Abstract
Scholars and policy makers are giving increasing attention to how young people are involved in politics and their confidence in the current democratic system. In a context of a global trust crisis in the European Union, this paper examines if open government data, a promising governance strategy, may help to boost Millennials’ and Generation Z trust in public institutions and satisfaction with public outcomes. First, results from our preliminary analysis challenge some popular beliefs by revealing that younger generations tend to trust in their institutions notably more than the rest of the European citizens. In addition, our findings show that open government data is a trust-enabler for Millennials and Generation Z, not only through a direct link between both, but also thanks to the mediator role of citizens’ satisfaction. Accordingly, public officers are encouraged to spread the implementation of open data strategies as a way to improve younger generations’ attachment to democratic institutions.
Highlights
IntroductionDemocracy still gets majority support, this attitudinal change can be a warning signal of some unmet demands and expectations
A series of global-scale events and phenomena, such as the Great Recession and climate change, are shifting the way younger generations address economic, social and cultural issues and how they engage in the political life, as they are increasingly indifferent towards politics [1, 2]
In the European Union (EU), Millennials find living in a democracy less relevant than adults do and they support alternative systems largely than the rest of the population [3], probably because they feel themselves excluded from the traditional political system [4]
Summary
Democracy still gets majority support, this attitudinal change can be a warning signal of some unmet demands and expectations. There are some other authors that stated that support for democracy remains during last decades and that there is no clear evidence for ensuring that younger generations distrust in democracy more than young people at any other moment of time, especially in the case of consolidated democracies [5, 6]. Most of the previous works that studied these issues among younger generations and age groups were based on measures on citizens’ support to the current political system, in contrast with other alternatives to democracy. Despite of these relevant contributions, some academics
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