Nonpolitical generation: reasons for lithuanian youths' disinterest in politics

Nonpolitical Generation: Reasons for Lithuanian Youths' Disinterest in Politics In the following years consolidated democracies have faced a great decline in citizens’ participation and interest in political life. The latest researches show that young people are especially disengaged from political life. Moreover, Lithuania seems to have the greatest number of young people who are not interested in politics in the whole developed world (OECD countries and candidates). Therefore this thesis analyse what are the reasons for youth disinterest in politics in Lithuania. First of all, analysis of contemporary theories and empirical researches is being done and provides different answers to the question. In particular it is said that youths’ interest in politics can be determined by four categories of factors: socioeconomic (income, subjective wellbeing, education, race and gender), psychological (political efficacy: self confidence in place of internal political efficacy and trust in political system as external political efficacy), socializing (discussions with family and friends, media, volunteering, political competition) as well as mobilizing (political campaigns) factors. Thus, ten hypothesis are developed eight of which are being formulated as both micro and macro level hypothesis. Whereas political competition is formulated to have effect in macro and political campaign in micro levels. Further, statistical analysis is being done to find the factors most relevant in this case. In order to find why Lithuania has such a high level of youth disinterest in politics compared to other OECD countries, aggregate analysis is being done on a country level. Correlations are found between the level of youth disinterest in politics and income per capita, trust in national government, discussions with friends and usage of media. In particular more income per capita as well as more trust in national government reduces the level of young people disinterested in politics. Whereas more rare discussions and less media usage increases the level of youth disinterest in politics. Lithuania, Czech Republic, Hungary and Slovakia who turn out to have the highest levels of youth disinterest in politics together with Lithuania, appears in one group based on most of other criteria as well. Thus, it is necessary to research more thoroughly these particular countries. Though altogether these factors seems to be a pretty good determinants, yet Lithuanian case cannot be fully explained by them as regression model suggests that based on following criteria Lithuania would have approximately one fifth less of young people disinterested in politics. Thus, usual suspects do not explain this phenomenon. Afterwards, analysis in individual level is being performed with a help of logistic regression as the dependent variable is interest in politics (1 – for those interested, 0 – for those that are not). Logistical regression analysis propose that the most relevant determinant for youth interest in politics in Lithuania is greater usage of media that is significant in all regression models, accompanied by more frequent discussions with family and friends, higher trust in parliament as well as higher level of education. Separately analyzing results of two different post-electoral questionnaires greater reach of political campaign appears to be also significant in dataset of 2012. Yet, the greatest determinant of whether young person will be interested in politics is the effect of elections, while data from 2016 signalizes much greater youth interest in politics compared to 2012. This can be understood as 2016 had greater youth voter turnout in elections and now proves that the level of youth interest in politics in Lithuania has also changed due to that and that elections were somehow different. It might be due to greater competition or other determinants that are not examined in deep in this work, yet should be analysed in future with great interest