Student Politics and Political Systems: Toward a Typology

Prevailing analyses of student politics focus upon noninstitutionalized modes of political behavior and upon the social-psychological attributes of participants.This approach tends to ignore the importance of structural links between political system, university, intitutionalized, and noninstitutionalized student politics. The major forms in which institutionalized student politics appear in different nations are closely linked to the attributes of the political and educational systems of each nation. The major system linkages which determine these forms are government control over university structure and financing, and recruitment to political careers through party sponsorship of university student aspirants. The prevailing form of institutionalized student politics where both of these links are present is factional competition among political party branches. Where both are absent, university student government prevails. Where recruitment is low and government control is strong, national student unions predominate and, where the reverse condition obtains, political party branches and clubs. A rationale for the typology is presented, and its application to four cases. The relative persistence and effects of the student movement are then discussed in terms of the movement's emergence in one or another of the four situations defined in the typology.