Young Citizens’ Party Support: The “When” and “Who” of Political Influence within Families
| Published date | 01 May 2024 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221133643 |
| Author | Jennifer Fitzgerald,Pavel Bacovsky |
| Date | 01 May 2024 |
https://doi.org/10.1177/00323217221133643
Political Studies
2024, Vol. 72(2) 634 –651
© The Author(s) 2022
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DOI: 10.1177/00323217221133643
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Young Citizens’ Party Support:
The “When” and “Who”
of Political Influence within
Families
Jennifer Fitzgerald1 and Pavel Bacovsky2
Abstract
Decades of evidence point to the vital role of parents in shaping their children’s partisan leanings,
particularly concerning mainstream parties. And yet the contours of intergenerational influence
remain quite obscured. For instance, scholars disagree on when social learning in the household
occurs (childhood vs adolescence) and about who is the dominant socializer (mother vs father).
Data from a long-term German household panel survey allow for a fine-grained examination of
intergenerational influence processes over time. We model the partisan preferences of 18-year-
olds as a function of their mothers’ and fathers’ own contemporaneous and past partisan
preferences. Our intergenerational inquiry reveals that mothers dominate socialization during
childhood while influence in late adolescence is more evenly distributed between mothers and
fathers. We also find that mothers have an advantage over fathers in communicating center-
left party preferences. These findings have implications for our understanding of socialization,
partisanship, and democratic stability.
Keywords
partisanship, youth, family influence, panel survey data, socialization, Germany
Accepted: 29 September 2022
Recent decades have witnessed the diminishing popularity of mainstream political parties
in many advanced democracies (Colombo and Dinas, 2022; Dalton, 1998). Furthermore,
the decline of mainstream parties has come in tandem with the rise of new electoral com-
petitors, most notably far-right anti-establishment populists (Arzheimer, 2018). These are
critical developments, largely because moderate, centrist political parties are understood
to be essential features of stable democratic systems. While scholars have channeled vig-
orous energy into understanding support for new political parties, we believe that these
1Department of Political Science, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA
2Department of Politics, Bates College, Lewiston, ME, USA
Corresponding author:
Pavel Bacovsky, Department of Politics, Bates College, 4 Andrews Rd, Lewiston, 171 Pettengill, ME 04240-6020,
USA.
Email: PBacovsky@Bates.EDU
1133643PSX0010.1177/00323217221133643Political StudiesFitzgerald and Bacovsky
research-article2022
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Fitzgerald and Bacovsky 635
electoral trends elevate the importance of understanding how people develop attachments
to mainstream parties.
With a renewed focus on what factors drive support for centrist political parties, an
essential line of inquiry is the development of partisanship early in life. When young
individuals feel connected to political parties, such affiliations tend to be relatively stable
across the life course in Europe and the United States (Converse and Dupeux, 1962; Sears
and Valentino, 1997). Much of our understanding of how young people learn about and
situate themselves in relation to politics stems from classical research on political behav-
ior, which tells us that partisanship is rooted in the family (Easton and Dennis, 1967). We
build on this stylized fact to gain fresh insight into the sources of mainstream partisan-
ship. This seems especially relevant to modern developments since the movement away
from established center-left and center-right parties stems partly from new generations
exhibiting divergent partisan patterns from past cohorts (Bacovsky, 2021; Henn et al.,
2005). Thus, further exploring how political socialization at home operates in the modern
era is essential.1
We focus our attention on gaining insights into aspects of household political influence
that previous studies have not explored. Notably, existing work has not pinpointed the
ages at which young people are most open to parental partisan influence. Some theories
emphasize effects in the “formative” years of childhood (Abendschön and Tausendpfund,
2017; Goetzmann, 2017). Others point to adolescence—also known as the “impression-
able” years—as prime time for household socialization (Jennings et al., 2009; Peterson,
1983). Moreover, the relative roles of mothers and fathers, particularly at different points
in a young person’s life, are unclear. We leverage long-term household panel data from
Germany to tease out the diverse effects of family socialization on young citizens’ parti-
san leanings. These data allow us to model a person’s party choice at 18 as a function of
their parents’ answers about their own partisanship from the current year (when the young
person turns 18), as well as the 12 previous years. This provides contemporary influence
measures and household partisan history dating back over a decade to offer insight into
the impressionable years in comparison to the formative years. By leveraging the data in
this manner, we are able to look back into an individual’s upbringing in an uncommonly
detailed way, establish how deep the partisan roots run, and how they are best nurtured
(see Bacovsky and Fitzgerald, 2021 for a similar approach).2
Through our analysis, we find evidence in support of both formative years and
impressionable years theories of political socialization. Eighteen-year-olds’ party
choices reflect the contemporaneous partisan preferences of their parents. Yet, also find
that parents’ past party support at different phases of a young person’s development
significantly influences the next generation’s partisanship, and that these effects vary by
the parent involved. Notably, influence by fathers is nearly entirely contemporaneous;
18-year-olds tend to get their partisan cues in real-time from their fathers. The maternal
influence is concurrent in some instances, but mothers dominate partisan socialization
during their offspring’s childhood. This finding supports a well-established canon of the
literature, highlighting the role of mothers in the early socialization of children (Bao
et al., 1999; Jaspers et al., 2008).
We also find some evidence that the socialization of left-leaning partisanship operates
differently than that of right-leaning partisanship. The primary distinction is that mothers
are more successful at engendering support for the center-left in their children, while
fathers tend to dominate center-right partisanship influence. This analysis sheds light on
previously obscured processes of household partisan influence.
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