Youth in the Kaleidoscope: Civic Participation Types in Estonia and the Czech Republic

This paper presents an exploratory typological analysis of young people (aged 15–30) as political and civic actors in Estonia and the Czech Republic. We compare youth civic engagement patterns in these two East European countries, sharing similar socio-historical contexts, and analyse the sociodemographic and attitudinal profiles of the resulting participation types. The study draws on Estonian and Czech data sets collected from November to December 2016 within the Horizon 2020 project ‘CATCH-EyoU – Constructing AcTive CitizensHip with European Youth: Policies, Practices, Challenges and Solutions’. Two independent methods (latent class analysis and cluster analysis) demonstrated shared patterns in the political and civic activities employed by the Estonian and Czech participants, suggesting the existence of four clearly distinguishable types of young citizens. A more detailed analysis revealed that the socio-demographic and attitudinal profiles of active young people, and therefore, the factors of political socialization, differed quite substantially in the two countries.

"In both countries, our analysis provided four clearly distinguishable clusters, suggesting the existence of four main types of young citizens in terms of their political and civic agency: a small group of generally active young citizens, a larger group of generally passive young citizens, and two intermediate subgroups of moderately active young citizens who are more clearly profiled in their preference of civic activity." (Beilmann et al., 2018, p. 27). "The clusters suggest that while in Estonia, online political activities are increasingly adopted along with the increasing intensity of all activities (from the most inactive Passive young citizens to the most active group of General activists), in the Czech Republic the adoption of networked participation leads to the articulation of a specific type that might, in comparison with the other cluster of moderately active young citizens (Voluntary benefactors), be understood as “digital citizens or activists” (Digital activists)." (Beilmann et al., 2018, p. 27).