Recent research from Canada, Great Britain, and the United States indicates that turnout in national elections is declining rapidly among young adults. As a consequence of this trend, the age gap in voter turnout between younger and older voters widens. The aim of this paper is to understand whether similar patterns are observed in other Western democracies. Based on national election studies from eight European countries, Canada, and the United States, turnout patterns of younger and older citizens are traced and compared over the past decades. In a second step, a first attempt at explaining aggregate patterns is made. More specifically, the hypothesis that young people are particularly sensitive to the level of competitiveness between political parties is assessed. In low stake elections, turnout patterns of young citizens are expected to be relatively low. Therefore, declining turnout levels among young adults could be a sign of declining levels of political competitiveness. Nonetheless, multivariate analyses show that different measures of political competitiveness neither directly affect the age gap nor the turnout levels of young voters.

This study analyzes the intergenerational transmission of environmental concern. More specifically, the direct influence of the environmental concern of mother and father and the intermediary effect of communication about environmental problems within the family is investigated. Furthermore, the paper explores gender-specific patterns in the transmission of environmental concern. The data used in this paper stem from the Parent-Child Socialization Study (PCSS, 2012), in which 3,426 15-year old Flemish adolescents and both their parents were questioned about their social and political attitudes. The results clearly confirm the transmission hypothesis: the environmental concern of both mother and father had a signifi cant influence on the environmental concern of the offspring. Strong transmission effects were especially found in families that communicate regularly about the environment. This effect was stronger for girls than for boys. Nevertheless, there is still room for other influences with regard to the development of environmental concern, indicating that environmentalism is not a core-attitude within families.

According to the advocates of the New Politics thesis youngsters are generally less interested in general elections, but are rather attracted by citizen-initiated referendums that are inspired by ecological, elite-challenging and pro-social motives. However, other scholars contend that the age-related differences that characterize participation in general elections are more or less universal because what really matters is how much is at stake. Yet, maybe a middle ground can be found between both perspectives if one explicitly takes into account the conditional nature of the New Politics theoretical framework. Based on exit-poll data regarding participation and vote choice in a Belgian citizen-initiated referendum in three different local contexts we test these conditional hypotheses. Our findings reveal that consistent with the New Politics thesis youngsters participate more and prefer pro-ecology, elite-challenging, and pro-social issue-frames, but only in ‘low stakes-contexts’ where no NIMBY-interests are at play.