The Recruitment of Youth Political Elites During Transformations in Central and Eastern Europe and Arab Mediterranean Countries: A Comparative Approach

Abstract

This paper aims to describe and compare the mechanisms for the recruitment of youth political elites in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the Arab Mediterranean countries (AMC) during and after the periods of social and political transformation that were the breakdown of the communist bloc in 1989 and the uprisings in the southern and eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East in 2011. While the early expectations were for a similar course of events in the two regions, at present it is the differences in the factors and consequences of the mass mobilisations that capture most scholarly attention. The analysis in this paper is based on desk research and rich quantitative and qualitative datasets from five AMCs carried out in the framework of the SAHWA Project funded by the th FP of the EC. Young people’s active engagement in institutional politics is the major channel for political recruitment into the politically relevant elite both in post-1989 CEE and in the AMCs after 2011. The official channels for youth elite recruitment, such as working in support of political parties, in election campaigns and specialised leadership training are often underpinned by young people’s families’ economic, social and cultural capital (in a more direct form in the AMCs and a more covert form in CEE).