors. The results strengthen the case for political education in schools while simultaneously
acknowledging its limits.
Keywords
electoral participation, first time voters, mock elections, Norway, political education
Received: 7th December 2015; Revised version received: 22nd June 2016; Accepted: 30th August 2016
Introduction
Politicians, the media, and researchers alike are concerned about young people’s atti-
tudes towards political participation in general, and voting, in particular. Declining
electoral participation in advanced democracies is perceived as warning sign of a dis-
engagement from the community and political life (Putnam, 2000; Wattenberg, 2012),
a lack of political knowledge (Delli Carpini and Keeter, 1996; Galston, 2001), and a
generation of apolitical youth (Øia, 1995).
This study’s objective is to examine the connection between participating in mock
elections as a part of political education in school and students’ intentions of voting in
Corresponding author:
Julie Ane Odegaard Borge, Department of Comparative Politics, University of Bergen, Postboks 7802, 5007
Bergen, Norway.
Email: Julie.odegaard@uib.no
202
Politics 37(2)
parliamentary elections. The research question is ‘Does voting in mock elections at school
have an effect on the willingness of students to vote in a Parliamentary election?’
Much of the scholarly interest in the individual’s relation to the political system grows
out of the claim that voting is democracy’s sine qua non, without which, it cannot be.
Thus, decreasing voter turnout may not only challenge one of the core characteristics of
a democratic regime but also questions the effectiveness of key institutions to imbue in
young people desirable political behaviour and support for the electoral system. At a
macro level, this process, in which institutions legitimate support for the electoral system,
is in political science research often referred to as political socialization, whose main
objective is to enable system persistence (Easton, 1965; Hyman, 1959). Democratic states
depend on institutions to promote democratic citizens (March and Olsen, 1995), and
schools have, in many countries, been given the role of safeguarding this functional
dimension of education (Rokkan, 1987).
Thus, political socialization is of high relevance to study the field of political educa-
tion, which, in this article, is defined as ‘the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary for
citizens to participate in the political process’. This definition is distinct from ‘civic’ or
citizenship education, which in the literature is treated in a broader manner; it defined as
instilling in young people the knowledge, skills, and attitudes that will enable them ‘to
participate in the communities of which they are a part, locally, nationally, and globally’
(Arthur et al., 2008: 5, italics in original).
An example of institutionalized political education can be found in Norway where
mock elections were introduced after the World War II to promote democratic participa-
tion, values, and attitudes for the future (Storstein, 1946). Mock elections have expanded
through the last 70 years to include all upper secondary schools.1 Norway is the sole
country in the world with a long tradition of mock elections in schools and a national
framework for this activity, which is conducted every second year a week before the local
or parliamentary elections. Norwegian mock elections involve educational features other
than the act of voting. There is a school debate where youth politicians visit the school
and debate current political issues, and since 2011, there has also been an election square.
The election square is a market place where the students can meet and interact with party
members from political youth organizations.
This study is based on data from the 2013 School Election Surveys (SES), collected by
the Norwegian Centre for Research Data (NSD),2 and conducted among students in upper
secondary schools in Norway in classrooms, either later the same day, or a few days after
the mock election took place. In 2013, there were 177 participating schools in the survey
across the country. To avoid selection bias due to school variances, this analysis is based
on a sample of students weighted on educational programme and geography (N = 1611).
The relation between education and political participation is perhaps the most well-
established relation that exists in research on political behaviour (Persson, 2015: 689).
However, we do not know the mechanisms at work. Persson (2015: 691) asks whether
education is a direct cause of political participation or if it works as a proxy for other fac-
tors. ‘The Absolute Education Model’ suggests that it is the skills and knowledge gained
through education that matters; the ‘Pre-adult Socialization Model’ is the extreme alterna-
tive where education is merely a proxy for factors such as family socioeconomic status or
political socialization in the home environment and personal characteristics.
I conducted a multivariate logistic regression analysis to test if voting in mock elec-
tions influences the students’ willingness to vote in the parliamentary election and whether
this effect persists after controlling for background factors. It is important to keep in mind
Borge
203
that the study does not have an experimental design. The mock election takes place earlier
in the day or a few days before the students answer the survey, and the causal effect might
be understood as if participating in mock elections is responsible for students’ positive
attitudes towards voting. However, in general, a process has many causes. Statistical stud-
ies, which omit all contextual factors except those codified in the variables selected for
measurement or used for constituting a population of cases, necessarily leave out many
contextual and intervening variables (George and Bennett, 2005: 21). Therefore, it might
be that the students who participated in the mock elections already were favourable
towards attending elections and that other underlying factors can explain the relation
between voting in mock elections and willingness to vote in the parliamentary election.
Comparisons made under ‘other things equal’ have a causal interpretation, but real ‘other
things equal’ comparisons are hard to engineer (Angrist and Pischke, 2015). All schools
conduct mock elections, and almost all students participate; thus, it is difficult to provide
comparable individuals who did not have the opportunity to vote in mock elections.
However, one of the current debates in civic and political education research regards
the role schools play in comparison to background factors (such as parental socialization;
see, for example, Neundorf et al., 2015). In this case, the mock elections make an interest-
ing test. If voting in mock elections proves to have an effect on the students’ willingness
to vote in the parliamentary election, and this effect persists after controlling for back-
ground factors such as pre-adult socialization factors, it strengthens the case for political
education in school.
Section ‘Theoretical expectations’ provides a brief overview of the literature on politi-
cal education in school, in particular, with regard to political participation before moving
on to the presentation of the case of Norwegian mock elections in section ‘The Norwegian
case of mock elections at school’. Section ‘Data and method’ presents the data and method
applied in the empirical analysis. The results are presented in section ‘Analysis and
results’. Finally, concluding remarks follow.
Theoretical expectations
In regard to research on political education in school, many scholars, based on the writ-
ings of John Dewey, argue in favour of active learning through participation such as live
simulations in class, hands-on experiences with political campaigns, and voting (Coffey
et al., 2011), mock trials (Bengston and Sifferd, 2010), mock congresses, and other forms
of project-based learning (Parker et al., 2013). Others focus on the general democratic
atmosphere of the school, such as having an open classroom climate (Hooghe and Stolle,
2004; Sherrod et al., 2010). For instance, Hooghe and Dassonneville (2013) show how an
open classroom climate promotes the willingness to vote in future elections among ado-
lescents by presenting several sides of the issues, encouraging students to express their
own opinions, and...
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