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Tag: Democracy

  • Influence of digitalization on political participation among young adults in contemporary Europe.

    Influence of digitalization on political participation among young adults in contemporary Europe.

    How does digitalization reshape the nature and depth of youth political participation across contemporary Europe? Wara (2026) conducts a systematic qualitative meta-synthesis grounded in mobilization theory to evaluate how digital communication platforms, e-governance, and e-democracy tools have redefined civic activism among young adults. Synthesizing evidence from 30 peer-reviewed articles published between 2014 and 2025 indexed in Web of Science and related repositories, the study investigates how technological shifts lower participation barriers while simultaneously introducing new structural tensions to democratic engagement.

    The findings demonstrate that digitalization has decentralized civic life by opening accessible, non-hierarchical arenas for political expression and collective action beyond traditional party and state apparatuses. Digital platforms enable rapid, horizontal organizing and transnational mobilization, as demonstrated by youth-driven movements such as Fridays for Future. However, this transformative potential is constrained by severe counterweights. Persistent digital divides, unequal access to digital infrastructure, and disparities in technological literacy continue to hinder equitable participation across different regions of Europe. Furthermore, the ecosystem of digital politics is complicated by cybersecurity vulnerabilities, pervasive online misinformation, and the risk of slacktivism, which can reduce active political commitment to superficial digital gestures and fuel ideological polarization.

    The study concludes that realizing the participatory benefits of digital politics requires structural intervention rather than passive reliance on technological diffusion. Sustainable digital democracy demands coordinated, cross-sectoral collaboration among governments, civil society, and educational institutions. These stakeholders must work in concert to advance digital equity, embed comprehensive critical media literacy into youth education, and construct inclusive, accountable digital governance architectures capable of mitigating polarization while safeguarding democratic participation in the digital era.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Wara, Y. A. (2026). Influence of digitalization on political participation among young adults in contemporary Europe. Open Research Europe, 5, 360. https://doi.org/10.12688/openreseurope.21521.2

  • Youth Political Culture in the European Union: Welfare Institutions, Political Trust, and Participation

    Youth Political Culture in the European Union: Welfare Institutions, Political Trust, and Participation

    What determines young Europeans’ trust in political institutions—their direct democratic participation or their everyday experience with the welfare state? Broka (2026) investigates the structural and social foundations of youth political culture across the European Union, examining how institutional performance, social trust, and civic activism shape the political orientations of young adults aged 18 to 29.

    While European youth policies have long prioritized socio-economic and civic inclusion, persistent vulnerabilities across critical welfare dimensions continue to delay transitions to financial independence and full citizenship. Drawing on longitudinal data from the European Social Survey (2002–2023) across the EU-28 countries, the author utilizes a theory-driven hierarchical multiple regression that progressively incorporates welfare state variables, interpersonal and social trust indicators, and measures of political power and civic activism to evaluate their relative explanatory power on political trust.

    The empirical analysis reveals that satisfaction with welfare-state institutions serves as the single strongest predictor of youth political trust, accounting for 40.6% of the observed variance. Although young adults display relatively low levels of formal political participation, the results demonstrate that structural and institutional factors—specifically welfare satisfaction, social and interpersonal trust, and level of education—exert a substantially stronger influence on political trust than direct political activism. Ultimately, the study underscores that youth political culture is fundamentally multidimensional, shaped far less by conventional democratic procedures alone than by effective institutional delivery, social safety nets, and broader societal organization.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Broka, A. (2026). Youth Political Culture in the European Union: Welfare Institutions, Political Trust, and Participation. Politics and Governance, 14, 11715. https://doi.org/10.17645/pag.11715

  • European Democracy Shield: Empowering strong and resilient democracies

    European Democracy Shield: Empowering strong and resilient democracies

    How can democratic socities defend themselves against external and internal pressures? The European Commission (2025) presents the European Democracy Shield to reinforce democratic institutions and resist authoritarian regimes agressive tactics.

    Democracy serves as the foundation of the European Union, underpinning peace, security, economic competitiveness, prosperity, and social cohesion. Grounded in free individuals, fair elections, independent media, and strong institutions, democracy functions as a way of life that protects fundamental rights, ensures equality under the law, fosters open societies, and keeps leaders accountable. European citizens identity democracy, human rights, and the rule of law as the Union’s greatest strengths.

    However, in a period marked by regional conflicts, geopolitical friction, and technological shifts, democratic systems face intensifying strain. Authoritarian powers view democracy as a direct threat and employ aggressive methods, often through state or non-state proxies, to weaken it. While democratic systems work by uniting diverse voices to find shared solutions, authoritarian actors deliberately widen societal divisions, exploit conflicts, undermine elections, and target free media and civil society to destroy public trust in democratic governance.

    The European Commission (2025) highlights this as an urgent challenge for the EU, neighboring regions, and democracies across the globe. Protecting candidate and potential candidate nations from destabilization and foreign interference is especially critical. Alongside its war of aggression against Ukraine, Russia continues to escalate hybrid operations accross Europe, using deceitful narratives and falsified history to weaken trust in democratic systems over the long term.

    Learn more about this policy here:

    European Commission. (2025b). European Democracy Shield: Empowering strong and resilient democracies (JOIN(2025) 791 final) https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52025JC0791

  • Electoral violence: An introduction

    Electoral violence: An introduction

    Why do elections frequently lead to conflict instead of peace? Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund (2020) explain that outside established democracies, voting often involves electoral violence, which operates as a distinct subtype of political violence.

    In introducing this special issue, the authors point out that while elections take place across almost every country today to ensure peaceful transfers of power, contests held outside consolidated democracies are often accompanied by significant violence. Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund emphasize that electoral violence has its own analytical and empirical dynamics, making it distinct from other forms of organized violence and qualitatively different from nonviolent electoral manipulation.

    The authors review existing knowledge regarding the causes and consequences of electoral violence, point out notable research gaps, and present the collection of articles in the issue. These contributions advance the literature across four core areas: the micro-level targeting and consequences of electoral violence, its institutional roots, the factors that create high-stakes elections, and how electoral violence fits into broader patterns of organized violence. Finally, Birch, Daxecker, and Höglund emphasize the geographic and methodological breadth of the studies, which examine Africa, Latin America, and Asia using ethnography, survey data, vignette and list experiments, and quantitative subnational and crossnational event data.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Birch, S., Daxecker, U., & Höglund, K. (2020). Electoral violence: An introduction. Journal of Peace Research, 57(1), 3–14. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022343319889657

  • The Methodology of “Varieties of Democracy” (V-Dem)

    The Methodology of “Varieties of Democracy” (V-Dem)

    How can we measure democracy more accurately? Coppedge et al. (2019) detail how the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) project provides a new methodological framework to measure democracy using deep data and open statistical tools.

    The article explains the newest methods V-Dem uses to measure democracy and related topics. Aside from breaking democracy down into distinct, detailed parts, V-Dem stands apart through several specific features. It brings together long-term historical records reaching back to 1900, and as far back as 1789 for a large group of countries across the globe. To ensure reliability, the project relies on multiple independent coders for every evaluative question and runs coder-agreement checks through a custom Bayesian item-response theory model. In addition, the authors provide confidence bounds for each individual expert score and summary index, showing the uncertainty around each estimate. V-Dem also offers multiple indices that reflect different theoretical definitions of democracy, uses fully transparent steps to combine the data, and makes all datasets freely available to the public, including the individual scores from each coder with all personal identifying details removed.

    Learn more about this article here:

    Coppedge, M., Gerring, J., Knutsen, C. H., Krusell, J., Medzihorsky, J., Pernes, J., Skaaning, S.-E., Stepanova, N., Teorell, J., Tzelgov, E., Wilson, S. L., & Lindberg, S. I. (2019). The Methodology of “Varieties of Democracy” (V-Dem)1. Bulletin of Sociological Methodology/Bulletin de Méthodologie Sociologique, 143(1), 107–133. https://doi.org/10.1177/0759106319854989