Socialization and generational political trajectories: an age, period and cohort analysis of political participation in Britain

Maria Teresa Grasso,Stephen Farrall,Emily Gray,Colin Hay,Will Jennings

doi:10.1080/17457289.2018.1476359

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. While most previous studies have tended to propose explanations for disengagement linked to specific repertoires of political action, we propose a unified theory based on the different socialization experiences of subsequent generations. We test this theory using a new dataset of collated waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey and by applying age–period–cohort models for repeated cross-sectional data and generalized additive models to identify generational effects. We show that generational effects underlie the participatory decline across repertoires. Consistent with our expectations, the results reveal that the generation of “Thatcher’s Children” are much less likely to engage in a range of repertoires of political action than “Wilson/Callaghan’s Children”, who came of age in the more politicized 1960s and 1970s. Significantly, and in line with our theoretical expectations, the “Blair’s Babies” generation is the least politically engaged of all. We reflect on these findings and highlight the concerning implications of falling levels of activism for advanced democracies.

Highlights

The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods
Consistent with our theoretical expectations, the results show that the generation that came of political age during the 1980s – “Thatcher’s Children” – is less politically involved than the generation that came of age in the rather more politicized 1960s–1970s – “Wilson/Callaghan’s Children” – and this finding holds across different repertoires of political action
We argue that politicization and the contestation of ideas are key elements determining the extent to which citizens are motivated to engage in politics and to participate politically (Hay 2004)

Summary

Introduction

The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. There was no discussion in this seminal study of how political socialization might explain disengagement from unconventional alongside conventional activism To address this important gap in the literature, in this paper, we show that similar generational effects underlie participatory decline in both repertoires. The cognitive mobilization model in particular emphasizes the role of dissatisfaction and grievances, in line with the social psychological model (Van Stekelenburg and Klandermans 2013), and suggests that individuals with higher levels of education, political interest and political information will be more likely to become dissatisfied with political outcomes and inclined to protest (Skocpol 1979; Norris 1999; Dalton 2008) As such grievances could play an important role in explaining participation.

Results

Conclusions

Notes on contributors