Abstract

Despite being one of the largest pools of future political leaders, young party members are a largely understudied group. While there is an interest to understand their motivations for becoming young party members, we know much less about young people’s political ambition and the factors that impact their decision to seek political positions, to remain party foot soldiers, or to drop out of party engagement entirely. Although there are many experiences that can shape the ambition of young people, one thing is for certain, if you have ambition and you want to get ahead in politics, you must have experience, be “seen” by your fellow party members, and following that, be well-connected.

One of the most concerning drawbacks is the potential exposure to online violence and harassment. While there has been a growing effort to define violence against women in politics (VAWiP), and to draw attention to and investigate how women in political positions experience different forms of violence, there are fewer investigations that focus on the impact of political violence and harassment and even fewer that examine age as an intersecting category of interest.

Drawing on unique qualitative interviews conducted with young Swedish and Norwegian political party members, in this paper I ask how young future politicians experience violence and harassment and the impacts that this has on their progressive political ambition and behavior. Preliminary findings suggest that young party members do experience semiotic, physical, and psychological violence and that these phenomena are gendered. Early findings also suggest that experiencing such forms of harassment does alter behavior, but this varies both by gender and with experience level.

Citation

Anlar, Brit. 2022. A Disrupted Pipeline? Youth Parties and the Impact of Political Violence & Harassment on Progressive Political Ambition. Presented at APSA, Montreal.

Abstract

The role that youth in the United States play as voters and activists has received heightened attention from both academics and the media in recent years. Yet, the representation of young adults in legislative bodies has received notably less attention. While previous literature has argued that the paucity of young representatives (those between ages of 18 and 35) is due to their general disinterest in political participation, others suggest that youth underrepresentation may be a product of institutional obstacles such as candidate age requirements and the electoral system (see Krook and Nugent, 2018; Stockemer and Sundström, 2020). In this paper we hope to draw out both supply and demand side effects on the descriptive representation of young people in U.S. state legislatures by developing and testing the concept of ‘youth inclusive’ states. I combine a unique dataset comprised of age and race/ethnicity data of all state legislative elected officials from 2018-2022, data from the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement, and data from the National Congress of State Legislatures to test the degree to which youth inclusive states help promote youth representation. My analysis tests not only if lower candidate age requirements and low candidate fees help improve representation, but also if the presence of youth caucuses in the state legislature may also play a significant role. As such, my analysis takes a more comprehensive view of state-level policies and initiatives that can help improve the representation of young people in U.S. legislative bodies. My research contributes to the literature on political representation and builds on recent American Politics scholarship that focuses on young adults as elite political actors (see Lawless and Fox, 2015; Shames, 2017; Alter, 2019). It also speaks to ongoing debates about young adult citizenship and the advancement of youth political engagement. The aim of this investigation is to further promote scholarship on age as a category of political marginalization and exclusion so that scholars and practitioners may begin investigating ways to increase young adults’ presence in legislative bodies.

Citation

Anlar, Brit. 2023. "Inclusive Cultures: Young Adult Representation in U.S. State Legislatures." Prepared for Special Issue.

Abstract

Youth representation, globally, is disproportionately low—less than 3 percent of all MPs, globally, are under the age of 30 (IPU, 2019). Despite this, to date political science scholars have paid little attention to the question of age. Moreover, women and politics scholars have only recently begun to ask how age may affect representation as an intersecting barrier to political success. What little research does exist has focused on the parliamentary level leaving out the crucial role of party gatekeepers and a potential “majority gatekeeper affect”. This paper, therefore, seeks to fill a gap in representation literature by examining candidate selection methods and youth representation. In this particular study I focus on four Turkish political parties with a particular focus on candidate selection methods. The paper seeks to answer questions concerning candidate selection methods that enable and inhibit the greater representation of young people. Preliminary results show support that when youth are included in candidate selection, the descriptive representation of young people increases. I also find that in the case of Turkey, there is a “majority gatekeeper affect” where young women are the biggest losers often ending up in the least winnable seat positions.

Citation

Anlar, Brit. 2019. Revisiting the Black Box: Youth Representation and Candidate Selection Methods. Presented at ECPG, Amsterdam.

Abstract

Political parties are core actors in democratic political systems. As recent literature observes,

however, parties themselves may not be democratic in terms of their structure and organization. Yet

a major shortcoming of existing concepts and measures of intra-party democracy (IPD), is that they

fail to incorporate concerns about gender equality. Integrating insights from feminist research on

political parties, I develop a new three dimensional ‘cubic’ model of IPD assessment. I apply this

model to compare four political parties in Turkey, showing that when gender is accounted for,

political parties typically categorized as ‘fully democratic’ do not remain so. The analysis

demonstrates how the inclusion of a gender lens provides a more accurate picture of the democratic

– or non-democratic – nature of political parties.

Citation

Anlar, Brit. 2018. Do Measures of Intra-Party Democracy Need Re-Thinking?​ Presented at MPSA, Chicago.

Abstract

In this article we provide a historical context of youth representation in Congress since 1980 and utilize unique data on the last elections to answer a series of questions about youth political representation. We find that Millennials are underrepresented despite rising numbers of candidates and that Millennial representation is differentially gendered and racialised, depending on partisanship. We contribute to the emerging research on youth political representation and to intersectional analyses of legislatures, showing the entanglement of age, gender, and race.

Citation

Köhler, I., & Anlar, B. Millennials in the U.S. Congress: a new kind of wave?. Presented at IPSA 2021.

Isabel Köhler is an independent researcher and member of the Young Elected Leaders Project.

Abstract

This article compares the relationship between candidate age and political selection in local and national elections. Through the use of detailed candidate register data from Finland, covering information on over 3.6 million candidates in six municipal and national elections between 2011 and 2021, we test two competing hypotheses: the "springboard" hypothesis, which suggests that local politics is more accessible for young politicians due to its lower level of competition, and the "parachuting" hypothesis, which posits that parties and voters will be willing to champion promising young candidates in national electoral contests. Our findings support the "parachuting" hypothesis, revealing that while national elections are more competitive, comparatively more young candidates are running in these contests. Additionally, we find that young candidates in national elections have an equal likelihood of success as older candidates, while they are significantly less successful than the latter in municipal contests. These results suggest that both political parties and voters seem to place less emphasis on seniority in national than in municipal elections.

Author Details

Josefina Sipinen is a postdoctoral researcher at Tampere University in Finland and Jana B. Belschner is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Bergen in Norway.

Citation

Sipinen, Josefina, Jana Belschner, and Brit Anlar. Age Gaps in Political Representation: Comparing Local and National Elections. Prepared for Special Issue.

Abstract

Campaigns to increase diversity in politics around the world have long focused on gender, race, and class. In recent years, however, scholars and activists have begun to explore the political dimensions of three further identities: age, sexual orientation and gender identity, and disability. In this article, we provide an overview of incipient research on these three “new” groups, highlighting why they deserve closer attention from political scientists. Drawing on academic and policy publications, we outline how each group is defined and argued to be politically relevant, what current research suggests in relation to four dimensions of representation, and what is being done or proposed around the globe to increase the political presence of these groups. In addition to reinforcing existing insights on gender, race, and class, we find that investigating these “new” groups problematizes existing approaches in at least three ways, highlighting the constructed nature of all group identities, the need for a continuum-based approach to understanding and mitigating group exclusions in politics, and multiple and interacting exclusions across “old” and “new” groups. A broad lens on identity and politics thus opens up new avenues of research, while also advancing ongoing efforts in practice to address inequalities in political representation.

Citation

Anlar, Brit, Mona Lena Krook, and Haley V. Norris. 2023. Political Representation 2.0: Youth, the LGBTQ+ Community, and People with Disabilities.

Abstract

The role that youth in the United States play as voters and activists has received heightened attention from both academics and the media in recent years. Yet, the representation of young adults in legislative bodies has received notably less attention. While previous literature has argued that the paucity of young representatives (those between ages of 18 and 35) is due to their general disinterest in political participation, others suggest that youth underrepresentation may be a product of institutional obstacles such as candidate age requirements (see Krook and Nugent, 2018; Stockemer and Sundström, 2020). In this paper, we examine variations in candidate age requirements for state legislative office across the United States to determine if and how they impact descriptive representational outcomes for those between the ages of 18 and 35.

Drawing on a unique dataset of all state legislative candidates and elected officials from 2018, we investigate the degree to which macro-level factors determine young adults’ numeric representation across state legislatures. Our research contributes to the literature on political representation and builds on recent American Politics scholarship that focuses on young adults as elite political actors (see Lawless and Fox, 2015; Shames, 2017; Alter, 2019). It also speaks to ongoing debates about young-adult citizenship and the advancement of youth political engagement. We hope that our investigation promotes further consideration of age as a category of political marginalization and exclusion so that we may also begin investigating ways to increase young adults’ presence in legislative bodies.

Author Details

Cecilia Ritacco is a doctoral student at Georgetown University.

Citation

Anlar, Brit, and Cecilia Ritacco. (2022). 'Immature' Representatives: Candidate Age Requirements and Youth Political Representation in U.S. State Legislatures. Presented at APSA 2022.

Abstract

Author Details

Veikko Isotalo is a PhD Candidate at the University of Helsinki.

Citation

Isotalo, Veikko and Brit Anlar. Party Conformists or Extremists? Young Candidates in the 2021 Finnish Municipal Elections. Presented at departmental seminar October 2022.

Abstract

Author Details

Veikko Isotalo is a PhD Candidate at the University of Helsinki.

Citation

Isotalo, V., & Anlar, B. Understanding dynamics of intra-party incongruence in OLPR municipal elections. Research Note presented at the IntraComp Workshop 2022.