ABSTRACT
Public involvement in traditional political institutions has declined significantly over the past few decades, leading to what some have seen as a crisis in citizenship (Putnam 2000; Macedo et al. 2005; Stoker 2006). In Europe, we have witnessed a large decline in voter turnout (Franklin 2004; Fieldhouse et al. 2007) and a dramatic fall in the membership of political parties (Van Biezen et al. 2012). These trends are most striking amongst young people, who have become alienated from mainstream electoral politics (Sloam 2012, 2013a). In austerity Europe, young people have, furthermore, been forced to bear the brunt of the global financial crisis and sovereign debt crises: from worsening levels of child poverty, to spiralling youth unemployment, to cuts in youth services and education budgets, to increased university tuition fees. Young Europeans’ lives have become more precarious and their futures increasingly bleak in the current climate of low growth and falling public spending (OECD 2013). This has led to a second and more dramatic loss of confidence in politicians and political parties to add to the slow-burning participatory crisis in electoral politics.
