Young Rebels Who Do Not Want a Revolution: The Non-participatory Preferences of Fridays for Future Activists in Finland

Janette Huttunen

doi:10.3389/fpos.2021.672362

Abstract

Young people’s lack of participation in elections has been taken as a sign that the young are wary of representative democracy and reject traditional authorities. Instead of election participation, it is expected that the young want more possibilities for direct involvement in political decision-making. Fridays for Future (FFF) is a global, youth-led climate movement that has been able to mobilize millions of young people around the world into political action (de Moor et al., 2020; Wahlström et al., 2019) in times when youth participation is generally declining, especially in traditional forms of political participation. While many have taken this as evidence that young people dismiss representative democracy in favor of a more participatory democracy, in-depth studies of their motivations are still lacking. This article helps fill this lacuna by providing a case study on Finnish FFF participants. Through semi-structured interviews and theory-guided content analysis with 15- to 20-year-old climate activists, the Finnish FFF participants’ attitudes toward political participation are examined. The data consists of 11 one-on-one in-depth theme interviews with young people, who participated in the FFF movement by attending at least one protest in Finland in 2019. The interviews focused on the following themes: motivation for participation in the FFF movement, interviewee’s background, and the participant’s ideas regarding politics, democracy, and political participation. The interviews were combined with material from various news sources to contextualize the information in the analysis phase. Based on the empirical evidence, I argue that although these young citizens have become politically active in a climate protest movement, it does not necessarily mean that they want major reforms to the representative democracy toward a more participatory system. Instead of more participatory possibilities, the Finnish climate activists want a better-functioning representative system with politicians who listen to their demands.

Highlights

In the fall of 2018, 15-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg held a one-person protest outside of the Swedish parliament and started the global climate movement ‘Fridays for Future’ (FFF)
Based on the ideas regarding political participation and democracy that the interviewed Finnish FFF participants demonstrate, I argue that the young activists, despite their evident involvement in a major, global protest movement, do not display more participatory preferences when it comes to political decision-making, nor are they rejecting established democratic norms, practices, or political authorities
The different forms of political participation are not mutually exclusive: the young can participate in multiple ways at the same time, both in single-issue movements and by voting, and the different forms can form a positive cycle of political engagement (Pickard, 2019, p. 397)

Summary

Introduction

In the fall of 2018, 15-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg held a one-person protest outside of the Swedish parliament and started the global climate movement ‘Fridays for Future’ (FFF). The movement demands political leaders to take action in the fight against global warming and has been successful in mobilizing the young masses into protest, gain substantial amount of media-coverage, and a wide, global scope, with climate strikes organized around the world (Wahlström et al, 2019; de Moor et al, 2020). This article provides a case study on young FFF activists in a country where the movement has been active since its early stages, Finland. I examine the Finnish climate activists’ attitudes toward democracy and political participation, with the goal to shed a light on whether the young people who have become active in a mass youth movement want more participatory possibilities for their political engagement, as is often expected (see e.g., Inglehart, 1997; Dalton, 2008; Chou, 2017). In the context of this article, the concept ‘participatory’ refers to the idea of more direct and active citizen participation in political activities outside of the institutionalized forms of political engagement

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