Comparing Civic Competence among European Youth: Composite and Domain-Specific Indicators Using IEA Civic Education Study Data

Addressing the European Union monitoring of civic competence, this article presents a composite indicator of civic competence and four domain indicators. The data used are from the 1999 IEA Civic Education study of 14-year-olds in school. The results demonstrate the complexity of the various influences on the development of civic competencies across countries rather than support for a single or unidirectional theoretical explanation. The nation’s years of democracy play both a positive and a negative role on different aspects of civic competence, while citizenship education has better than expected consequences in some countries.