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Youth participation in institutional decision-making processes has become increasingly common since the turn of the century. The underlying idea is to foster young people to become active citizens and to give them a voice in political decision making.
This chapter is based on multisited participant observation of youth participation processes in the greater Helsinki region. It distinguishes between common youth participation procedures and the theoretical ideals of participatory democracy. Moreover, it underlines the variety of interests, desires and styles of doing society expressed by the participants, and the mismatch between these aspirations and existing institutional arrangements.
This chapter analyses the initiatives submitted to Youthideas.fi, an e-democracy service aimed at young people developed in cooperation between a youth information nongovernmental organization and several governmental actors. A dataset of over 450 ideas submitted to the service was analysed using a theoretical framework highlighting the justifications, grammars of commonality and civic imaginations expressed in the initiatives. We found that the majority of the ideas were technical solutions to everyday problems and that the argumentation used was primarily based on private interests. We use these results to argue that the Youthideas.fi service promotes a techno-rationalist and problem-based conception of democracy. While this reflects a typical style of argumentation found in Finnish political culture, we suggest that more deliberative means of participation could have more far-reaching positive consequences for democratic development.
How do young people participate in democratic societies? This book introduces the concept of ‘doing society’ as a new theory of political action. Focused on Finnish youth, it innovatively blends cutting-edge empirical research with agenda-setting theoretical development. Redefining political action, the authors expand beyond traditional public-sphere, scaling from formal to informal and unconventional modes of engaging.
The book captures diverse engagement from memes to social movements, from participatory budgeting to street parties and from sleek politicians to detached people in the margins. In doing so, it provides a holistic view of the ways in which young people participate (or do not participate) in society, and their role in cultural change.
