What exactly is civic and political participation? What factors influence young people’s participation? How can we encourage youth to actively participate in their own democracies? Youth Civic and Political Engagement takes a multidisciplinary approach to answering these key questions, incorporating research in the fields of psychology, sociology, political science and education to explore the issues affecting youth civic and political engagement. Drawing on evidence that has been obtained in many different national contexts, and through multinational studies, this book provides a theoretical synthesis of this large and diverse body of research, using an integrative multi-level ecological model of youth engagement to do so. It identifies unresolved issues in the field and offers numerous suggestions for future research. Youth Civic and Political Engagement is an invaluable resource for researchers, teachers, youth workers, civil society activists, policymakers and politicians who wish to acquire an up-to-date understanding of the factors and processes that influence young people’s civic and political engagement, and how to promote youth engagement.

NULL

This book, aimed at postgraduate level students, analyzes government relationships with international financial institutions to evaluate the role of citizen participation in formulating national poverty reduction policies. Palash Kamruzzaman first explores the rhetoric of participation in development policies and goes on to examine how such citizen participation efforts were outlined in the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper of Bangladesh, where local development brokers play an important economic role. Ultimately, he argues that participatory policies are not enough; we need an entire overhaul of poverty reduction thinking and enough political will—from citizens and politicians alike—to implement it.

There is widespread concern that the Internet is exacerbating inequalities between the information rich and poor.