Youth Political Development: An Introduction

Research on political socialization during the 1950s focused on early precursors of political attitudes and treated children as rather passive participants in the process. A second wave of research in the 1960s considered youth a force creating social change and held that the transition between adolescence and adulthood was a period uniquely suited to examining political issues. Developmental research during the past two decades has emphasized lifelong plasticity and the importance of the sociohistorical contexts in which children grow up. This change in views of development has occurred at a time when populations in all societies are becoming more diverse and when there have been dramatic economic and sociopolitical upheavals throughout the world. Thus there is a renewed importance for research on the political development of young people and the potential for examining this topic in increasingly meaningful ways. This issue highlights a new generation of research in this domain, paying particular attention to international and comparative work and to those studies that bring afresh and developmental approach.