It’s More than Just Debating: The Political Participation and Democratic Attitudes of Debate Programme Participants in Seven “New” Democracies

Abstract

This study is focused on the democratic competencies and political participation of young people taking part in debate programs in seven “new” democracies – the Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania and Slovakia. The research employs conventional methods adopted from various established surveys for capturing the political attitudes and values of youths. Using a longitudinal research design, we compare results from debaters and their non-debating peers on three dimensions: political competence, democratic values and political participation. The results of the pre-tests indicate that debaters’ attitudes are more in accordance with what a democratic theory would expect from active and engaged citizens. Participating in debate activities did not reveal significant attitudinal improvements during the short timeframe of our research (one school year), but the initial differences between debaters and non-debaters remained stable over time.

Keywords

• debating
• democratic values
• electoral participation
• issue-based participation
• new democracies
• political participation
• youth