Age, Resistance, and Political Learning in a New Environment: The Case of Canadian Immigrants

Abstract

The relationship between age and political engagement poses a continuing puzzle for students of political behavior. On the one hand, its rough empirical outlines are well-known. Older citizens are likely to be stronger political partisans and more politically involved than their younger counterparts. Older individuals' attitudes, while subject to some change, are more stable than those of the young. On the other hand, the processes that create these effects continue to be objects of dispute and sources of confusion. Some analysts argue that a greater rigidity of attitudes accompanies the biological aging process: stronger and more inflexible feelings may reflect an age-related difficulty in processing new information, or they may reflect the fact that information accumulates with age, creating stored bases of attitudes and experience to which new pieces of information add incrementally little. A different perspective is that attitudinal consistency is reinforced, if not created, by consistency in environmental messages. From this point of view, the greater strength of attachment and tendency towards political involvement among older individuals reflect largely their success in creating stable home, occupation, and social group environments. The more frequent political involvement reflects developed repertories for action, as well as available information sources that can be drawn upon when needs arise. It is difficult to disentangle these conflicting lines of explanation because for most citizens aging is associated with increased exposure to the political world (hence the opportunity to acquire additional political information), with more stable personal environments, and with greater community integration. Diverse generational experiences and other differences between younger and older individuals, such as educational opportunities that have greatly increased in most western nations, further confound the problem of empirical analysis. Put another way, special research designs are needed to sort these overlapping conditions and characteristics; indeed, probably much of the current confusion stems from the limited nature of past designs. At the same time, the need for more clarity about the effects of age on political involvement has never been greater. Societies everywhere are experiencing a rapidly aging population base. This phenomenon is frequently noticed by policymakers and students of public policy and ought to be of equal interest to specialists in political behavior. Not only are older individuals a growing demographic category, but they are on their way to becoming a significant social and political force as well. Insofar as they may react differently to events, issues, and opportunities, the implications will be considerable.