by James Sloam & Matt Henn
The United Nations Development Programme has described 2024 as a global elections “Super year”. However, while that may be the case, younger generations across many established democracies remain deeply disillusioned with mainstream electoral politics. This is hardly a revelation, but reflects the findings from a large body of existing research identifying low levels of youth voter turnout. By way of contrast, very little attention has been paid to how young people can – and occasionally do – engage with politicians and officials between elections on issues of importance to them. Even when parties attract overwhelming youth support, such as the Labour Party in 4 July UK General Election, they often have little idea of how to govern for - let alone with - young people. In our recent article for Policy & Politics, we argue that youth engagement with local policy-communities on issues that have meaning for their everyday lives offers a potential antidote to this democratic malaise.
So first the good news. Our research points to an increasing willingness of policymakers to engage with young people – particularly in the area of environmental policy. Less positively, policymakers struggle to provide opportunities for meaningful and sustained engagement. Our article explores where the problems lie and suggests how these might be resolved.
We ran focus groups and held interviews with young people and local civic leaders from across London in the run-up to the 2021 United Nations COP26 Summit. The research was co-produced with young people (aged 15 to 24) from the Mayor of London’s Peer Outreach Team – most of whom come from disadvantaged or traditionally marginalised backgrounds. We also reached out to other young Londoners.
Our findings revealed that, from a young person’s perspective, should policymakers wish to engage young people in the policymaking process, then there is a need to think about environmental issues more broadly, by linking them to everyday personal issues. As one young female participant observed, ‘[the environment] is a very ignored issue, because in London now there are more serious issues that we focus on that are life dependent… like housing, or poverty, or crimes.’
Young people were keen to get involved in local environmental decision-making, and emphasised the importance of providing deliberative civic spaces as a starting point for such engagement. Interestingly, local politicians and officials were also positive about such environmental policy-engagement – although stressed the challenges and limitations in setting-up such processes. For instance, they acknowledged that although the “quantity” of such engagement was increasing, the interactive nature of these engagement initiatives (their “quality”) was somewhat lacking. Furthermore, the young participants involved in such policy-engagement opportunities were typically not representative of all young Londoners. Additionally, environmental policymakers ‘do not commit to youth engagement over a sustained period of time’ and are often reluctant to cede control over policymaking to young people.
Despite these obvious weaknesses in the embedding of youth participation in environmental policymaking in London, our article highlights the steps local policy-communities need to take to engage effectively with young people. The first is to provide more civic spaces for deliberation that can feed into public policy. The second is to address institutional preferences and policymaking processes that encourage tokenism and inhibit meaningful participation. The key is to train relevant officials in working with children and young people as partners, which involves the co-creation of policies – from design through to implementation. This research is important because it enhances our understanding of the role of young people in environmentalism and their democratic value.
You can read the original research in Policy & Politics at:
Sloam, J., & Henn, M. (2024). How young people can shape environmental policy in urban spaces. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000039
If you enjoyed this blog post, you may also be interested to read:
Buch-Hansen, H., & Carstensen, M. B. (2024). What kind of political agency can foster radical transformation towards ecological sustainability?. Policy & Politics, 52(2), 259-277 from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2023D000000025
Deslatte, A., Siciliano, M. D., & Krause, R. M. (2024). Applying collective action frameworks to analyse local-level collaboration for electric vehicle-related policies. Policy & Politics (published online ahead of print 2024) from https://doi.org/10.1332/03055736Y2024D000000034
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