Abstract
On a democratic society, it is desirable to consolidate the relation between citizens and political system through a participatory political culture. Romania – as others post-communism spaces – is characterized by a low level of political communication, poor civic involvement and insufficiently cooperation between government and citizens. During this context, the position of the new generation is crucial in consolidating democracy. Previous studies showed that the young Romanian is perceived rather as an outsider in the relation with the system, have a low trust in institutions by comparison with other age categories, and is not optimistic regarding the capacity of public contestation. On long term, these issues can lead either to a decrease of interest on civic engagement and – in time – to the emergence of a democratic deficit or a subject political culture, or to the emergence of anti-system positions. Nowadays, young people have new tools to help developing a participatory culture, such as new media, new forms of political socialization, an increasing interest in non-governmental organizations et. al. The purpose of the paper is to approach a set of indicators specific to civic and political involvement, using data from a sociological quantitative study conducted on a sample of 430 undergraduates’ students from three specializations: Sociology, Social Work and Human Resources (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi), in order to observe their civic and political attitudes.
Highlights
General considerations Youth position towards the political system in a certain social space represents an important element in the analysis of the future of democracy in that state
As the chart above points out, students are more interested on national politics rather than local politics
The results show that 55% of the respondents are interested on a great and very great extent on national political life, while 4 of 10 students are not preoccupied by this topic
Summary
General considerations Youth position towards the political system in a certain social space represents an important element in the analysis of the future of democracy in that state. Sociological quantitative study conducted on a sample of 430 undergraduates’ students from Faculty of Philosophy and Social-Political Sciences, “Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iasi) When it comes to democracy, according to Robert Dahl, there are two theoretical dimensions of democracy: public contestation – the measure in which in a society are permitted opposition, public contestation or political concurrency, and inclusiveness/ right to participate – the measure in which it is guarantee the right to participate at public contestation (Dahl, 2003). The overall score for Romania was 6,49, as a result of five elements taken into consideration: electoral process and pluralism [9,17], functioning of government [5,71], political participation [5,56], political culture[4,38] and civil liberties [7,65] This score place Romania between flowed democracies, but the study shows that our country registered an improvement, based on the rise of political participation (street protests, strong voter turnout in the European Parliament election in May 2019 and presidential election in November 2019, anti-corruption movement etc.) (The Economist Intelligence Unit, 2020). Sociological studies (IRES 2012, IMAS 2011, TNS Political & Social 2013, 2018) showed that the young Romanian is perceived rather as an outsider in the relation with the system, have a low trust in institutions by comparison with other age categories, is not interested to a great extent about politics, and consider that the capacity of public contestation is limited
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