A survey of young people's sentiment towards local democratic innovation

Abstract

Concerns about the state of democracy and participation date back several decades. In the 1990's, there were concerns about declining political party membership and voter turnout, and a general political fragmentation. This trend has been strengthened and made visible throughout the 2010's, with increased polarization and populism, and countries moving away from democratic ideals. Democratic innovations, including digital democracy initiatives, are introduced to "fix" democracies and renew interest, but is the public, especially the younger generation, interested? In this paper, we present the findings of a Swedish survey of youth sentiment towards innovations in local democracy. Our findings indicate that young people generally are supportive of local democratic innovations, but that levels of support vary across age groups as well as between different types of democratic innovations. Surprisingly we find that the youngest cohort in our study (16-19) is less supportive of online democratic innovations compared to other groups