Youth Engagement in American Democracy

As President Franklin D. Roosevelt once stated, “Let us never forget that government is ourselves and not an alien power over us. The ultimate rulers of our democracy are not a President and senators and congressmen and government officials, but the voters of this country” (Roosevelt). In their book, Running from Office, Lawless and Fox argue that a “high-quality, well-functioning democracy demands that the next generations hears – and then heeds – a call to public service” (3). While this assertion is certainly true to some degree, the real problems of democracy will arise when young people disengage themselves from politics altogether. Despite having low interest in running for office, young Americans still show significant interest in news

Since Lawless and Fox’s study is the first of its kind, there is no way to measure whether young people have ever been interested in politics. Thus, there is no foolproof way to compare current young people to young people in the past. According to a study done by the Pew Research Center, about 10% of Americans are “political bystanders” (Gao), meaning that they are not registered to vote and do not participate in politics in any way. 38% of these individuals are under 30 years old. This pattern is not completely unusual. As individuals age, there is increased political interest. This change is most likely because political legislation tends to affect older individuals more. For most young people, politics feels like a distant, irrelevant system. Therefore, if a large number of young Americans aren’t even voting, it is fairly unsurprising that they also don’t want to run for political office. However, there is a silver lining. In their survey, Lawless and Fox asked young Americans to rank the importance of keeping up with news and current events. 71% of young people considered “keeping up with current events” (Lawless and Fox 37) important. This statistic is reassuring, as maintaining an understanding of the news typically spurs interest on particularly controversial topics. This interest could incite passion for a topic or a

There are over 500,000 elected offices in the United States, of which a serious majority operate at the local level. The elected offices in the United States range from school boards to President. The amount of Americans working in elected offices represent only a fraction of the total eligible Americans that could run for office. Lawless and Fox found that 11% of the young Americans that were surveyed were very interested in running for a political office (141). That number seems low, but it is not entirely surprising. When Americans think of political offices, the positions that come to mind are usually on the federal level. Perhaps young people don’t have an interest in working in an elected office on the federal level, but would consider the possibility of sitting on a school board or a city council. The young Americans surveyed by Lawless and Fox were fairly confident in their leadership abilities, with a majority indicating a belief that they possessed leadership skills (Lawless and Fox 118). Lawless and Fox’s evidence that most young Americans believe in their own leadership skills is a very favorable indicator that some may eventually run for office. Although many young Americans may not be interested in a high-stress political career, holding a less time-consuming elected office may not be